Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/612

606 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 can not 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 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.