The need of such a society was felt by my friend Dr. B------ some years ago. He was house-surgeon to a provincial hospital, and in the wards was a patient with stammering bladder. All sorts of treatment were tried unsuccessfully, and at last Dr. B------ hypnotized him and applied suggestion. The man was almost immediately cured, and left the hospital full of gratitude. But the chairman of the board of management severely censured Dr B------, and told him he must not again use mesmerism in the hospital, as it would bring the institution into bad repute. For years Dr. B------ was afraid to speak of hypnotism; but times and opinions changed, and he now has an extensive practice, and is making a large income as a psycho-therapist.

For twenty minutes it was a duel between us, for all the time she was trying to open her eyes, while I was suggesting she couldn't until the pain was cured. Gradually she acknowledged that it was getting better, and at last she said it was gone, and opened her eyes. She had no more pain, and returned to the country quite well and strong. She remained well for six months, though she again systematically neglected all the rules of health; and then I heard she had another breakdown, accompanied by severe sciatica.

This lady was one of those who hug their infirmities and call it ' bearing their cross.' She was quite sulky when she had to give up her neuralgia, though, of course, she would not admit it It had become a part of her personality. Sometimes one is told by such patients that they wouldn't know themselves without their disease. Many people allow themselves to fall into a state of invalidism because it is, they think, interesting, and appeals to their friends' sympathies; and others take up the role because they find it is one they can fill gracefully, perhaps after having failed in other walks of life.*

Doctors and nurses are kindly people, and may often be termed professional sympathizers. I knew one rich young woman who was never so happy as when in a nursing home preparing for an operation. She had had both ovaries and one kidney removed. While her younger and more attractive sister and rival was enjoying the normal life of a young girl of means, this poor woman had her coterie of sympathetic and admiring friends and doctors. She was much benefited by a course of suggestion, and was led to regard life from a new point of view. Many chronic invalids are always kicking against the pricks, and are obsessed by the idea that ' Providence has a special down upon them.' Removal of this sense of grievance is the first step towards a better state of things, and hypnotic suggestion greatly helps to do this.

The subconscious mind is a strange thing, and plays curious pranks with our health and thoughts. It is not reached by drugs, but by psychical influences, and I believe hypnotism to be the best and most philosophical \>ay of employing these. The researches of Freud and the methods of psycho-analysis throw a flood of light on this strange warping of the personality and the vagaries of invalid subconsciousness.

The sick man may be likened to a person fallen down into a well. It is generally sufficient to lower a rope and haul him up, the subject adjusting the rope around himself and co-operating with his rescuers. But the well may be deep and the injury caused so serious that the subject is unable to help himself, and the rescuer has to descend and adjust the rope round his helpless body and so effect his relief. Again, the subject may be insane to start with, or have been rendered so by the fall, and instead of cooperating with his rescuer or being passive, may actually light against him and require compulsory salvage. I should say the patient the practitioner has generally to deal with belongs to the first class. Most hypnotic patients belong to the second, and deep hypnosis and psychoanalysis often make it possible to successfully treat the third class. *

* Dr. Haydn Brown, acting upon my advice, has established in his medical home at Chislehurst, a system of employing neurotic patients in useful and productive work under the direction of competent instructors. The creative instinct is strong in mankind, and many of our patients suffer from its not being exercised. Work they regard as an evil to be avoided as much as possible. Distracted by ennui and imprisoned in self, their one hope of lasting cure lies in work and contact with the realities of life (Wingfield). To get such persons to make something useful is the best forms of re-education. The system has been successfully worked for years in Germany and Switzerland. The effect on the energetic idler is striking and immediate. He feels a new interest in life when he has achieved something and can show the fruits of his labour, be it only a walking-stick or hand basket. Games and sports are good in their way, but constructive work is much better.

Forms of insanity which were once thought to depend upon obsession and demoniacal possession are now known

* I have come across many cases illustrating this point. For instance, one wealthy neurasthenic gentleman wanted to make a bargain with me to keep him in my house for a year on the understanding that he should pay me £700 if I succeeded and nothing if I failed. To him I replied that I was open to a ' sporting offer,' but on rather different lines - viz., that he should pay me only half fees if I succeeded and double ones if I failed. For if the physician got neither success nor money, his case was doubly hard. Of course, the patient did not accept my offer, and I expect he is still going about from cure to cure at home and abroad. Another patient assured my housekeeper, with great satisfaction, that she had worn out fifteen doctors ! I once took such a patient to a well-known alienist, who at once realized the position and said to him: ' My friend, the trouble you suffer from is damned selfishness, and that same fills half the lunatic asylums in the country.' One is always being asked to make silk purses out of sow's ears, and a good doctor sometimes sacrifices himself in vain for a bad patient. Some such patients seem to require not only re-education as practised by Vittoz of Lausanne, and by Crichton Miller of London, but to be born again.

I have known cases where disaster and financial ruin have brought about cure after all the doctors had failed, because the patient has had to follow Abernethy's advice to earn a shilling a day and live on it. There is no greater satisfaction than that derived from renewing a broken life and restoring a working member of society to usefulness, but I advise young practitioners taking up psycho-therapy to be on their guard against psychic parasites and moral vampires. One of the points cleverly insisted upon by Mrs. Eddy is the throwing of the onus of failure to cure on the patient instead of on the ' healer.' to arise from perverted subliminal consciousness. Janet relates many cases, some of which are quoted by Myers. For instance, that of a commercial traveller who became absolutely sleepless, and thought himself possessed by the devil. Ordinary attempts to hypnotize him failed, until Janet humoured the morbid idea, and addressed himself to the obsessing devil. He defied him to put his victim to sleep in a certain chair. ' The devil' fell into the trap, and the man fell into a sound sleep. Janet then found him open to his suggestions, and got him to tell the cause of the trouble.

This, it appears, was an act of infidelity to his wife while on his travels, which so preyed upon his mind that he thought himself damned and given over to the devil. Janet combated the exaggerated idea, conquered it, and cured the patient. Only a very skilful psychologist could hope to treat such a case successfully. Some years before I knew anything of hypnotism I attended a gentleman whose remorse took a similar form. His ending was was tragic, for he committed suicide.*