Similar results come from far-off Brazil, where Dr. Domingos Yaguaribe has established (in 1901) at San Paulo a flourishing clinique, after a course of study at the Institut Psycho-physiologique, under Dr. Berillon. He has sent me photographs of his hospital and dispensary, which point to rare success in such a short period. He gives a resume of the results of his first two years' practice, and these include 8,247 consultations. Among his principal successes are: Alcoholism 269 cases, neurasthenia 30, chronic diarrhoea 22, dysmenorrhcea 29, stammering 7, incontinence of urine 22, hysteria 95, neuralgias and headaches 469, rheumatism 26, deafness 12, various paralyses 52, chronic ulcers 5, hysterical blindness 2, dumbness 8, paralysis of speech 5. Dr. Yaguaribe finds his patients are easily hypnotized generally at the first attempt, and only about 5 per cent. prove insusceptible.

Perhaps the most successful hypnotic clinique was that of Dr. Wetterstrand of Stockholm. * Dr. Forel of Zurich, who has visited Stockholm, has described to me his method of procedure, and has published an account of what he saw in a recent work. †

His two large reception-rooms are luxuriously furnished, and in them are a number of comfortable arm-chairs and sofas. From nine till one daily patients crowd in, and each one in turn is carefully examined by Dr. Wetterstand.

Dr. C. W. Branch has experimented on 100 West Indian negroes and negresses of different ages, and found 87 per cent. were hypnotized with facility. He thinks the black races are more susceptible than the white {Journal of Tropical Medicine, April 2, 1906).

Esdaile when he left India took up his residence in Perthshire, and in his retirement continued to make experiments in hypnotism as a hobby. But he soon found that the canny Scot was a much more difficult subject to tackle than the mild Hindoo (' Dictionary of Universal Biography'). But Dr. Kerr of Edinburgh, Drs. MacLennan and McCluer of Glasgow, and other Scotch physicians who practise medical hypnotism, tell me their figures work out much the same as the English, French, Swedish, etc.

* I understand that his colleague, Dr. Bjerre, carries on the work with great success at Stockholm.

† ' Hypnotism,' etc. (English translation, 1906), p. 221.

Only such cases as he considers suited are selected for the treatment, and the others are sent away with ordinary prescriptions and directions. Those selected for hypnotic treatment are admitted into the reception-rooms and told to rest quietly and watch the procedure on the other patients. All around him the visitor sees other patients comfortably reclining in different stages of hypnotic sleep, and the whole atmosphere of the place is full of drowsy associations and suggestions of cure. When Dr. Wetterstrand comes to him he is already half asleep, and his mind is fully prepared to act upon the suggestions made to him. Ordinary suggestions, such as tend to deepen the sleep and produce feelings of general rest and comfort, are made aloud for everyone to hear, but the particular suggestions applicable to each individual case are given in a whisper by the doctor speaking into the patient's ear. It will be remarked that every step in the method tends to impress the imagination. The preliminary examination which the patient actually undergoes in the hope that his case will be found suitable for the treatment; the admission of the selected cases into the inner rooms, about which there is a certain air of somnolency and expectation; the vision of other persons in different stages of sleep - all excite the faculty of imitation and the desire to sleep to the greatest degree possible.

After so much trouble and such careful selection the new-comer would indeed be ungrateful for opportunities and undeserving of cure if he did not enter into the spirit of the place and prove amenable to hypnotism and impressionable to suggestion. Small wonder is it, therefore, that Dr. Wetterstrand has treated over 3,000 patients with such success that he finds only 5 per cent, are uninfluenced by hypnotism. * Dr. Berillon adopts a very similar method in his clinique in Paris, and he rarely attempts to hypnotize a patient on his first visit or until he has been prepared for it by seeing other persons operated on. He, therefore, also generally succeeds in influencing his patients. Dr. Van Renterghem at Amsterdam pursues a somewhat similar course, and is equally successful. No physician adopting a psychical method of treatment can afford to ignore any legitimate means of influencing a patient's imagination. And the best way to attain this end is the assumption and maintenance of a firm and yet sympathetic demeanour. I am led more especially to thus enter into minutiae by having observed the something like contempt some of the medical men I have met have expressed for what I may call the technique of suggestive treatment.

I have seen a hospital physician, who believes in hypnotism, fail over and over again with his hospital patients because he has ignored the preliminary step of gaining their confidence and allaying their fears. To enter a ward surrounded with students, and to pick out a trembling woman and tell her, without the least preparation, that she is to be hypnotized and go to sleep, is to arouse all kinds of opposing emotions in her mind, and renders hypnotism, at any rate by the Nancy method, impossible. The same woman, if approached gently, and shown other persons put to sleep and awakened, would probably prove an excellent subject, and might perhaps be cured by the treatment. Drs. Van Renterghem and Van Eeden always impress upon their patients that the more or less powerless condition to which hypnotism will for a short time reduce them is for a definite object, and that object attained, there will be no more after-effect from hypnotism than from any other medical procedure; that there is no weakening of the will, and that the induction of hypnosis entirely depends upon their volition and co-operation, and cannot be achieved without them. The patient's attitude should somewhat resemble that of a passenger who gets into a cab in order to go to a certain place.