My friend Colonel Neilson, late Director-General of the Army Medical Department, Canada, tells me that the thing which first made him investigate hypnotism was seeing the effect of the treatment on a bugler belonging to his regiment, who was in hospital and given up as a hopeless case of phthisis pulmonalis. He hypnotized the man, and suggested quiet sleep, freedom from cough, and good appetite. The patient was only affected to the second degree, but the suggestions immediately began to tell: the exhausting, ineffectual cough diminished, the appetite improved, and the man slept well. In six weeks he was able to leave the hospital and return to duty. The man was never influenced beyond the second degree. One would, of course, like to have the physical signs and points of diagnosis thoroughly described in such a case, as I am sure Dr. Neilson would not maintain that the processes set in motion by hypnotic suggestion can restore broken-down lung-tissue. *

* The following extracts from a letter received from Dr. Neilson will perhaps be of interest to the reader. Writing from Kingston, Dr. Myers (Practitioner, vol. i., 1890, p. 201) mentions a case of acute pneumonia he saw treated by Bernheim in the hospital at Nancy. The man had the physical signs of congestion of the bases of the lungs, and was in a state of high fever and delirium. He at first refused to be hypnotized, but eventually gave his consent, and Dr. Bernheim sent him to sleep for five hours. The man awoke refreshed and free from pain and delirium, but the physical signs remained unaltered. A medical friend of mine, suffering from pleurisy with high fever and much pain, induced a colleague to hypnotize him, with the result that he experienced almost immediate relief, and, though the disease ran its usual course, there was but little subsequent pain. I suffered much myself from sleeplessness, pain, and restlessness, after a severe surgical operation in 1904, and my friend Dr. Giglioli of Florence, who was staying with me, kindly hypnotized me a few times.

I was not a very good subject, but his suggestions as to sleep and ease were completely successful, and tided me over a difficult time.

The naivete of some people who use things without knowing their nature reminds one of Moliere's bourgeois gentleman, who was surprised to find that he had been talking prose all his life. * Among the medical men who have come to watch some of my cases was a gentleman who seemed much struck at seeing the method I adopted with a rather refractory subject. I held his hand and stroked his forehead, while at the same time suggesting the symptoms of sleep. The gentleman told me afterwards the reason why he was so interested. It appears that he had a few months previously been in attendance on a very severe and protracted case of delirium tremens. The patient could get no sleep, and the doctor was afraid of death from exhaustion. On the third evening he resolved to make a strong effort to produce sleep, and, if necessary, to sit up all night with the patient. He told the man that he would not leave him until he slept, and, sitting down by the bedside, he took his hand in one of his own, and with the other gently stroked the forehead. At the same time he talked quietly and reassuringly to him. In less than half an hour he was rewarded by seeing the restlessness entirely cease and the man drop off into a quiet sleep.

That sleep, the doctor told me, lasted fourteen hours, and the patient awoke out of it weak, but cured. Manipulation about the head has in many persons a most soporific effect, and several persons have told me that they always become drowsy under their barbers' hands. It is said by Liebeault, on the authority of several writers, * that persons in the hypnotic state, whether it be induced spontaneously or by external means, are able to ingest without evil results much larger doses of poisons than can be taken in the normal condition, and that the bites of venomous serpents are very much less likely to prove fatal than in the waking state. †

Ontario, he says: ' Military practice offers but a few opportunities of practising hypnotism, but so far I have applied it in about 100 cases. ... In eight or ten with brilliant success, in thirty or forty with fair success, and in the remainder with little or no result. The best results were obtained in cases of female derangements, muscular rheumatism, functional dyspepsia, constipation, insomnia, chronic pulmonary complaints, and dipsomania. Of the last-named I have treated five cases and have obtained two cures - i.e., the patients have remained total abstainers, in one case twenty and in the other fourteen months, without any sign of a relapse.'

* Forel is very trenchant in his remarks on Professor Dubois, of Berne, who has written a diatribe against hypnotism, though Forel points out his success in practice chiefly depends upon the unacknowledged use of hypnotic suggestion. Van Renterghem, one of Liebeault's most distinguished pupils, and a most loyal admirer of our master, is equally outspoken in his introduction to Dr. Hilgen's book. I had the pleasure of hearing these doughty antagonists engage one another at the International Congress of Psychology at Amsterdam, 1909.

* Op. cit., p. 222.

† Several medical men who were present at a recent performance assure me that they saw somnambulic subjects swallow as much as 80 grains of quinine in one dose, and that they watched for effects and found none. The same public performer made his unfortunate subjects drink large and almost poisonous quantities of paraffin oil, kerosene, and other nauseous compounds, without producing any result. This application of suggestion has its practical side. Forel tells how he had to prescribe castor oil for his children, and they much disliked it. By hypnotic:suggestion he made them quite enjoy

The action of hypnotism here is probably similar to that exerted by chloral in the treatment of tetanus, and of large quantities of alcohol as a remedy for snake-bites. The excitability of the nerve centres is controlled, and excessive and exhausting discharge prevented, until the poison has been eliminated. I should imagine that hypnotic treatment is likely to prove useful in the treatment of tetanus and other spasmodic diseases depending on increased reflex excitability of the brain or spinal cord - not, be it understood, to the neglect of other treatment, but as an auxiliary.