The following case presents many points of interest. In 1893 an American working man came to me with a note from a well-known omniscient editor, and this was his story: He was thirty years of age, and had been for ten years a labourer in the shipyards at Boston. He had led a dissipated life, but was very strong and well until he had a bad attack of influenza in 1892. This left him so weak that he could not go back to heavy work, and if he attempted to stoop, there was severe pain in the lumbar muscles. Ordinary remedies did not set him on his legs, so he studied his case for himself, and found in a medical work on influenza in the public library in Boston laudatory references to hypnotism in the treatment of the sequelae of the disease, and the statement that the system was practised at Nancy, in France. Without further inquiry he sold his effects, and with the money took a steerage passage to Havre. Thence he went to Paris, where he found he had spent all his money and was still a long way from his goal. He went to the American Consul, who advised him to come to London, and gave him money for his fare. Arriving in London, he wrote to the omniscient gentleman referred to, who is as well known in America as in England, and he referred him to me.

I hypnotized him, and he became at once somnambulic. I let him sleep for several hours, and suggested increased vitality and freedom from pain in the back. These suggestions, combined with movements and massage, were repeated five or six times during the next ten days, and then the patient announced himself as cured. He set off to look for work, and found it as a dock labourer. He came to tell me that he could work all day, carrying heavier loads than most of his mates; and that he was saving up his wages so as to get back as soon as possible to his own country.

* Vide special number of the Practitioner (January, 1912) on Neurasthenia. Many well-known specialists contributed articles, and I discussed the merits of hypnotism, and, I think, proved my points.

No doubt the trouble and expense this patient was put to helped to get him into a suitable frame of mind for cure from the treatment he had set his heart upon. If he had only known it, there were at the time at least two able physicians practising hypnotism in Boston, and it would be interesting to know if the treatment would have been equally successful if he had found it at his door. I think it would, for he was a good subject, and one was able to drive suggestion well home. This strong, self-sufficient working man possessed the spirit of the pilgrims of the Middle Ages, and no doubt the grotto at Lourdes claims many such votaries, who return from a pilgrimage there cured from their diseases. Some, alas ! remain uncured.

Asthma is another disease like neurasthenia, very intractable by ordinary drug treatment, and yet often cured by outside remedies. Dr. Francis cures a large proportion of his cases by cauterizing the nasal septum. I have known some very bad cases cured by Ling's Swedish exercises, and others by putting the patient on rigorous Salisbury diet. Other cases, again, have yielded to vaccine therapy - we cannot have too many strings to our therapeutic bow. I have cured several cases by hypnotic suggestion, as is exemplified on p. 335. Asthma is one of the diseases for which hypnotism should always be thought of. Forel relates the cure of a very bad case where there was considerable resulting emphysema of the lungs and dilatation of the heart. Prevention of attacks soon brought about structural repair, as shown by the physical signs.

The profession is indebted to Dr. Milne Bramwell for much information concerning the therapeutic uses of hypnotism. He has frequently demonstrated its availability as an anaesthetic in surgery, and he has brought an exhaustless fund of patience to bear on the most obstinate cases. He has described a case of pruritus vulvae which had resisted all attempts at hypnotization for sixty-seven times, but he succeeded in inducing somnambulism the sixty-eighth time, and the patient was cured! *

He showed at Leeds a case of aphemia with paresis of the legs, which had lasted for three years, which he had cured in a few days by hypnotism: a case of hyperidrosis existent in a girl since infancy, with a patch of skin on the left wrist so affected that the perspiration was continually dripping from it to the ground. She was cured almost immediately. A case of intercostal neuralgia in a boy was cured in three sittings. In four cases of Meniere's disease he found great improvement was brought about in the hearing, and the vertigo was almost entirely removed. Dr. Bramwell tells me that he has never seen any harm done by judicious employment of hypnotism, and this statement coming from him must be acknowledged to carry great weight.

A somewhat similar case of hyperidrosis is reported by Dr. A. Charpentier. † The patient, a young man of twenty, had suffered from excessive sweating of the hands for five years, apparently dating from a mental shock. Intermittent to begin with, it had for two years been continuous, and was so abundant that when the hands were held down the perspiration flowed from the finger-tips as from a filter. Many forms of treatment had been tried, including astringents, ergotine, atropine, scarification, electricity, but without success, and at last Dr. Char-pentier bethought himself of hypnotism. After some difficulty the patient became a good subject and completely somnambulic. Improvement immediately resulted from suggestions directed to the central origin of the trouble, and the young man was shown cured at a meeting of the French Societe l"Hypnologie et de Psychologic

* It comes as a surprise to me that, after his early insistence on the importance of getting as deep hypnosis as possible and his splendid perseverance in striving to this end, Dr. Bramwell should now attach little importance to hypnotism, and advocates treatment by suggestion alone {vide article by Dr. Maurice Wright in the National Review, August, 1910). Perhaps, as in the case of Dubois, his reputation and personality suffice. I confess I still need the aid of hypnotism.

† Revue de l'Hypnotisme, January, 1900.