I say, "There is a flea on your right cheek; it itches abominably." The hypnotized person makes a grimace at once, and scratches his right cheek. "You feel that your legs and arms are comfortably warm." To this he answers that it is so. "Don't you see a savage dog in front of you, barking at you?" The hypnotized at once starts hack, and then chases the supposititious dog, which he sees and hears. I pretend to hand him something, and tell him that it is a sweet-smelling bouquet of violets. He sniffs in the imagined perfume with delight. I can make the hypnotized drink bitter quinine, salt water, raspberry juice, and chocolate within a few seconds in successive sips from one and the same glass of water; but one does not even require the glass of water. The statement that he has a glass containing the named drink in his hand suffices. Pain can easily be suggested, and it is still easier to drive away a pain which was present before by suggestion. For example, one usually has no difficulty in curing a headache in a few seconds or at mo3t in a few minutes.

Besides this, anaesthesia, anosmia, blindness, color-blindness, double vision, deafness, loss of the sense of taste, and ageusia, can be readily suggested. I have had teeth drawn from my patient's mouth during hypnosis, abscesses opened, corns removed, and have made deep incisions without the least pain having been produced. It is sufficient to assure him that the region is dead and insensible. Surgical operations and parturition are possible with hypnosis, although this is rarer, and in this case it can replace chloroform anaesthesia with advantage, and without the dangers of the latter. Drs. von Schrenck and Delbceuf have described labors which have been conducted under hypnosis without any pain. If one succeeds in producing anaesthesia properly, painless surgical operations, provided that they do not last too long, are always possible with hypnosis. But the fear of the operation generally disturbs the suggestibility, especially when the patient witnesses elaborate preparations. The greatest practical difficulty is met with here.1

Bemheim wisely calls the extraordinary deceptive perception of the disappearance of an object present within the area of the senses Negative Hallucination. I may tell a hypnotized who sleeps with open eyes that I have disappeared, and that he no longer sees me, hears me, or feels me. I can let him hear and feel me without seeing me by suggesting this, and so on.

Negative hallucination is a very instructive process. It helps to explain the nature of hypnotism, and also the nature of hallucinations. We owe our thanks to Bernheim for the best studies on this suhject. At first it is somewhat striking how the hypnotized acquires the appearance of a swindler as he goes round and avoids that which is supposed to have vanished, etc One can observe here the phenomenon of double consciousness if one studies the position very closely. The supcrcon-sciousness does not see; the hypoconsciousness sees and avoids.1 In certain cases there is an association between both chains of consciousness, as mentioned in the dream recited on p. 79. This is also shown in a case in which Delbceuf gave the suggestion to a young girl that she was a good-looking young man, and the girl then acknowledged that she had seen the young man, but that the old gray head had always loomed through. Del-boeuf had fallen into the error of generalizing this observation, an error against which, I would point out here, one cannot warn sufficiently in hypnotic phenomena. There are converse cases, either evidenced by heightened individual suggestibility, and especially in hysterical persons, or as the result of special training (both factors usually act together), in which the correcting hypoconsciousness recedes completely into the background, and in which the hypnotized becomes completely deceived. This can only be achieved if one succeeds in extending the negative hallucination completely to all the senses: for example, if one arranges that an object can be neither seen, nor felt, nor heard {when it knocks against something, or falls), nor smelled. It is always extremely difficult altogether to exclude a certain degree of hypoconscious nothing. On the other hand, it is very easy to combine amnesia with the phenomena just mentioned, and the majority remain firmly convinced afterwards when awake that they have felt, seen, and heard absolutely nothing.

1 O. Vogt gave a very suggestible patient the suggestion during waking that his severe toothache would cease at once, that he would go to the dentist in the afternoon unci have the offending molar drawn; he would not feel anything of this. The waking suggestion was completely realized.

The study of negative hallucination rapidly leads to the conclusion that that which is not suggested is not only supplemented by every hypnotized person according to its kind, as it is with all suggestions (the one hallucinates the chair behind the person who is supposed to have vanished, on which he is really sitting; the second hallucinates a mist, and so on); but every negative hallucination of sight is complemented by a positive one, and, conversely, almost every positive hallucination is complemented by a negative one. As a matter of fact, one cannot see a gap in the field of vision without placing something into it, even if it be only a black background; and, conversely, one cannot hallucinate anything positively without covering a portion of the visual field, or at least, as in the case of transparent hallucinations, rendering this part misty. The same takes place also with many deceptions of hearing and feeling. When a voice is hallucinated, actual sounds are often not heard. If a blackbird's song is changed into a satire (illusion), the bird's song is no longer recognized as such. If one lies in bed and hallucinates that one is lying on a pin-cushion, one no longer feels the soft mattress, and so on.

1 "One can observe the activity of the hypoconscipusness even in the insane very frequently if one has experience in hypnotic experiments. An hysteric believes that I am her brother, and refuses to be convinced to the contrary. But. nevertheless, the fixation of my person produced a chain of ideas which I could only have caused in my capacity as doctor. Another hysteric always saw a certain person whom she hated in her excitement. She went for the supposed person, but stopped herself short before reaching her, and never struck at the hullucinated person, although she always attacked everyone else." (0. Vogt.)