But function depends upon blood-supply in the first place, and it follows that by influencing the trophic and vaso-motor centres we must affect and control not only psychical processes, but the motor sensory and structural arrangements which form their physical basis. This is practically the position we assume.

Delboeuf, desiring to ascertain the positive effect of hypnotic suggestion in the treatment of a burn, and being, of course, unable to find two persons of identical constitution and condition generally, used the ingenious device of producing, with caustic, two exactly similar burns on the same person - one on each arm - and of treating one wound by curative suggestion, combined with the usual remedies, and the other with the usual remedies only. Having induced hypnotic sleep, he suggested to the patient that the one arm should be cured painlessly and without any suppuration; and it did in fact heal, by simple separation of the slough and healthy granulation, ten days earlier than the other, which went through the suppurative process, accompanied by inflammation and pain (op. cit., p. 9). Were this case not reported by a well-known savant, I confess I should feel some hesitation in recording it here; as it is, its accuracy is beyond doubt.*

Beaunis (op. cit.) notes a case in which, by suggestion, he regulated the pulse of a patient. Before sleep there were 96 pulsations in a minute, which during the sleep increased to 98.4. He suggested a reduction, and it fell to 92.4. The pulse having again risen to 100.2 he suggested an acceleration, and it further rose to 115.5. The slackening and quickening of the pulse in each instance followed immediately upon the suggestion. The tracings were taken by Marey's sphygmograph, and of these facsimile reproductions are given in Beaunis's work. He also succeeded in slightly raising the temperature of patients by suggesting an increase of warmth.

* See also Bcrillon's wart case, p. 18.

I have myself frequently succeeded in modifying the heart's action by hypnotic suggestion to a notable extent by as many as ten beats in either direction in the minute, but the subjects on whom vesication can be produced by suggestion are, I imagine, very few, and in them probably only after prolonged experimentation. I have on one occasion produced vomiting by suggestion. Once a dipsomaniac patient, who had relapsed and indulged in beer, required, I felt, very drastic treatment. He was a somnambulist, and in the trance state I told him that if he ever drank beer again it would act as an immediate emetic. I then awoke him and insisted on his drinking half a glass of ale. He had hardly swallowed it before it returned, though he was quite unconscious of the suggestion.*

Beaunis describes at some length the production of all the effects of a blister following the suggestion that one had been applied. ' M. Focachon, a chemist of Charmes, showed us (Drs. Bernheim, Beaunis, and Liebeault) this phenomenon on a patient whom he brought to Nancy. [During her sleep, at about 11 a.m., eight postage stamps were applied to her left shoulder, while it was suggested to her that they were a blister. She was allowed to sleep all day, being, however, aroused for meals, and was kept under observation. When she retired for the night she;was told to sleep until 7 the next morning. At 8.15 a.m. the dressing which had been put on was removed, and the stamps were found in situ The surrounding skin, for 4 or 5 centimetres, was thickened, modified, and of yellowish-white colour. The cuticle, however, was not raised, and did not form a blister; but it was thickened and wrinkled, and presented the appearance usual before complete vesication. The part of the skin was surrounded by a zone of intense redness and swelling.* M. Focachon and the patient returned to Charmes, and by 4 p.m. four or five vesicles were developed. Fifteen days later the blister was still suppurating freely.

M. Focachon made a similar experiment on another patient, and in forty-eight hours produced a blister, which followed the same course.' Dr. Wetterstrand has kindly sent me photographs of a woman's hand, on which he raised blisters by simply touching places with the tip of his finger and suggesting it was a hot iron. The converse experiment has also proved successful. A blister is applied to a hypnotized subject who is told that it is a soothing liniment, and no vesication is produced (Alfred Fouillee, Rev. des Deux Mondes, May, 1891).

* I have since received letters from this gentleman's friends, and what they say affords remarkable evidence of the deep-seated effect of hypnotic suggestion. He was taken suddenly ill at a cricket-match with what turned out to be acute pleurisy. As he was faint and in pain, he was given the usual rough-and-ready remedy - a glass of spirits. No sooner had he swallowed it than it returned. It was three months since I had last hypnotized him, but Dr. S------ had repeated my suggestions.

Professors Bourru and Burot, of Rochefort, succeeded in causing haemorrhage from the nose, by suggesting that it should take place, in a young soldier of epileptic and hysterical constitution; they even fixed the hour when it should come on. On this same subject Dr. Mabille, of the lunatic asylum at Lafond, produced instantaneously, by suggestion, haemorrhage from different parts of the body, exactly similar in character to the stigmata of some medieval saints.†

* Sir B. W. Richardson, in his kindly notice of my book in the Asclepiad, June, 1890, attributes the blisters produced in this case, not to suggestion, but to the fact that the gum on the postage stamps was of bad and irritating quality ! Dr. Albert Bonjean (' L'Hypnotisme ses Rapports, avec le Droit et la Therapeutique,' Paris, 1890) relates numerous experiments in which he was able to obtain stigmata and blisters by suggestion alone, without even touching the part affected.

+ The best modern example of a religious stigmatisee is that of the Belgian nun. Louise Lateau. The case was very fully investigated in 1869 by Dr. Lefebvre, Professor at Louvain University, and other physicians, who came to the conclusion that the phenomenon was a genuine result of auto-suggestion (Bonjean, op. cit., p. 106 .