really mean that. The cut is in the finger, but the pain is in the brain, and consciousness is necessary for us to have pain. Suppose a man is going to have an operation on his finger and is made unconscious. Now the finger is there, but the pain has disappeared, showing that pain is not located in various parts of the body, but in the domain of consciousness. So if, under hypnotic influence, you tell the patient that he will have no pain, he thinks the pain away, so to speak-knocks it out of his consciousness.

How we can run needles into people and produce no blood seems still more remarkable, but physiologically it can be explained. Let me say here that if any one should pierce a large artery with a needle, serious consequences might result. Let us say that we penetrate the skin in a place where there are thousands of little capillaries. Each one of these vessels is connected with the nervous system by two sets of nerve fibers-those which can dilate the vessels, those which can constrict them. Now, suppose I give the suggestion that I am going to run a needle through a certain part of the arm. An impulse, sent from the brain, constricts the blood-vessels at this spot, inhibits the sense of pain, and the needle comes out again without a drop of blood following it.

The explanation of the dizziness from water supposed to be whiskey and the cure by salt supposed to be sugar is that both are the result of an unexplainable force whereby the patient takes every word of the hypnotizer as gospel, though it is contradictory to his own ideas. For example, in one case a patient told me that he knew the glass contained water and yet it tasted like whiskey, and he also knew that the sellar contained salt and yet it tasted like sugar.

The cure of the finger-nail habit and all the post-hypnotic suggestions may be summed up briefly. All we should do is to refer back to the perfect or subjective mind where all these suggestions are stored up and say that the objective mind draws nutriment from it, and in this nutriment these suggestions given under the hypnotic influence come into play.

Before closing this portion of the essay I should like to say that I believe hypnotism is not an occult power, but is a simple, natural physiological process. And again, anybody can use the power just as any one can become a good piano player, or student or business man by training. Yet it is only those with the natural tendency toward personal power who will make the greatest success.

It would indeed be pleasing to me to cite a number of wonderful cases where hypnotism has been used experimentally in order to show the great influence of the mind over the body-how a horse can be ridden over the outstretched body of a man in a cataleptic state, how illusions and hallucinations can be produced, how we may even obtain negative hallucinations, how we can turn an adult into a child, how we can conjure before the mind's eye vistas grand and suberb, panoramas gorgeous and elegant, how the commonest man may become an orator,

a saint, an assassin perhaps. But all these things would be far beyond the scope of this essay. However, one case seems to be of especial interest as it shows how far hypnotism may be used in the cure of various inflammations.

The experiment is on a nurse twenty-eight years old, who is not at all hysterical. She is the daughter of plain country people, and has been for a long time an attendant in the Zurich Lunatic Asylum, which Forel directs. He thinks her a capable honest person, in no way inclined to deceit. The experiments were as follows: A gummed label was fixed upon her chest on either side; the paper was square. In no case was an irritating gum used. At midday Forel suggested that a blister had been put on the left side; and at 6 o'clock in the evening a moist spot had appeared in that place; the skin was swollen and red around it, and a little inflammation also appeared on the right side, but much less. Forel then did away with the suggestion. On the next day there was a scab on the left side. Forel had not watched the nurse between noon and 6 o'clock, but had suggested that she could not scratch herself. The other nurses said that the subject could not raise her hand to her chest, but made vain attempts to scratch. Forel repeated the experiment later; he put on the paper at 11:45 A. M. and ordered the formation of blisters in two and one-half hours. Little pain was suggested, and the nurse therefore complained but little. At 2 o'clock Forel looked at the paper on the left side, for which the suggestion had been made, and saw around it a large swelling and reddening of the skin. The paper could with difficulty be removed. A moist surface of epidermis was then visible, exactly square like the paper. There was nothing particular under the paper on the right side. Forel then suggested the disappearance of the pain, inflammation, et cetera.

In time everything disappeared.

