Case 38: This patient led an exemplary life for ten years and became an ardent temperance worker. His wife died, and two years afterwards he married, most unwisely, a young and frivolous girl. Disappointment broke his heart, and he practically committed suicide within three months of his marriage by shutting himself up in his room with a supply of spirits and drinking himself to death. This history shows how impossible it is to affirm that any drunkard is cured until he has died. ' Call no man happy until he is dead,' said Solon.

Cases 46 and 65 are keeping well, according to latest reports (1904-5).

Several of the failures here recorded have tried Keeley and other drug treatments, but in no case, as far as I have learnt, have they been permanently successful. In only one later case (that of a children's nurse sent to me in 1901) has a secret drug treatment been successful when hypnotism failed. This patient was a very good subject, but always expressed great fear of the process. She remained an abstainer for fourteen months after her first hypnotic treatment, and then had a relapse. I treated her again, and she remained sober for three months. Then she relapsed, and further treatment was a failure. It remains to be seen whether the drug treatment makes a better record in the end.

(H) means strongly marked heredity, and that several members of the family have suffered from chronic alcoholism.

(H) means strongly marked heredity, and that several members of the family have suffered from chronic alcoholism.

(H) means strongly marked heredity, and that several members of the family have suffered from chronic alcoholism.

Analysis: 65 cases; 39 men, 26 women. Cured, 15; relapsed after apparent cure of 2 years, 2. Died 6 months after apparent cure, 1. Much benefited permanently, 7; relapsed after 3 to 6 months, 30. No effect, 10. of his unaided will, these suggestions are all one need make; but if he is a person of very weak character, and is exposed to exceptional temptation, it is well to make the deterrent influence stronger by exciting a feeling of extreme physical repulsion, which can easily be done in the case of somnambulists. One has only to tell the patient that if he takes beer or spirits they will at once cause him to vomit, and then on waking him compel him to drink a glass of beer to produce such an attack of nausea and sickness as he will remember for many a day. Even in such a case it will, no doubt, be possible for the subject to re-educate himself to like liquor, just as a schoolboy who will go on smoking, though every pipe at first makes him sick, may at last overcome the repugnance and become a confirmed smoker.*

In the combination of moral and physical influences thus produced we possess a very powerful lever. If a man has been made a drunkard through the solicitations of fast companions, his power of resistance is reduced to nil, and the offer of a drink has so often been followed by its absorption, that the sequence of events becomes automatic, an ideo-motor reflex action; but let such a man be hypnotized, and in this state be told that alcohol is poison, and that to offer him a drink is to grossly insult him - as in a case of a confirmed drunkard reported by Neilson - and we form a new inhibitory tract, which by repeatedly being traversed becomes well worn and habitual in place

* While attending an inebriate patient lately I was visited by an of the other. But it is plain that we must not expect immediate cure. Old channels cannot be destroyed, any more than new ones can be formed, in the course of a few days. I always tell my patients that it takes one month to get over the crude effects of confirmed alcoholism, three months for the liver, stomach, and other organs to recover their tone, and twelve months for the brain power and morale to be re-established.

American physician, Dr. A------, who told me that he had a large practice in the West, and that he was very successful in curing drunkards. My patient was a journalist, aged forty, and as he was a 'soaker' I felt very doubtful about his cure, though he was a somnambulic subject. I asked my visitor to try his hand, so as to reinforce mine, and he kindly complied. His method was to hypnotize him in the usual way, and then make strong anti-alcoholic suggestions. To arouse him he gave him a rather severe blow over the stomach, so that my patient awoke dazed and startled. We were a little disconcerted by this violence, but Dr. A------ assured me he found this method most successful, as the shock drove home the suggestions and fixed them. Unfortunately, however, success in this case was only very short-lived, and the man has since died from the effects of alcohol.

After a period of treatment, varying in different cases, a new personality or ' conscience' is produced, and the patient can return to his former associations and friends so protected as to be safe from relapse. The time necessary for restraint or close observation is from three to six weeks, and after that he should be under observation for at least a year, and the suggestions should be repeated at lengthening intervals during that time. It is by no means necessary that the patient should spend any portion of the time in a retreat if efficient control and observation can be exercised by a trustworthy relation, friend, or attendant. We must remember that at first every public-house offers a suggestion to drink, and every boon companion calls up associations of ideas connected with former self-indulgence, and opposed to the suggestions we have endeavoured to implant.

I was recently induced to undertake the case of a medical man, whose surroundings were extremely unsatisfactory, but the patient expressed a great desire to be cured, and proved a very susceptible subject. Dipsomaniacs are notoriously untrustworthy, and in a few days I found on inquiry that his protestations were false, and that he had made no attempt to avoid temptation, but rather put himself in its way. Under such circumstances the treatment had not a chance, and as he refused to submit to restraint we at once abandoned it.