On the contrary, when there is anaesthesia (numbness), or when one faculty is alone affected by the hysterical symptoms, and when the mental equipoise of the patient is fairly good, hypnotism promises a great deal, as the following case will show.

A girl, sixteen years of age, attended a clinic, at which I was a post-graduate student. Her arm was paralyzed and had been so for three years. The sense of touch, temperature, and pain were gone. The nutrition, however, was good, and the electrical reactions normal. The arm hung limp by her side. The physician in charge of the clinic hypnotized her. He then commanded her to raise her paralyzed arm. She did so, to the astonishment of her mother, who was present, and to the amazement of the students as well. The physician told her that she would be able to use her arm for one week, and that at the end of that time she must return to the clinic. At the appointed time she came back, and the arm became paralyzed only as she entered the room, so she said. Again she was hypnotized, and was told that she would use her arm for a period of two weeks, and the interval of each hypnosis was lengthened.

This patient presented not the highly-wrought emotional disposition, but simply an hysterical paralysis. This symptom, like all other symptoms of hysteria, cannot be accounted for upon any hypotheses at present current. It is not purely imaginary in the ordinary sense of the word, but it certainly is connected with the mind in some way.

Medical literature is filled with such cases, and so-called miraculous cures of similar conditions abound on every hand. Here, too, the temperament is equally important and the suggestion must he tactfully suited to each patient.

Apropos of the subject under discussion, I quote the following from a clinical lecture delivered by Dr. M. Allen Starr, at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, published in the "International Clinics,"' in January, 1892.

The patient was a girl, nineteen years of age, who had suffered from what Dr. Starr termed a subconscious pain in the right arm and shoulder. It had existed five years. Dr. Starr says he excluded organic disease and hypnotized her by means of a bright coin, and while she was hypnotized, suggested to her that her pain was growing less, and lengthened the period between each hypnotic treatment. The patient was entirely relieved by hypnotism.

The following are Dr. Starr's words, verbatim, from the lecture.

"You see, then, gentlemen, that in a condition of this kind it is possible to make suggestions that reach our subconscious states and last over into the conscious state, and such suggestion is not harmful in any way, and often has the effect of relieving conditions that have baffled medicine and all other forms of treatment. This condition of delusive pain sometimes may not be as firmly fixed as in this person. It may be subconscious, but not so constantly and acutely there as to affect the individual very much. Under these circumstances it may be possible, without putting the person into the hypnotic condition, to suggest relief, and through your personal influence gain a hold upon the individual to persuade him to get well."

It will be noted that Dr. Starr calls this person's suffering "subconscious." It seems to me that the terms "sub"and "conscious" are contradictory, "sub" denoting "under" or "below," and "consciousness," our recognition of our state and its surroundings. One cannot feel and know that of which they are not conscious. They may not place it in its proper position in consciousness. The theory is that such pain exists primarily, not in the arm, but in that portion of the brain which presides over sensation in the arm. This is, in fact, the theory which is generally accepted as explaining the varied phenomena of hysteria. If a part of the body is numb, the trouble is not at all in that part of the body, but in the brain, and whatever sensory symptoms may exist they are morbid states, not necessarily of the part to which the brain is referred, but of the portion of the brain presiding over the locality. This theory looks plausible, but lacks absolute proof.

The next statement I wish particularly to be noted.

In an attack of major hysteria there are sensory and motor disturbances, general or local. Now, in a person who is hypnotized, these same phenomena can be produced exactly, and are apparently from the same source, the mind. They vanish with the hypnotic state, but may be left by suggestion in the mind of the patient after the hypnotic state has gone. Can we then, by suggestion, write almost anything we choose upon the mind as upon a tablet with an indelible ink? Does this state, termed hypnosis, so change the condition of the psychic life as to make it susceptible to such profound alteration? It certainly seems in many cases to be so.

In hysteria, suggestion will frequently, as has been said, cause either a disappearance of, or a change in, the nature of the disturbances. This is the principle which is important for the reader to grasp. Just as disease of the body may affect the mind, so disease of the mind may produce, in the conscious life of the individual, sufferings which are just as tangible and real to him as the evidences of his senses, and yet have no basis or fact in discoverable organic disease of the body. The man's consciousness may refuse to admit that he can move bis legs when the nervo-muscular and osseous systems are in perfect order. Such a state is at first difficult to conceive. Tell the athlete as he vaults over a bar, or runs upon a race-track, that he cannot walk and he will laugh at you, and yet I have seen such an athlete who was paralyzed for one year, restored to health in a few minutes, by simple suggestion and ridicule. A friend laughed at him, and told him that he could walk if he only would.

He tried it and he did.

We do not know enough about the various states of consciousness to explain why this is true, but if those who do not know the fact wish to learn it, they will not have to seek the evidence at a great distance. I do not attempt to formulate any theory, but shall cite the following very simple propositions in proof of the fact, and trust that they will at the same time make its conception easier.