On the other hand, it is possible for an apparently quite healthy person to develop, by pure imagination, the symptoms of serious illness. Laymen who dabble in medical science, and medical students at the beginning of their course, are apt to imagine that they have one or other of the diseases they have been studying, heart trouble being perhaps the most usual; and of this they do frequently develop some of the subjective symptoms.

A friend tells me that once only in his life has he suffered from laryngitis and loss of voice. This was while attending Sir Felix Semon's lectures on diseases of the throat. It may have been a mere coincidence, but that hardly explains the frequent instances of medical men who have succumbed to the disease which they have made their special study - e.g., Professor Trousseau from cancer of the stomach. It is possible that the mind, being continuously fixed on one special organ, predisposes i to disease of that organ.

* A prominent member of the Society for Psychical Research, Miss Mason, has reported several cases of cure she has effected by simple suggestion, and she tells me she generally succeeds, especially with children. She just touches each wart with her finger and says ' Go away,' and by her next visit she finds they have gradually shrivelled up and disappeared. Miss Mason holds an important Government inspectorship, so her dignified position no doubt greatly impresses the small patient. It is stated that the more vascular a wart is, as shown by its readiness to bleed, the more likely is it to respond to suggestion. I had a curious experience in 1909 with a growth more serious than a wart - molluscum contagiosum. The patient, a lady of fifty, had derived much benefit from hypnotic treatment for aural vertigo and neurasthenia. Her confidence was unbounded, and she asked me to ' suggest away' a growth which had troubled her for months and was rapidly increasing. She hated the idea of an operation even with an electric wire, so I consented to try, but had little faith in the result. The growth was very vascular, about the size of a shilling, and attached to the skin of the thorax by a pedicle.

After four or five treatments suppuration set in at the base of the pedicle, and in twelve days the growth sloughed off, leaving only a minute scar. It may have been a coincidence, but hypnotism was credited with the ' miracle.'

Hypochondriasis is, as we know, a condition in which the patient feels the working of his internal organs, and is morbidly conscious of them. It tends to grow worse, because his attention becomes more and more fixed upon functions which ought to be performed automatically, and unless some powerful mental stimulant is applied, organic disease is sometimes actually set up. The late Sir J. Russell Reynolds * has collected and classified several cases of paralysis dependent on functional causes, which were cured by careful treatment directed chiefly to the morale of the patients. He points out the difficulties attending the ordinary treatment, and shows how necessary it is to counteract the morbid ideas which are often at the root of the mischief. Most of the cases to which he refers were cured, but some resisted all forms of treatment. Dr. James Reynolds † relates a case of a woman who died in the Birmingham General Hospital from the effects of hysterical paraplegia; the necropsy showed that there was no organic disease.

He thus summarizes the dangers of this condition: 'If the nature of the malady be mistaken, and the stimulus of the will be habitually with-held from the inactive muscles, the nutrition of that part of the nerve centre which presides over those muscles becomes impaired, and what was at the beginning a mere perversion of function is finally converted into real organic disease.' Russell Reynolds thus concludes his paper: 'I believe and know that many cases of apparently grave disorders of the nervous centres may be removed entirely; and that in other instances, when the ideal affection is grafted upon organic lesion, much may be done to remove the former, and afford so much of the stimulus of hope, that the cure of yet graver symptoms is brought within the range, not only of possibility, but of probability and of' actual fact.' There are many people of both sexes who never hear of a disease without fancying they have it.

* British Medical Journal, vol. ii., 483, 1869.

† 'Paralysis and other Diseases of Motion dependent on Idea,' ilia., p. 632.

The illness of a royal or distinguished sufferer, the progress of which is daily recorded in the newspapers, will sometimes become almost epidemic; thus,throat specialists can tell some curious stories of the increase of imaginary and real throat affections during the illness of the late Emperor Frederick. That fear will promote disease has been abundantly proved during outbreaks of cholera, small-pox, the plague, and other epidemics. Pseudo-hydrophobia is a recognized malady, and no doubt many supposed cures of hydrophobia have in fact been cures of this fear-induced imitation.

Laycock tells the story of a woman, aged forty-eight, who was in constant attendance on her daughter during her tedious labour. Though she had not menstruated - she had passed the menopause - for eight years, she experienced uterine pains, and had a sanguineous discharge from the parts, and the next day her breasts were swollen, painful, and discharging a serous fluid. * Quoting Sir Benjamin Brodie, he adds that patients have been so acted upon by their fears, and by seeing their friends affected, that they have imagined they have had tumours of the breast, and it is not improbable that the disease has been so produced.

Nothing can illustrate this truth better than Kinglake's description of the behaviour of the Levantines during an outbreak of the plague at Cairo, showing how these terror-stricken people invited the very danger they feared: ' For awhile it may be that the caution of the poor Levantine may enable him to avoid contact (with the garments of passers-by), but sooner or later, perhaps, the dreaded chance arrives. . . . From that dread moment his peace is gone; his mind, for ever hanging upon the fatal touch, invites the blow which he fears; he watches for the symptoms of plague so carefully that, sooner or later, they come in truth. The parched mouth is a sign - his mouth is parched; the throbbing brain - his brain does throb; the rapid pulse - he touches his own wrist (for he dares not ask counsel of any man lest he be deserted) - he touches his wrist, and feels how his frighted blood goes galloping out of his heart. There is nothing but the fatal swelling to make his sad conviction complete; immediately he has an odd feel under the arm - no pain, but a little straining of the skin - he would to God that his fancy were strong enough to give him that sensation. This is worst of all.

It now seems to him that he could be happy and contented with his parched mouth and his throbbing brain and his rapid pulse, if he only knew that there were no swelling under the left arm; but dares he try? In a moment of calmness and deliberation he dares not; but when for awhile he has writhed under the torture of suspense, a sudden strength of will drives him to seek and know his fate; he touches the gland, and finds the skin sane and sound, but under the cuticle there lies a small lump like a pistol-bullet, that moves as he pushes it. Oh ! but is this for all certainty - is this the sentence of death? Feel the gland on the other arm. There is not the same lump exactly, yet something a little like it. Have not some people glands naturally enlarged? Would to heaven he were one! So he does for himself the work of the plague, and when the Angel of Death, thus courted, does in truth and indeed come, he has only to finish that which has been so well begun.' *