M. Bernheim does not for a moment pretend that hypnotism can cure organic diseases, such as cancer, phthisis, paralysis from cerebral effusion, with destruction of motor centres; but even in such cases it often relieves the most distressing symptoms. I have myself seen it relieve pain in hopeless cancerous disease. The special field for treatment by hypnotism is non-organic functional disease, and we all know how rebellious ailments of that nature are to ordinary medication. Strange as this may appear at first sight, a little reflection prepares us to understand the fact. We know how remarkably digestion, assimilation, and nutrition are influenced by mental conditions. Should not this prepare us for much more?

Like the late Dr. Liebeault, Dr. Bernheim is delighted to see visitors, and is most attentive to them. After a short time he taught me how to hypnotize, and allowed me to operate on his patients before the class. I soon made the observation, which I confirmed later in Paris, that operators vary a great deal in their power. Some succeed at once, others more slowly, and a few fail altogether. Patience, kindness, and a firm will appear indispensable.

It would be impossible in the short space at my disposal to describe even a fraction of the cases I saw and noted in Bernheim's wards during my stay at Nancy. I shall only give some details of a few. The first I shall select exemplifies the power of relieving distressing symptoms in a case of organic disease, and, moreover, illustrates that very curious state known as somnambulism, or the deepest degree of induced sleep. The patient was a man aged forty-two, a soldier discharged from the army owing to disease of the aortic valves, or, as M. Bernheim correctly termed it, ' la maladie de Corrigan.' The ailment was not far advanced, and the patient's troubles were mainly insomnia and dyspnoea. Hypnotism, with suggestion of sleep and facility of respiration, gave marked relief, and was repeated whenever the effect wore off. One day M. Bernheim said to me: 'I will now show you a real hypnotic somnambulist.' The patient having been hypnotized, M. Bernheim suggested to him as follows: 'Sleep for ten minutes, then get up, walk across the ward to No. 15, take the nightcap of the patient there, place it under your own pillow, then open the window, and you will hear music'

We left the man sleeping. In just ten minutes he arose, crossed the ward slowly and carefully, his eyes being closed, took the nightcap from bed No. 15, brought it over and placed it under his own pillow. He then went to the window, threw it open, and leant out. His face expressed keen delight, and he remained standing until M. Bernheim woke him by blowing on his eyelids. When questioned about the nightcap he was astonished, knew nothing about it; and when asked why he stood at the open window, replied: 'I thought I was back with my regiment, and that the band was playing.' His sleep being of the deepest kind - somnambulistic, in fact - he had not the faintest recollection of the suggestion which caused him to go through the evolutions described. This was one of many similar cases I saw in the services of Drs. Bernheim and Liebeault.

I shall now recount the cure of a fixed neuralgia of long duration accomplished by suggestion under hypnotism.

One morning while on his rounds M. Bernheim found a new patient just received into hospital. He was a bronzed, weather-beaten man about fifty years of age - a workman in one of the iron foundries which abound near Nancy. He complained of a fixed pain in the region of the right false ribs, just over the liver. This pain came on suddenly about a year before, while he was making great exertion in lifting a heavy bar of iron. It was constant, disabling him from working, undermining his health, and reducing him to poverty. He had undergone much treatment, and the affected region bore evidence of severe counter-irritation in the cicatrices caused by the actual cautery, of which our French brethren are fond. The whole side was so tender that he could barely allow us to examine it.

M. Bernheim said to me across the bed: 'I am glad you are here to-day. This is a case in which I expect a very good result from hypnotism.' He then hypnotized the patient, and suggested that on awaking the pain would be better, and at the same time rubbed strongly over the affected parts. In ten minutes he returned and awakened the patient. The pain was gone! The side was so insensible that vigorous palpation elicited no complaint. This patient was a deep sleeper, or somnambulist. He had no recollection of having even seen M. Bernheim or me.

I asked M. Bernheim what explanation he could offer of such a marvellous result. He replied: 'I can give none satisfactory. If I must propose any I would say that, as the pain was felt in the brain, the cauteries, etc., merely fixed it there, and that hypnotism has so altered the cerebral condition that sensibility is lost.' I had the opportunity of watching the progress of the case. The pain returned in the evening, but greatly mitigated. A daily repetition of hypnotism gradually extinguished it, and in nine days it was completely gone.

All this sounds like a fairy-tale. However, I was able not long after to relieve by hypnotism and suggestion an almost identical neuralgia of long duration in a young girl, which had resisted all other treatment. As in M. Bernheim's case, the pain returned in a mitigated form; but after five repetitions of the hypnosis and suggestion a full week's relief ensued, and the girl went home. This patient was in the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, under the care of my colleague, Dr. Joseph Redmond, now President of the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland. He can bear me out in what I state. The cure has been permanent. This is one of the many successes I have had. Dr. Charles Fitzgerald tells me he has cured by hypnotism and suggestion a case of tinnitus aurium when all other treatment failed. Drs. Richard Hayes, McCullagh, and J. J. Murphy have also had some remarkable results.