On the other hand, Sir W. Goodhart mentions the case of a hysterical woman who consulted a doctor about her health. He examined her chest, and, thinking he detected signs of phthisis, expressed great surprise that she had no cough. Though up to that time she was free from any symptom of the kind, the suggestion was sufficient to excite a most troublesome and obstinate cough which it was very difficult to cure. Sir W. Goodhart cites this case as a warning to the practitioner against being too persistent in asking leading questions .* A very excellent and clever lady of my acquaintance tells me she never consults doctors now, as she finds they always make her worse by their suggestions of disease. For instance, after waiting some time in an atmosphere of discomfort and suffering in the ante-room, she would be shown into an impressive consulting-room, and find herself face to face with a grave and learned physician, who would fix her with a glittering eye, and say with a solemn and sepulchral voice, 'Where is your pain?' The poor lady would reply: 'Sir, until this moment I had no pain; but now you make me feel pains all over me.' I don't suppose there are many people so bad as that; but we learn from extreme cases.

Dr. Forel (op. cit., p. 215) confesses how in his early days, before he had studied psycho-therapeutics, he once 'suggested' a gastric ulcer to a patient in whom he suspected this condition. The woman developed a number of symptoms of the disease, and was confined to bed for months. Afterwards he found her to be an excellent hypnotic subject. I remember, as a very young practitioner, a labouring man coming to me to be examined as to soundness before joining the police. He was a strong young fellow, a market gardener, and he looked the picture of health. Almost as a matter of form I put the stethoscope to his chest, and to my surprise found a loud aortic bruit. I told him he had heart disease and was unfit for service - I fear rather brusquely. The poor fellow nearly fainted on the spot, and I am afraid the shock must have made him ill for days. Evil is wrought by want of thought more than by want of heart. In such cases it is one of our difficulties to know how much to conceal and how much to reveal, having the patient's interests and our own reputation to consider.

There is a story told by Rudyard Kipling of a soldier with locomotor ataxy, who was able to pull himself together as long as there was fighting to be done, but quickly went to pieces when the surgeon examined him and invalided him home.

* 'Common Neuroses,' Harveiari Lectures, 1891.

Dr. Arthur, of Sydney, New South Wales, has ingeniously taken advantage of the fact that the force of suggestion is very greatly increased by hypnotism. He has reported in the British Medical Journal a series of cases in which he had tried hypnotism with excellent palliative results. But the pains returned from time to time, and it was impossible for the patients always to go to him for relief. He therefore hypnotized them, and told them that whenever their symptoms recurred they had only to take a dose of the medicine he would give them and they would experience immediate relief. Among these cases were one of carcinoma uteri, one of scirrhus of the breast, one of locomotor ataxy, etc., incurable diseases, in which all we can do is to relieve symptoms. The medicine he gave, which hypnotic suggestion caused to act as a panacea, was a mixture of tincture of valerian. He terms this method 'treatment by indirect suggestion.'

The power of religious ecstasy and absorbing religious contemplation, in all creeds and in all climes, to cause disregard of surroundings and contempt for physical suffering need not be insisted upon, for its reality is attested by all history. From the days when Queen Jezebel's priests mutilated themselves on Mount Carmel, to the present time, when we have seen the dervishes hurl themselves on the bayonets of our soldiers in the Soudan, utterly unmindful of the pains of death, and seeing only the plains of paradise beyond, the story is the same. A condition similar to hypnosis undoubtedly prevails in such cases. It is asserted, and with some reason, that in many cases martyrs at the stake have been mercifully spared much of the suffering which seems inseparable from their cruel death, in consequence of a hypnotic state, with its attendant anaesthesia, being induced in them, partly the result of religious fervour and abstraction, and partly brought about by the glitter of the flames and the clamour of the crowd, over-stimulating certain sensory centres to the consequent inhibition of others.

The devotees of certain sects obviously undergo hypnotization before practising their rites - e.g., the Aissouans who recently visited London. These Arabs are hypnotized by their priest or chief, and in the hypnotic state allow themselves to be stung by scorpions and devour venomous snakes.

Brown-Sequard relates a remarkable case of ecstatic catalepsy in a girl whom he was called in to see. She lived in Paris, close to the Church of St. Sulpice, and every Sunday morning at eight o'clock, when the bell began to ring, she used at once to rise from her bed, mount the edge of the bedstead, and stand there on tiptoe until the bell sounded at eight in the evening, when she returned to her bed. The board on which she stood was curved and polished, and it would have been impossible for the most athletic man to have remained on it in such a position for more than a few minutes at a time. While standing there she was utterly unconscious of her surroundings, and continued murmuring prayers to the Virgin all the time, her hands clasped, her eyes fixed, and head slightly bent. Some of the bystanders were sceptical, and Brown-Sequard, to put her to the test, applied a strong interrupted current to her face. She showed no sign of pain, but the muscles reacted energetically, and her intonation was therefore slightly affected. The girl was weak and anaemic, and was so thoroughly exhausted by her Sunday exertions, that the remainder of the week she could only lie helpless in her bed.

The enormous increase in muscular and nervous force in one direction (dynamogenesis) was accompanied, as is invariably the case, by inhibition of other functions - in this case, those of higher cerebration. *