If hypnotism had done nothing more for medical science than bring such melancholy cases as the above within the scope of curative treatment, it would have conferred a lasting benefit on humanity. In even worse cases of perverted sexual instinct it is frequently successful, and Dr. Von Schrenk-Notzing, of Munich, read before the International Congress notes on a case of this kind treated by him with the happiest results. Modern medicine teaches us that these perverted instincts depend upon a hereditary or acquired morbid condition of the brain and spinal cord, and constitute, in fact, a psychical disease. Hypnotic suggestion seems to act by checking excessive functional irritability, and by developing and bringing into play the inhibitory action of the higher brain centres, which have either not developed or have undergone impairment.

In consequence of the translation into English of Krafft-Ebing's classical work, 'Psychopathia Sexualis,' and his reference to hypnotism as the best, if not the only, method of bringing about the cure of these cases, I have been consulted in quite a number of them - at least twenty-five in fifteen years. With two patients hypnotism was completely successful, and one of these is happily married. In several of the others considerable improvement was effected, but, unfortunately, most of the patients were but indifferent subjects.

A remarkable case (20) is that of a schoolmaster, aged forty. He was a man of education and ability, and had filled good positions in several colonies. His downfall was always due to his indecently assaulting young girls. He showed his faith in hypnotism and his wish to be cured by working his passage to London in 1903 in order to see me. He proved a somnambulist at once, and responded to suggestions most completely. That evening he went out for a walk, and in a dark passage ran against a little girl. For a moment the old temptation assailed him, but it was immediately replaced by a strong inhibitory impulse which drove him rapidly from the spot. That was the last time he felt any morbid desire. He wrote two years later saying that he was filling a good position and had become very fond of little girls in a proper way. A terrible source of danger to society was thus stopped, and a miserable life was reformed. I cannot conceive any other treatment having the least chance of success in such a case.

In treating cases of sexual inversion the hypnosis should be very profound, for one has to alter by suggestion a set of very deeply ingrained instincts and emotions.

Wetterstrand (op. cit., p. 50) reports having cured a case. The patient was a man of thirty-two, and he was cured in seventeen sittings. He became somnambulic at the first sitting. *

It is absolutely necessary to gain the confidence of the patients in these cases, and they must be carefully watched, as they are notoriously given to deception. But their confidence can be gained by judicious management, and then one is saved from the danger of allowing the wish to be father to the thought.'

Several cases of this kind successfully treated by hypnotic suggestion convince me of its efficacy not only in palliating, but in permanently curing phobias and obsessions of sexual origin; notwithstanding the assertions of Freud and his followers that hypnotism only cloaks the symptoms, and drives the morbid idea deeper into the subconscious.

By all means let us fall back upon the more difficult and serious operation of psycho-analysis if the simple and rapid method of hypnotic suggestion fails, but one doesn't at once amputate a limb if setting a neglected fracture is all that is required.

* Doctors, lawyers, and teachers who wish to investigate this rather unsavoury but very important subject will find it fully treated of in Krafft-Ebing's book, and in the recent work by Dr. Havelock Ellis, •Studies in the Psychology of Sex.' Psycho-analysis should be thought of when hypnotism fails to cure.

The two following cases possess considerable interest, owing to the intellectual attainments of the patients, for they confirm the assertion that hypnotizability may be rather a sign of intellect than the reverse: