The following notes present, I think, many points of interest, and illustrate the value of hypnotism in a class of cases not amenable to ordinary treatment:

M. A------, aged thirteen, was brought to me for treatment in December, 1895.

She was the illegitimate child of a prostitute by a German Jew. Both parents, as far as can be gathered, were drunken and dissolute; and the child was adopted when a few days old by a respectable artisan and his wife, who have brought her up as their own.

The child was small for her age, fair and fragile in appearance, pretty and graceful, and looked very superior to the rank of life in which she was placed; she was of highly nervous temperament, but healthy, and had never suffered from any severe illness.

She was intelligent, and stood well in the Board school she attended. She was very fond of music, and played creditably on the violin.

She was brought to me to be hypnotized for a habit of mischief, which showed itself by cutting up clothing and furniture whenever she had an opportunity. Her own clothes, especially when new, were the chief objects for destruction; and I was shown frocks, hats, and boots, which had been destroyed in that way. Everything had been tried in the way of cure, from severe punishment to affectionate persuasion, but no effect had been produced, and the habit had persisted for over seven years. She always denied the acts when accused of them, but afterwards used to confess to them and promise amendment with much weeping. She also habitually bit her nails, a habit which Berillon has shown to be a very important sign of degeneracy, and she often talked in her sleep. In other respects she was a normal and affectionate child.

Her extreme nervousness made her difficult to hypnotize, but on the third visit she fell into a somnambulic state. Suggestions were then and subsequently made, that she would have no desire to do mischief, and that she would be cured. At the same time, suggestions were made that she would sleep quietly at night, and would no longer bite her nails. All the suggestions acted perfectly. The nail-biting and talking in her sleep ceased at once, and there was only one relapse into mischief, when she cut up a new bonnet belonging to her foster-mother in February, 1896. In June, 1896, she had rather a severe attack of scarlet fever, from which she made a good recovery. Menstruation appeared for the first time in November, 1896, and continues normal. There has been no return of the morbid impulses, and the girl is developing rapidly. Later accounts (1904) report her filling satisfactorily a clerkship in the city.

If the child is intelligent I find hypnosis is easily induced, and that the susceptibility to curative suggestion is very marked. On the other hand, when there is deficient intelligence, hypnosis is almost impossible of attainment; and suggestion, according to my experience, can achieve but little.