A recent case presents many points of interest. The patient was a weaver from the North, and he was sent to me by his clergyman. The poor man was unable to do his work, and suffered from sleeplessness, restlessness, mental depression, want of appetite, and other symptoms of neurasthenia. His illness dated from a year previous, when his son had nearly died from rheumatic fever. Quite unjustly he accused himself of being the cause of the illness, and nothing seemed to be able to get this haunting idea out of his mind. He proved a good hypnotic subject, and I sent him back in a fortnight quite well. I have treated successfully several cases of ' stage fright' occurring in actors and musicians. This condition is largely the outcome of morbid self-consciousness and self-suggestion, and is, therefore, more appropriately combated by healthy suggestion. A notable cure is that of a talented violinist, whose nerve was completely destroyed by the adverse criticism of a prejudiced journal. She soon quite regained confidence, and remains cured.

The suggestive system has been extensively taken up by foreign lunacy and mental physicians. Among these are Drs. Semal, of the asylum at Mons; Mabille, chief physician of the asylum at Lafond; Burckhardt, of the asylum at Prefargier (Switzerland). These specialists and others frequently report cases of amelioration and cure, through the use of suggestion, in the Revue de l'Hypnotisme.

The insane are not easily influenced by hypnotism; all who have anything to do with them know how difficult it is to get them to fix their attention on anything except their delusion; but once an influence is gained over them, suggestion may prove most useful.

Dr. Woods, late Superintendent of Hoxton House Asylum, London, is the chief worker in this field in England, and in an important paper contributed to the Journal of Mental Science * he describes several cases of melancholia, delusional insanity, and acute mania which he has benefited by hypnotic treatment.

That borderland of insanity occupied by dipsomania, the opium habit, and the excessive abuse of tobacco and other narcotics, offers an extensive field of usefulness to suggestive treatment. Professor Forel, in his address at the Congress of Neurologists held at Zurich in 1888, gave it as his opinion that in those cases suggestion is a very beneficial, and often a very powerful, agent, frequently enabling the drunkard to take that first step, which is always so difficult, towards reformation and cure. He cited also several cases in which he had succeeded by its means in curing patients of the opium habit in from eight to twelve days, and that without the acute mental suffering which is commonly felt when an enslaving habit is quickly broken off. Drs. Van Renterghem and Van Eeden (of Amsterdam) likewise tell me that they have had great success in overcoming these moral diseases. At Nancy I had the opportunity of seeing many such cases in process of cure. One man came to Dr. Liebeault completely shattered by indulgence in tobacco, which he both smoked and chewed. He was a railway porter, a big, strongly-built fellow, but he was weak and shaky through his excesses. His digestion was faulty, his tongue thickly furred, and he had no appetite.

His pulse was slow and intermittent, he felt giddiness on movement, and his sight frequently vanished through incipient amaurosis. Persons whose nervous systems are broken down in this way are very easily hypnotized, and Liebeault soon had this man in a state of profound sleep. He then told him that he was to give up smoking, that a pipe was to be to him an object of loathing, and a quid of tobacco even more offensive; also that, if he did indulge in one or the other, pain and sickness would be the result, so that he must not even feel a desire for the indulgence. The patient came daily for several mornings, and daily showed an increasing improvement, till in a week he was completely cured of the symptoms of nicotine-poisoning. He would, of course, have been cured by voluntary abstention from tobacco, but I doubt if the beneficial effect would have been so rapid; and no one seeing the man would have credited him with the moral courage and determination necessary for breaking off a long-cherished habit. It is told of the younger Dumas that he was formerly an inveterate smoker, and on one occasion, feeling out of health, went to consult his doctor, with the usual cigar in his mouth.

The physician, one in whom Dumas had entire confidence, having heard his symptoms, told him plainly that smoking was destruction for him, whereupon the great writer immediately flung away his cigar, declaring that he would never smoke another - and he kept his word. But how many are gifted with such resolution? * I am afraid most doctors share my experience, and find that patients come to us, not to be cured of their bad habits, but to be relieved of the suffering resulting therefrom.

* April, 1897.

There are many cases on record where this abandonment of a cherished habit has been accomplished without hypnotism. A man who has caused the death of one dear to him in some drunken brawl is very likely, if he has any good in him, to conceive a horror and dislike for intoxicants, and to become a reformed character.

* A near relation of my own underwent hypnotic treatment at Nancy for the cure of the tobacco habit in 1891, and his experience is interesting. After being a great smoker for years, he formed the resolution of giving up the weed, as he found that it was causing nervousness and palpitation. Dr. Liebeault never induced in him more than a slight drowsiness, with inability to open the eyes, and yet the effect of suggestion was immediate and remarkable. Tobacco almost at once became distasteful to him, and he did not smoke again for years. Now he is a very moderate smoker. Probably in this case the patient would have been able to reform himself unaided; but. Liebeault saved him from a good deal of suffering, and very likely from some relapses.