toms of which are largely determined by the suggestions of the operator, or in the absence of these by the preconceived notions of the subject himself. It is for this reason that a satisfactory classification of hypnotic symptoms cannot easily be made.

The loss of voluntary motion is the simplest phase of hypnosis observed after passing into a state bordering on sleep. You close the patient's eyes and then abruptly say:

"Ah, you are already asleep. Your eyes are heavy, so heavy that you cannot open them. Try as hard as you like, but you cannot open them. Now, I lay your hand on mine and you cannot remove it. See, it sticks like steel to a magnet. But I have only to speak the word and you are released. Open your eyes. See? They open easily. Take away your hand. Yes, you readily remove it. You do exactly what I tell you to do. You can't do otherwise-the fact is you do not care to disobey. It is far easier and pleasanter to obey."

This experience impresses the patient with a sense of necessity, and, so long as you do not ask anything unreasonable, or that does not comport with his sense of right, he will not think of disobeying. A vicious man will do vicious acts under orders; but a conscientious man will not. Your patient may have had much pain. Lay your hand on the painful spot and say:

You are

"You have no more pain. The cause of it has been removed, and you are free. well, absolutely well."

The

Repeat this in similar words several times. Say it loudly; then whisper it into the ear. suggestion is to be deeply impressed.

POSITION FOR HYPNOSIS.

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This is a favorable degree of hypnosis for suggestion; but it is not equal to that of deep sleep.

To carry the patient into the profound stage merely use suggestion. If in an office chair, put him into a semi-recumbent posture and suggest deep sleep.

These words will answer the purpose: "You are now fast asleep. Nothing can awaken you but my command. You are wholly oblivious to all but my words. Listen, now, while I speak.

The patient will nearly always do precisely what you command, and will appear to be in deep sleep-sometimes with the accompanying deep and regular breathing. Nothing will disturb him until you give the waking word, provided you remain with him, and provided, also, that you do not insist upon something against which his moral or spiritual nature would rebel.

It is easy to put one patient into a particular stage of hypnosis with mixed phenomena, while another will not enter it at all, though he will readily enter other stages, until experimented with a number of times. Idiosyncrasies show up very plainly in hypnosis.

Position for Hypnosis.

One characteristic of the hypnotic sleep worthy of early notice is that the patient, being in constant subjective relation with the operator, does not appear to wholly forget physical relations. In this respect the condition resembles certain phases of hysteria wherein the patient, during (to lay observers) an alarming attack of apparent unconsciousness, from which she long refuses to be aroused, sits bolt upright, co-ordination being sufficiently

maintained to keep her from falling. Likewise, the hypnotic patient does not relax, as in ordinary sleep, but the muscles are sometimes, but not always, rigid until softened by suggestion.

For this reason the question of position is comparatively immaterial. If the physician be treating at his office, the patient may be seated in his adjustable chair, and for the purpose of deep hypnosis is made to assume an easy semi-recumbent posture. (See half-tone.) For light hypnosis it is more convenient to seat him in an ordinary chair so that the operator may occupy a convenient position behind him.

When one is not practicing hypnotism in a wholesale way, as I have seen it done abroad, there is no occasion for all the machinery of bright balls, revolving mirrors, etc. The simpler methods and the quiet, easy positions are to be preferred, as they are more likely to please people of intelligence and secure from them the greater confidence.

The more the patient comes to believe in the power of the healer, rather than in the means employed, the more satisfactory the results. But I caution the operator again in behalf of truth and the beneficent results likely to follow the apprehension of it, to aim ultimately to bring the patient to understand that the TRUE CURATIVE POWER LIES IN HIMSELF, and that all the physician can do is to arouse it, by various means, into renewed activity.

The most efficient measures of cure are always simple. The chief effort is always to be directed toward establishing the necessary confidence of the patient in the means employed, in the physician, but most of all in himself.

SCOPE OF HYPNOTIC CONTROL.

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The Scope of Hypnotic Control.

As in the instance of other manifestations of nature's hidden forces, the fancies of those unacquainted with the phenomena in their details are disposed to run riot. The true power of the hypnotist has been misapprehended and the effects of hypnotism on the subject have been misinterpreted and exaggerated.

The will of the hypnotized person is not under the power of the operator. Let those who think it is experiment on a subject or two and they will become convinced that one cannot be so controlled, either in hypnosis or out of it, as to commit an act to which his volition had not already given tacit consent. The truth is that our moral principles and impulses lie mainly beneath the floor of consciousness and when one is pressed to do what does not accord therewith there is an emergence of the true nature and one comes to one's waking sense and then the resistance is determined by the ordinary processes of inductive reasoning. Press the hypnotized patient to do some grotesque or immoral act too far and he will waken. There is revolt.

Now this return of a hypnotized subject to normal conditions, against the purpose of the operator, does not prove, as some have supposed, that hypnosis is really an objectively conscious state in which he comprehends his true environment. Would they take this position with respect to normal sleep? During the latter we are not objectively conscious of what is going on around us, and, in our dreams, we accept most absurd situations without protest. The stealthy burglar may be prowling about and we

know nothing of his presence, until something occurs sufficiently out of the ordinary to cause our sleepy consciousness to assert itself. The mind in sleep readily adjusts its actions to environment, not only present environment, but prospective as well. Go to bed in a sleeper before it leaves the station and very likely you will not be awakened by departure of the train, though one-half the noise and motion would have started you in fright from your own bed at home. The hypnotized subject gives himself up to be dominated by certain ideas and an attempt to lead him beyond that point of concession will result in waking him.

As much may also be said concerning posthypnotic suggestion. It has its bounds set up by the subject's own ideas of consistency and decency.

Has Hypnotism a Pernicious Effect on the Subject's Mentality?

The testimony of all practitioners of experience is that no ill effects have been observed. Among those who thus testify I have elsewhere mentioned Forel, Liebeault, Bernheim, Wetterstrand, Van Eeden, De Jong and Moll.

The Hypnotic Suggestion.

The hypnotic suggestion differs in no essential from other suggestion. In giving it one should remember that subconscious mentation is surprisingly logical, and that the suggestion itself, when presented, should have logical order and be a fair inference from what has preceded it. What has been termed apper