527 A. According to Dr. Edgar Bérillon, who was the first systematically to apply the hypnotic method to the education of children (see his paper, "De la Suggestion envisagée au point de vue pédagogique "in the Revue de l'Hypnotisme, vol. i. 1887, p. 84), the percentage of those who can be hypnotised is more than 80, and he asserts that suggestibility varies directly as the intellectual development of the subject. He classes under four heads the affections which can be successfully treated by hypnotic suggestion. (See the Revue de l'Hypnotisme, July 1895).

(1) Psychical derangements caused by acute diseases: in particular, insomnia, restlessness, nocturnal delirium, incontrollable vomiting, incontinence of urine and of faeces.

(2) Functional affections connected with nervous disease: chorea, tics, convulsions, anæsthesiae, contractures and hysterical paresis, hysterical hiccough, blepharospasm.

(3) Psychical derangements, such as habit of biting nails, precocious impulsive tendencies, nocturnal terrors, speaking in sleep, kleptomania, nervousness, shyness.

(4) Chorea, hysteria, epilepsy, or mental derangements considered as resulting from the combination of several nervous diseases.

One of Dr. Bérillon's most characteristic instances may be described. (It is given in full in the Revue de l'Hypnotisme, July 1893, p. 11).

Emile P., eleven years old, had acquired, when he was about one year of age, the habit of constantly keeping in his mouth two fingers of his left hand, the first and second fingers up to the middle of the second phalanx. Ever since then, at night, as soon as he was in bed, he began to suck his fingers, and could not get to sleep unless they were in his mouth. Very frequently he would suck them in the daytime too. This finger-sucking could only be put a stop to by some occupation which kept both hands busy. All sorts of methods were adopted to cure him of this bad habit, without any sort of result. A good many gastric and digestive troubles ensued, which the parents rightly attributed to this bad trick.

In the first hypnotic séance Bérillon suggested to the boy to go to sleep without putting his fingers in his mouth on that and the following nights. Although the hypnosis had been very light, the suggestion was carried out. Emile P. had felt inclined to suck his fingers, but had been able to resist the temptation. On the third day after this first séance the temptation recurred with greater intensity, and the boy remarked to his grandmother: "It's peculiar, but I feel every now and then like sucking my fingers; but I feel that I am unable to".

After three sittings, in the course of which the hypnosis obtained became progressively deeper, he was able to go to sleep without thinking of sucking his fingers. Since then he has never fallen into his bad habit again. And yet the patient was very degenerate: his father was a drunkard; also his grandfather; his mother suffered from hysterical convulsions.

In the case of these automatic impulses, the first care of the physician should be, as Bérillon observes, to raise into the field of consciousness motor presentations which have sunk partially or wholly below the threshold. The process of hypnotic cure consists generally in calling the attention of the patient to movements which have become automatic and unconscious. In the most severe cases it is possible to counteract the automatic impulse by creating another impulse which is aroused by and inhibits the first. (Bérillon, Revue de l'Hypnotisme, April 1895, p. 306.) Thus Bérillon took firm hold of the wrists of one of his patients while in the waking state and told him to try to bite his nails. This was, of course, impossible. The suggestion was then made that whenever the automatic movement was about to be carried out, the patient would feel a heaviness in his arms, which could not be lifted without considerable effort. He would then become intensely conscious of the incipient movement, and would be able to reinforce the automatic inhibition of it by an effort of conscious will.

For reports of hypnotic cure of onychophagy, see Bérillon, the articles already quoted; Bourdon, Revue de l'Hypnotisme, November 1895, p. 134; Bouffié, Revue de l'Hypnotisme, September 1898, p. 76.

For reports of hypnotic cure of even graver habits, see Van Renterghem and Van Eeden, Psycho-Thérapie, p. 250; Bernheim, Revue de l'Hypnotisme, December 1891, a case in which the habit had become quite automatic and irresistible, and where every other method of treatment had failed; also De la Suggestion; Schrenck-Notzing, Die Suggestions-Therapie bei krankhaften Erscheinungen des Geschlechtssinnes; Bérillon, Revue de l'Hypnotisme, July 1893, pp. 12, 14, 15; Bourdon, Revue de l'Hypno-tisme, November 1895, pp. 136, 139, 140; Auguste Voisin, Revue de l'Hypnotisme, November 1887, p. 151.

For cures of enuresis nocturna, see Ltébeault, Revue de l'Hypnotisme, September 1886, p. 71; Bérillon, Revue de l'Hypnotisme, June 1894, p. 359; Van Renterghem and Van Eeden, Psycho-Therapie; Paul Farez, Revue de l'Hypnotisme, August 1899, p. 53. This author recommends the method of suggestion in normal sleep.

Liébeault, in the Revue de l'Hypnotisme for January 1889, gives twenty-two cases in which hypnotic suggestion was used in the moral education of children from the age of fourteen months upwards, with the aim of curing the habit of lying, excessive developments of emotions, such as fear and anger, and precocious or depraved appetites, etc.; and of improving the normal faculties of attention and memory. He reports ten cures, eight improvements, and four failures.

For other cases of moral education, see Bérillon, De la suggestion et de ses applications a la pédagogie (1887); L'Hypnotisme et l'Orthopedie morale (1898); Revue de l'Hypnotisme, December 1887, pp. 169-180, and December 1897, p. 162; Bernheim, Revue de l'Hypnotisme, November 1886, p. 129; Ladame, the same, June and July 1887; Voisin, the same, November 1888; De Jong, the same, September 1891; Bourdon, the same, August 1896; Van Renterghem and Van Eeden, Psycho- Thérapie, p. 215.