Many investigators have been able to bring about a change in blood supply and other visceral changes of a similar kind. Changes in tem- · perature have been made as much as three degrees centigrade. Bernheim found that by suggestion he could induce local reddening of the skin. This is undoubtedly a vasomotor change. These local red spots. were often found in the middle ages on the hands of monks and nuns after they had been looking steadily at a cross for hours. At that time it was supposed to be a miracle and a message from the Divinity. In 1860, a woman was found with these spots or blisters caused by something unknown. It was learned that she got these while in the hypnotic state. The wounds healed in the normal way and all that remained to make it necessary for it to be commented upon, was that it gave the investigators the idea of trying to produce these spots by artificial means. Krafft-Ebing, a noted German physician, produced certain results analogous to those cited above. He would put something in the patient's hand and give him the suggestion that it was burning. A reddening would appear. He would take a scissors, a piece of metal

and a postage stamp (saying it was a mustard plaster) and would produce the same results.

Wonderful as it may seem-that hypnotic suggestion can produce such grave organic changes-the physician has only to reflect for a moment on the powerful changes which the mind exerts over the course of a disease. He realizes only too well that the mental attitude of the patient toward his malady is of almost as much importance in the cure as the therapeutic measures he may advise. Processes of inflammation are purely physiological in the light of modern medicine, and yet there can be no inflammatory process which cannot be made worse by concentrated mental worry. A sore finger to the phlegmatic individual is a trifle; but the hysterical woman makes a "mountain out of a mole hill" of it and thereby actually makes the inflammation worse.

THE USES OF HYPNOTISM.

The general tendency has been in the last decade to use hypnotism indiscriminately; but like every therapeutic agent, it in time will become restricted and only used in certain complaints. It surely should be included by every physician in his "therapeutic arsenal." It has one thing in its favor which places it above all remedial agents, and that is, that when it is used properly it can do no harm. We must recognize that in all the scientific literature on the subject, there has not a single death been reported from its use. The unscientific application is its abuse.

We must also recognize that there are many cases that are practically incurable by medical treatment, cases which defy the greatest physicians, cases which are surprising because of their persistency. When the last extreme has been reached, when physicians consult and pronounce the case as practically incurable, hypnotism may be tried.

Before the advent of ether or chloroform, the possibility of using hypnotism for anesthetic purposes was thought of, and apparently its use in this direction met with success in a limited number of cases. In 1459, Doctor Guérineau announced that he had amputated a thigh under hypnotic anesthesia. Some other reports are as follows: Jules Cloquent amputated a breast in 1845; Doctor Loysel of Cherbourg amputated a leg and removed some glands in 1846; a double amputation of the legs by Doctors Fanton and Toswel in 1845; amputation of an arm by Doctor Joly in 1845; and in 1847 a tumor of the jaw was removed by Doctors Ribaud and Kiaro of Potiers-all under hypnotic anesthesia (Bernheim's "Suggestive Therapeutics").

But hypnotism was found to have more drawbacks than advantages in these cases of major surgery. In the first place, hypnotic anesthesia is a difficult state to produce and even a more difficult state to maintain. Secondly, there is always the possibility of the patient awakening unexpectedly and dying from the shock of the operation.

Although it has thus fallen out of use as an anesthetic in these serious cases, still it is used constantly, and more and more every day,

in minor surgery. In dentistry it certainly has its place; in out-patient departments of our hospitals it is often of value, as it has no after effects.

