The terms "hypnotic suggestion," "posthypnotic suggestion," and"simplesuggestion" will be used so frequently that an explanation of them seems necessary.

By "hypnotic suggestion" is meant suggestion made while the subject is hypnotized.

By "post-hypnotic suggestion" is meant sug-gestion after the patient is out of the hypnotic state. The term post-hypnotic suggestion has also been erroneously applied to suggestions made during the hypnotic state when these suggestions are intended to remain permanently in the mind of the patient.

By "simple suggestion" is meant the suggestion made to the patient without hypnosis being induced. The whole subject will be further elucidated in the chapters devoted to the theories of hypnotism.

By the term "mental control" is meant all forms of suggestion or other means of impressing the psychic life of the patient.

There are many morbid conditions which are not attended by permanent injury to the structures of the brain. These are all amenable in a greater or less degree to one or another of the forms of suggestion. Children suffer from many morbid, erroneous ideas, which afflict their developing brains. When these become chronic they can frequently be cured by strong suggestion, or when this fails by the use of hypnotism. Examples are, fear of the dark, excessive fear of contamination, fear of ghosts, etc. The disease known as "night terrors" in children, when the physical causes are first removed will usually yield to hypnotism. I have also benefited a number of cases of somnambulism, both in children and adults, by hypnotic suggestion.

Hypnotism is also valuable in curing many bad habits of mind and body which have been formed during childhood. Several severe cases of kleptomania have been cured by it. Immoral and vicious tendencies are in a measure amenable to its influence.

Modern science is throwing a new light upon this whole question of morals. Its principles have long since been recognized in a degree. The infinite variety in the moral tendencies of different individuals has at last aroused the best minds of the age to a rational consideration of their causes. It is now recognized that there is such a thing as moral insensibility, and also that this mental disease, for it is a disease, may be either congenital or acquired. The old idea of individual responsibility is now taking an entirely different guise, and it is a recognized fact that the different moral traits may be strengthened or weakened by use or disuse. Whether one believes that the mind is simply the result of material life, or whether it is due to and finds its essence in an external spiritual agency, the practical results to the world by the new conception of the growth or development of the mind, will be the same. Crime is essentially a disease. A disease not brought about by some spiritual prince of darkness, seeking the eternal damnation of man, but by a disease inherent in the development of the psychical life of the individual.

Jesse Pomeroy, the fiendish murderer, in the State's prison in Massachusetts, affords a strik-ingexampleof moral anaesthesia (insensibility). Persons having observed him carefully, state that he gives no evidence of deep remorse for his revolting and hideous crimes, but instead is simply impatient of restraint, and regards himself as not being thoroughly understood (which is true), and also that he is a much-persecuted man, which it is needless to say is not true.

The point that is here sought to be made clear is this, that the mind possesses in embryo certain capacities and traits. If these are prop-erly brought out by its heredity, environment, and training, it will reach its full and grand development. If, from one of many causes, in some respect, it is hindered, the divinest thing of all creation is distorted. Now in the subjective consciousness of every one lie dormant, controlled by the reason and by the will, all of the impulses, which if let loose, play havoc with the character. They are preying upon us in the still hours of the night, or when our better selves are conquered by the sway of passion. They grow with us, these hideous monsters that inhabit the cellars of our souls, and, when our reason and will are sleeping, they climb into the beautiful mansions of our intellects and besmear them with their own filth and slime.

These impulses, these tendencies, which are in every man, can be, as is well-known to all, cultivated or repressed. When any one of them, thirst for alcohol for instance, gets the upper hand, it may sometimes be repressed by hypnotism when the ordinary forces fail.

It is in the functional insanities that hypnotism finds its true remedial sphere. It is in children whose moral natures are unbalanced, that it can he made useful if other means fail, in controlling tendencies. It is in the adult who is weak and vacillating that it sometimes proves a tower of strength. It can be applied in many ways. The Church has done much in this direction by making fear its lever. Again, hope has been the guiding angel of many fallen souls. Love and hate can be so wrought upon that the hypnotic state will be induced, and thereby play their part for good or ill in life's great drama.

Hysteria has been casually mentioned and defined, and a separate chapter will be devoted to the subject Nervous prostration, technically termed "neurasthenia," is more amenable to hypnotism than is any other form of nervous disease. Too many women, and a large number of men, alas, know its symptoms full well. Sleeplessness, depression, inattention, irritability, all go to make up its symptomatology, and cry out with mighty voices that man has worked his nervous system too hard.

Many pains, as neuralgia, etc., can be relieved or cured by the use of hypnotism. Many functional disturbances of different parts of the body, likewise, may find relief through its agency. Many painful conditions often attending destructive organic disease can be ameliorated in the same way. Hypnotism never did and never can restore organs whose active tissues have been totally destroyed. A man whose brain has been injured, either from external causes or from an extensive hemorrhage within its substance, can never again have the paralyzed side of the body restored to its normal condition by hypnotism, but if enough brain tissue is left, suggestion made in the hypnotic state may prove a more powerful stimulant to him than ordinary incentives, and he may regain, in a degree, the lost use of his body.

I do not know a greater crime than holding out false hopes to such an one, when these hopes must be blighted. Therefore too much should not be claimed for any method of cure, for fear that the disappointment will be too great. It indeed requires nice discrimination upon the part of anyone practising hypnotism, to know how much either to hope for themselves, or to promise to their patients.

Hypnotism is a remedial agent, so mysterious and overwhelming in its effect that it is likely to impress too profoundly the invalid who is seeking relief. It is more wonderful than surgery, more subtle in its influence than drugs, and permeates every part of the psychic life of the patient.