I introduce the following case as a sort of medical curiosity:

5. Miss M------, aged forty-five, an extremely practical and clever woman, mistress of a large school. She is very gouty and rheumatic, but otherwise robust. She came to me first in 1899, suffering from rheumatic pain and stiffness in the right knee, with slight effusion, and writer's cramp of the paralytic variety. She was easily hypnotized, but did not lose consciousness. Suggestion acted immediately and to an extraordinary degree. She was able to walk and move the leg without difficulty almost at once, and the writer's cramp was cured in a few days. The rheumatism has since occasionally returned in other joints, and once it took the form of severe coccygodynia. The effect of suggestion has always been so immediate and curative that one wonders if it has any limits in this particular case. Hard cases are said to make bad law, and excessive suggestibility in too many of our patients might make bad medical practice.

The lady lives a long way from London, and only comes to me when her doctor tells her he has done his best with drugs. So far none of her ailments have resisted hypnotic suggestion, though they have been varied in kind and extend over twelve years. They include, besides, various forms of rheumatism; climacteric flushing, tinnitus aurium, obstinate constipation, acute indigestion, chronic frontal headache, dysuria, sleeplessness, nervous exhaustion, gouty eczema, and writer's cramp. This case, though, unfortunately, quite exceptional, shows how hypnotism is a veritable panacea with some people.

Even more disappointing than failure of suggestions to take effect are those cases where the treatment is strongly indicated, and yet cannot be applied on account of the insusceptibility of the patient.

A case in point is that of a schoolmaster who consulted me a few years ago on account of a miserable delusion which was wrecking his life. He was under the impression that the boys were always laughing at him, and the struggle he had to contain his anger and maintain his dignity was so intense that it was undermining his health. The idea would probably soon have been removed by suggestion, but, unfortunately, he proved absolutely insusceptible to hypnotism.

A similar case is that of a medical man with a very large poor practice. He is a good-looking man of forty, but he has got the fixed idea that he is hideous and that everyone is laughing at him. He is impelled to suicide, and has entered an asylum as a voluntary boarder. As his condition is largely due to overwork, the rest and freedom from responsibility will probably restore his mental balance; but if he had proved hypnotizable, curative suggestion would have proved a short-cut to cure, and he was certainly justified in trying it.

I should have much liked to have helped an exceptionally able medical man who had won high distinction at college and built up a good country practice. Ambition induced him to read for a very difficult qualification, which he failed to obtain. As a result, he formed the idea that he was an ignoramus and unfit to practise his profession. He told all his patients so, and became overwhelmed by his responsibilities in the simplest case. He has had to sell the remains of his practice and take a complete rest abroad. *

The failure of the treatment was brought home to me recently by a patient who came to me hoping to be cured of absent-mindedness and lack of concentration. I gave him a few treatments, and then he ceased coming. As he had not paid me, I wrote two or three reminders, but he took no notice, so I finally got my lawyer to write to him. He then sent me a cheque with the comment that my treatment was evidently unsuccessful, as such conduct was what he had hoped to be cured of.

The case of Dr. A------ must, I fear, also be counted among those I have failed to help by hypnotic suggestion. He was a man of over forty, married, and with children. Having good private means, he had given up practice, and idleness had its usual result, taking the form of a liaison with a young lady.

* Insane delusions occurring in doctors have, I confess, a weird fascination for me, as one sees in them the struggle between practical and scientific knowledge and diseased mentality. Very striking was the case of a retired army surgeon who consulted me in 1900 about his wife. She thought she was girt about by electric wires, and that the current was turned on especially at night. I found the husband inclined to believe there was ' something in it,' but I was not prepared for an early and urgent summons from the landlady of the lodging-house to which I sent them demanding my immediate attendance. I found the bedroom had been wrecked by the unfortunate pair, as they felt convinced the current passed through the gas-pipes, and they had therefore wrenched these from the walls. He assured me he felt the current, and that feeling was believing

It is not uncommon for suggestion to act the wrong way, and for the insane to inoculate those in charge of them with their ideas. Recently a clergyman brought his sister to me, telling me she thought herself under the mesmeric control of a neighbour. He added he thought there was 'something in it.' As a matter of fact, the lady was of a certain age, and the gentleman had shown her a little attention, which she misinterpreted.

He came to me and begged me to try by suggestion to prevent him eloping with his mistress, and make him loyal to his wife. I consented to try, and he proved a fairly good subject. He was hypnotized a few times, and told me the suggestions were acting powerfully. Then he left off coming, and I have heard nothing more of him.

One is sometimes asked to employ hypnotism with the object of influencing unfortunate love attractions. Success could hardly be looked for in such cases, even if a medical man were justified in acting without the full consent and knowledge of the person chiefly concerned. I have, however, frequently found hypnotism a valuable means of relief for the mental, moral, and physical sufferings due to disappointed affection.