Berillon, * as Government Medical Inspector of Public Asylums in France, has great facilities for studying abnormal children, and he has employed hypnotic suggestion largely in correcting vicious tendencies. He has made a special study of degeneration in children, and among the signs of this condition he reckons nail-biting (onychophagie), nocturnal enuresis, masturbation, and excessive pusillanimity. These conditions are very amenable to hypnotic treatment. Dr. Osgood Mason is enthusiastic about the value of hypnotism in educating unmanageable and backward children, and he gives many remarkable examples in his interesting book, ' Hypnotism and Suggestion in Therapeutics, Education and Reform ' (London, 1901). He relates, too, how he made a badly educated but intelligent woman become a fairly good speller by telling her to observe and remember while reading how the words looked and were spelt.

* Dr. Berillon's services to the State have recently been acknowledged by his being created a chevalier of the Legion of Honour. A banquet to celebrate the occasion was attended by the elite of the profession. 8

Many persons have objected to the educational use of hypnotic suggestion, on the ground that it is a tampering with the ' free-will' of those influenced. It is true enough that the will should not be weakened, but who would say that it should not be interfered with? Is it not a fact that all education and all moral training are an interference with free-will? The child who delights in school-work needs no coercion to application. The child - if such a one there be - who has no moral faults whatever requires no exhortations to unselfishness, truthfulness, and other good qualities. But most children prefer play to work. Some will tell a lie to escape punishment; all, so it seems, have a variety of failings and bad habits, so that reformative and preventive means must be used to train them to industry, truth-telling, and general excellence of conduct. It is, as I have said, only when those ordinary means have failed that hypnotic suggestion should be employed, and then it should work on the same lines as all judicious education: the child should not be made to obey like a slave or an automaton, but should be guided by suggestion, as by a wise teacher, to practise autosuggestion, and thus, by his own will-power, to aid in the overcoming of bad habits and the acquiring of good ones.

Some enthusiastic advocates of hypnotism argue that, as nearly all normal children are readily hypnotized-; as it is much more easy to hypnotize patients who have been operated on previously; and as conditions are very likely to arise in after-life in which the induction of hypnosis would be of advantage for combating pain, inducing sleep or anaesthesia, or correcting evil habits, it is very desirable to hypnotize every child, so as to be able to invoke the agent when required.

I confess to have no sympathy with such a contention, but, on the contrary, incline to the opinion of a medical friend who says he would rather have his child naturally naughty than hypnotically good - if by 'naturally' he means the ordinary faults and shortcomings of free, happy, and healthy childhood. If he were the parent of such a child as is described on p. 331, I dare say this gentleman would modify his opinion, and be glad to employ the only remedy which, as far as I know, is available in such cases.

When the mental powers are deficient by reason of faulty brain structure, hypnotism cannot, of course, do much. No one professes to create new grey matter by hypnotic suggestion. Still, the records of our asylums show that even when the brain is almost rudimentary, educational influence may be successful in producing decent and orderly habits. But in complete idiotcy it is almost impossible to hypnotize, and suggestions are powerless through want of point d'appui.

At the Nancy Congress, Liebeault and others gave instances of dull, idle, and unmanageable children who by suggestion (combined in some cases with judicious home influence) were made models of industry and good behaviour. Schoolboys who had habitually kept at the bottom of their form were by this treatment so incited to work that they soon occupied a place at the other end. Another child, seven years of age, so obtuse as to be almost an idiot, was so benefited by suggestion that in three months he could read, write, and understand the four rules of arithmetic.

What other remedy but hypnotism can be suggested in such a case as the following, which I treated in 1895? A lady interested in reformatory work brought me a girl of fifteen to see if hypnotism could help her. She was a workhouse child of degenerate type, but not imbecile. She had been placed in two different situations as servant, and in each case had been sent away for theft. At the home she was put to laundry work, and there being nothing else to steal, she used to steal the soap and the other girls' bread-and-butter. These she hid away, but made no use of.

She proved a good hypnotic subject, and I suggested that in future she should know she was doing wrong when she stole, and should be able to refrain; that she should work industriously, and be honest, truthful, and attentive. In all these qualities she was deficient, but after being hypnotized a few times a great improvement was perceptible, and she was sent to a third situation. When I last heard of her she was keeping quite normal and giving satisfaction, so one has good reason to consider it a permanent cure. Hypnotism probably saved the girl from a life of misery and crime, for kleptomania is not recognized among the poor.

Hack Tuke, speaking of ' moral insanity' (Journal of Mental Science, 1885), well puts it when he says that in cases of this description, where, perhaps, the disposition and actions of one member of a family will by their perversity bring untold suffering on his relations, there is undue development of the lower or automatic functions, whilst the higher centres are defective, and that it should be our object to correct this disproportion by suppressing aome functions and developing others. If (he goes on to say) the horses drawing a coach run away in consequence of the driver being drunk, it is not the horses we should blame for the accident, but the incapable driver who is no longer able to hold the reins. We know that badness may proceed from two causes, which Hack Tuke calls immoral resolution - positively bad, and moral irresolution - negatively bad. It is probable that in either case, if the offender were caught young, hypnotic suggestion would prove a valuable adjunct to other reformative agencies.