* Op. cit., p. 112.

Liebeault quotes several authors to prove that many persons seem to have had the power of so dominating their bodies by the force of will that they succeeded in keeping off illness which threatened them, and in some instances in averting or curing it when it actually had assailed them. Thus, he says, Pascal cured himself of neuralgia by steadfastly fixing his attention on other things, and Goethe relates how he got rid of a troublesome cough in the same way. They induced a condition which was practically identical with slight hypnosis, and suggested to themselves functional changes in the direction of health.

Liebeault told me he was able to cure himself of slight maladies - such as facial neuralgia - by auto-hypnotism and auto-suggestion. He sent himself to sleep by fixing his gaze on some prominent object, such as a door-handle, and his mind on the disappearance of the malady, and he dropped off into a doze, out of which he awoke cured '. But I apprehend that such a result can only be achieved by a few, and that, as a rule, both the induction of hypnosis and the suggestions for cure must come from without. In most persons the disease dominates the system, and entirely prevents the presence of that state of mental receptivity and confidence which is an essential preliminary to curative auto-suggestion.

Professor Dubois (quoted by Laycock) divided hypochondriasis into three stages: in the first the mind only is affected; the patient is harassed by imaginary diseases, and concentrates his attention on one or other of the viscera, thereby changing their innervation and bringing about the second stage. In the third stage these nervous changes terminate in organic disease of the affected organ, and the evil ceases to be one of imagination alone.

We sometimes come across people who tell us they 'have no time to be ill'; and certainly reports of longevity shows that rust destroys more than use, and that hale old age is more frequently attained by those who have led busy lives than by idlers. Idleness is a well-known factor in producing all kinds of ailments, real and imaginary, of mind and body, perhaps because the idle man, from sheer lack of interest in life, devotes too much attention to his own organism. *

* 'Eothen,' p. 257.

Imagination, combined with 'direction of consciousness ' (Sir H. Holland) to a part, will produce results which have been noticed by many pathologists. John Hunter said he was confident of producing a sensation in any part of his body simply by concentrating his attention on it. Sir H. Holland observes: † 'In hypochondriasis, the patient, by fixing his attention on internal organs, creates not merely disordered sensations, but disordered action in them.' And again: 'When there is liability to irregular pulsation (of the heart), this is brought on and increased by a simple effort of attention.'

The late Dr. Forbes Winslow, writing on this subject, says: 'It is a well-established fact that alterations of tissue have been the result of a morbid concentration of the attention to particular organic structures. Certain feelings of uneasiness, or even pain, originate in the mind a suspicion of disease existing in particular parts of the body, it may be in the lungs, stomach, heart, brain, liver, or kidneys. Some slight irregularities and functional disturbances in the action of these organs being noticed, are at once suggestive (to the hypochondriac) of serious and fatal disease being established in the part to which the attention is directed. This deviation from a normal state of certain functions frequently lapses into actual structural disease, as the effect of the faculty of attention being for a lengthened period concentrated on this action. The continuous direction of the mind to vital tissues imagined to be in an unhealthy state undoubtedly causes an exaltation of their special functions, and an increase of susceptibility, by (it may be presumed) concentrating to them an abnormal quantity of blood, this being followed successively by (I) undue vascular action, (2) capillary congestion, (3) an excess in the evolution of nerve force, and (4) appreciable structural alterations.

Hysterical contraction of the lower limbs frequently leads to structural changes and disease of the spinal cord (Charcot, Gowers), from impairment of nutrition and trophic changes leading to softening. Hack Tuke says: 'If twenty persons fix their attention on their little finger for ten minutes, the result will be that most of them will feel decided sensations there, amounting in some to a mere sense of weight or throbbing, and in others to actual pain.' He endeavours to explain this by supposing that the act of attention excites an increased flow of blood to the part, and consequent increased vascularity of the sensory nerve ganglia, so leading to subjective sensation; or that the sympathetic nerve centres become excited, and the vasomotor nerves influenced thereby so as to cause in the finger temporary vascular changes which invoke sensation. He puts forward also a third hypothesis, which is interesting from the relation it bears to that given by Professor Delboeuf, of Liege - that fixing the attention on a part of the body for some time renders us conscious of the working of functions which are usually performed automatically and unconsciously.