Dr. Bernheim shows that hypnotism removes many of the symptoms attending organic disease of the nervous system, paralysis, anaesthesia (insensibility to touch and to pain), blindness from brain-injury, severe pain, etc. His theory of the matter is that many of the results of the injury reach much further than the actual anatomical limits of it, and as the higher cerebral centres control the lower, they again train other parts of the nervous system to perform vicariously the function of the injured part. Hence paralysis of one part or the whole of one side of the body can be either ameliorated or wholly relieved by treatment with hypnotism. (For record of cases see Bernheim's "Suggestive Therapeutics," page 217.)

Records similar to Bernheim's have been published by Charcot, Liebault, Braid, Mesmer, Krafft-Ebing, and pre-eminently by Luys. These gentlemen are all careful observers and their position in the medical world, together with their thorough scientific education, will give weight to their testimony. The early investigators of these subjects, like the pioneers of every new science, were shining marks for every sort of abusive epithet, and for their devotion to science were called insane, termed rascals, were branded as charlatans - in fact, had exhausted upon them the whole magazine of vituperative abuse. The Church settled the whole question to its satisfaction, at least, for the time, by announcing that they were the special emissaries, and in the service of. His Satanic Majesty.

To-day hypnotism holds a respected place in the scientific world, but its nature, like the nature of most mental phenomena, is not understood, yet it has done and is doing much good. In the United States it has not received, either from the public or from the medical practitioner, the study which it deserves. A long narration of cases is wearisome to the general reader, yet, at the same time, they are necessary for the practitioner of medicine, Since he cannot judge in any way of the accuracy and method of the observer unless cases are given in detail.

I have had, of course, a much smaller experience than have some of the European hypnotists, but I shall enumerate a few cases in detail and shall select the diseases most often met with by the physician in general practice. Those which are not amenable to cure by the ordinary means at the command of the practitioner, will be given the most prominence. I shall, so far as I can give cases representing the diseases of each system of the body, for reference, and because it will make the subject more easily understood by the lay reader.