To show what suggestion may do, I will cite the case of a medical friend who asked me to hypnotize him and make suggestions about retaining his water. He had an organic stricture and felt the greatest dread of a catheter. I found him hypnotizable to the second degree, and I made suggestions that he should be able to retain his water for four or five hours during the day and all night. After three or four sittings he assured me that, instead of having a call nearly every hour day and night, he is now able to go as long as most people. In this case I doubt if the treatment has not done more harm than good, for by relieving the symptoms it has enabled him to postpone the surgical interference which is urgently called for. I have frequently been able in the same way to relieve the dysuria of patients suffering from Bright's disease or diabetes, and sometimes even that due to prostatic enlargement.

Dr. Kingsbury, late of Blackpool, has reported in the it. Hilger has often used hypnotic suggestion to remove patients' dislike to desirable articles of food - e.g., milk; and to induce them to accept a necessary diet cheerfully - e.g., in diabetes. I had practical experience of such a case of suggestion a few years ago, when I found myself kept awake at night if I indulged in coffee after dinner. Being fond of coffee, I found this very annoying, and I got my friend Mr. Fox Pitt, the eminent psychologist, to hypnotize me a few times and remove the idea. The result was satisfactory, for I have since been able to enjoy my coffee and my good nights. Of course, I believed in the treatment, and was a good patient, though only slightly hypnotizable.

British Medical Journal and in his book a remarkable case of painless and rapid delivery in the hypnotic state. The patient, a young girl under fifteen, was hypnotized several times previous to the confinement, and was most deeply influenced. * Dr. Douglas Bryan, of Leicester, reports a similar case in full detail. † Dr. Milne Bramwell has brought the surgical use of hypnotism prominently before the profession, and operations were frequently performed at Leeds with him as hypnotic anaesthetist. I need hardly remind the reader that Esdaile, Presidency Surgeon at Calcutta, performed many capital operations under mesmeric anaesthesia sixty years ago.

Milne Bramwell excited great interest by showing the profession at Leeds how easy it was for him to hypnotize subjects at a distance by telegram or letter. One patient went into a deep trance immediately she handed the dentist a note, and in this state had several teeth painlessly extracted. Suggestion, of course, is the explanation of this result. On some occasions, where it has been necessary to break off the treatment prematurely, or where it has been advisable to continue it over long periods of time, I have found the following plan very efficacious: The patient is given a paper on which are drawn several lines and figures, and he is told that once a week, or as often as is necessary, he is to lie down in some place where he can be quiet, and hold the paper in his hand at a convenient distance from his eyes. After looking at it a few seconds with the desire and expectation of sleep, he will pass into the stage of hypnosis he ordinarily assumes, and in that state the memory of the suggestions previously made will recur to his mind, and he will feel them producing their usual effect.

It is important to remember to tell the patient that this course is only to be adopted at the prescribed times, and that, in fact, it is a medical prescription. * A paper is not always necessary: a patient whom I am in the habit of sometimes hypnotizing by gentle stroking of his forehead tells me that he now frequently sends himself to sleep at night by imitating on himself this simple process.

* Dr. Marie Dobrovolsky has described in the Revue de l'Hypnotisme for March, 1891, a series of eight confinements in which she has employed hypnotic suggestion. The pains were either greatly diminished or abolished in all the cases, and that without interfering with the uterine contractions. In several of the cases only a slight hypnotic sleep was induced. In every instance the patient was previously hypnotized several times preparatory to the lying-in.

† General Practitioner, December 15, 1906.

I have been successful in a good many cases of neurasthenia brought on from overwork, anxiety, or dissipation, and also in the depressed nervous condition sometimes seen to persist after influenza, typhoid, and other fevers.

Sir Clifford Allbutt says ('Gulstonian Lectures,' 1884) the neurasthenic patient has no reserve of energy. He has exhausted it perhaps in work, but frequently in dissipation, and it has never reaccumulated. He lives, as it were, from hand to mouth on the day's supply, and a precarious existence it is. In such cases sleeplessness is a very prominent symptom; and even when sleep is obtained it will generally be found that it is of an unrefreshing character, so that the patient wakes up saying he is more tired than when he went to bed. Theoretically, hypnotism ought to work wonders in these cases, and as a matter

* The following extract from a letter received from a patient who was for some months under my treatment explains the working of this method. The gentleman was a dipsomaniac of the very worst type, and after keeping sober for seven months he left England and soon relapsed. He then went to stay in a retreat where no treatment was employed but enforced abstention; and as he told me that he found it much more difficult to abstain without hypnotism than with it, I adopted this plan. ' Doing as you suggested,' he writes. ' I made the first attempt last week, and it was completely successful. I went off at once, bearing in mind that I was to awake in ten minutes. I took the time and found that I awoke to the minute. All your suggestions came back and repeated themselves, as it were, frequently. 1 could quite have believed that you were there making them, and they were spoken in your voice.' Colonel Neilson first caused me to try this method. He practised it successfully in the case of a soldier, whom he cured of confirmed drunkenness of twenty years' standing.