The various medical cases that have been treated by the hypnotic method are too numerous to recount. They include nearly every form of mental nonequilibrium and also cases of general organic trouble dependent more or less on the mental attitude of the patient. They include habits of various kinds, such as onycophagie or finger-nail biting, excessive smoking, dypsomania, nervous twitchings, et cetera, nervous headaches, insomnia and neuralgias; chronic nervous constipation and diarrhoea and dyspepsia; local and general pain, insomnia and neurasthenia. Nor is this all. Hypnotism's greatest blessing consists in the cure of psychic paralytics and psychic hysterics. In this connection we may say that it should be used unconditionally. Doctor Starr, in a lecture at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, cited a case of paralysis in the left arm from the shoulder to the elbow. A physician knows that it is impossible to get a true paralysis of this kind. Doctor Starr hypnotized the patient in his clinic and in less than three minutes the arm was in as good working order as ever. During the course of the past year, I have worked on a few hysterical cases for physicians where nothing but hypnotism could cure them. A remarkable case of true organic nature came to my notice over a year ago. A lady had a severe swelling on her finger which was so painful that I could hardly bandage it for her. I put her to sleep, suggested the pain away, told her the inflammation would subside the next day and awakened her. I could then do anything I wished to the finger without hurting her.

I have left aside the part that hypnotism plays in mental and moral culture a phase of the subject so vast that it deserves more consideration than could be given here.

[THE END.]

MEDICAL NEWS.

A COMPILATION OF CENTENARIANS. STATISTICIANS have been busy in Europe compiling longevity tables of the various countries. Germany, with a population of 55,000,000, has but seventy-eight persons who have passed the century mark. France, which is generally accredited as being a land of luxury and fast living, has 213 centenarians in a population of 40,000,000. England has 146, Scotland 46, Denmark 2, Belgium 5, Sweden 10, Norway 23, and Spain 410. The most striking figures emanate from the land of the Balkans where, notwithstanding the stormy scenes of insurrection which are constantly enacted, persons past the hundred year mark are not uncommon. Servia has 573, Roumania 1084, and Bulgaria 3883, a centenarian for every one hundred of its population.

MINOR INTELLIGENCE.

CARELESSNESS of parents for their offspring is responsible for death by suffocation of over two thousand infants annually in England, six hundred dying from this cause in London alone.

REPORT from Europe announces the publication of a newspaper under the direct business and editorial control of the inmates of the new asylum for the insane at Maueroeling, Austria.

THE Fulton (Missouri) Hospital for the Insane has recently been awarded damages to the extent of $14,000 for destruction wrought during the Civil War. The institution's claim was for $41,000.

HAAKON BJOINSTERN is the cognomen of a young giant who recently arrived in this country from Norway. He measures seven feet six inches in height, and contemplates the pursuit of farming in the far west.

DOCTOR LAPPONI, physician to the Pope, died in Rome, of pneumonia, on December 7, 1906. The doctor has long been a sufferer from cancer of the stomach and in his weakened condition was unable to withstand the ravages of pneumonia.

DOCTOR WILLIAM OSLER, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, arrived in Baltimore on December 8, en route to Toronto to participate in his mother's one hundredth birthday. According to the dictum of the doctor his mission would seem to be forty years too late.

FRANCE is agitating the abolition of the death penalty for capital crimes. At a meeting of the cabinet on October 30, a measure to this effect was presented, and it is highly probable that the Chamber of Deputies will pass a law in accordance with the desire.

ANTWERP will be the scene of an international exposition during April, May, and June, 1907. While the exhibits will be of a general nature, embodying art, manufacture, et cetera, the medical profession will be represented in departments of hygiene and pharmacology.

THE United States Bureau of Entomology has changed the name of the Stegomyia fasciata, the transmitter of yellow fever, to Stegomyia calopus. The change was made to obviate confusion, the old name, fasciata, being commonly applied to another insect of the same. group.

NEW YORK CITY is to have a new public bath at 242-248 East Fiftyfourth street. Plans for a building three stories high, equipped with gymnasium appliances and running track, have been filed with the building department. The entire cost of structure and equipment will be $200,000.

THE sale of absinthe has been prohibited in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland, and it is probable that the other cantons will pass like laws. The baneful effects of the drug are manifest in France, and in all probability the Swiss mandate was passed to preserve the country from the plight of France.