The postulate mentioned in the preceding chapter proves conclusively that it is the duty of the medical practitioner to know and understand suggestion, even if the reader has not been convinced of this in the earlier chapters. Unfortunately, this is still far from being accomplished. The majority of medical men are still lay and ignorant persons in respect of the question of suggestion.

In this respect there exists a serious gap in our medical studies. Medical practitioners are mostly extremely ignorant not only in the suggestion question, but also in psychology and psychophysiology, and for this reason they are incapable of comprehending the doctrine of suggestion. They interpret the matter almost as lay people do, and are frequently inclined to wander over from "materialism" to "spiritualism," or, at all events, to "telepathy," evidencing a want of critical spirit, since the relationship of psychology to the physiology of the brain appears to them to be "a dark, uncanny sphere." They have followed their studies from the beginning to the end without taking cerebral life and its influence on the body into consideration. Only a few attempt to educate themselves thoroughly on this point later on. How can one ever understand the normal and pathological man without understanding his brain and its functions?

A large number of the worst mistakes of our numerous specialists arise from this. They seek the causes of central disturbances in the periphery of the body, because the psychophysiological mechanism is incomprehensible to them.

It suffices to have pointed out this defect, in order to show that the filling out of it has become an urgent need. The study of modern psychology, psychophysiology, and the doctrine of 306 suggestion (the latter in connection with a small clinic or outpatient department) ought to be rendered possible in every medical school.

It is only in this way that a successful struggle against superstition and quackery will be possible, and that the medical practitioners will be able to escape making those awkward blunders which the laity nowadays is on the look out for. In this I am only speaking of the results of empirical practitioners, and do not even include the attacks which could be made on them by psychologically trained non-medical persons. It is clear that if the medical practitioner diagnoses and treats a local disturbance, which does not exist, through his ignorance of suggestion and of the phenomena of pathological autosuggestion, or else if he goes to the other extreme and suspects the patient of malingering, he will lay himself open to being laughed at by the first quack whom the patient consults, or by one of the religious magic institutions. These blunders act like so many harmful stabs inflicted on science, its earnestness, and its dignity.

Bernheim has already shown that the magic of the "stigmatized" Luisa Lateau undoubtedly depends on suggestion, as he was able to obtain the same by suggestive means. The same applies in my opinion to the "miraculous cures" which are attained in Protestant so-called "prayer" institutes.

In Zeller's institute in Maennedorf, Canton Zurich, e.g., Mr. Zeller lays his hand (the right or the left) on the naked affected part of the body for a definite length of time (laying on of hands in accordance to the Bible), repeats this procedure according to the requirements, and in this way obtains the cure of pains, paralyses, etc A second form of laying on of hands which is employed there is the "anointing with oil" (also from the Bible). The hand is moistened with cold olive oil, and "laid on" in the manner before-mentioned. Mr. Zeller, who told me this himself, ascribes the chief power to the prayer connected with the procedure, and believes that he can disprove the assertion that "it is magnetism," since he does not employ any passes (strokings). But the Nancy school does not employ these either.

However, that Mr. Zeller suggests his patients intensely without realizing it, both verbally and by touching the affected part, is quite obvious from what has already been said. Apart from the absolutely different explanation, his curative method is extremely like Liebeault's method of suggestive therapy, only it would seem that waking suggestion is mostly applied.

It has always been a high ethical and cultural privilege of the education centers and of science to illuminate into the darkness of superstition and of ignorance with the torch of knowledge. It is therefore disheartening to see how just these centers still behave toward the doctrine of suggestion and the newer psychological investigations, hesitatingly, timidly, and even opposingly, although no other discipline is capable of throwing so much light on the modern forms of superstition.