Sacramento daily record-union., 1890-04-07
THE REVIVAL OF HYpNoT1sm.

ue discussion OF the character, useful
ness and limits of Notwithstanding it
worthy to rank as science-iust now en-
cages the attention of European physicians
to the exclusion of many other scientific
topics. In France there is manifest most
Interest in the matter. The immediate
phase of thequestion is that which involves
the question, "Can hypnotism be safely
and successfully employed to cure disease
or alleviate pain?" On all sides the tests
are now being made that are to evolve the
truth, it is hoped, concerning that mysteri-
Gus psychological condition, the hypnotic
state, and how much of cheat there is in it.
A dispatch of Saturday from London
reads:
Sixty prominent physicians and dental sur
geons conducted some very remarkable hyp-
motto experiments in Berlin in the case of a girl
whose tonsils were removed by an absolutely
painless operation during state of coma. The
patient observed the slightest suggestions of the
hypnotzer. Another patient was hypnoiized
by letter I'm the absence of the OPERATOR
written to a surgeon named Turner and worded
mus 60 to sleep by order of DR.. Bramwell
Ooey MIR. Turner's commands" Dr. Bramwell
also hypnotized another patient by a note sent
py the hands of his daughter, and still another
by message sent by telegraph. These state
ments are youched for by the London Lancet.
But we should prefer to read the Lancet s
report before accepting in full these re-
markable statements which verge upon
the marvellous.
DIR. Charles L. Tuckey of Paris has pub
Gshed the first intelligent pamphlet upon
the results of tests made of the curative
capacity of hypnotism. A brief statement
OF some of the cases will be of interest,
since all impartial searchers after the truth
must be solicitous to know exactly what it
is claimed has been demonstrated. In one
case man OF 80 was cured of sleeplessness,
gaining from the very hour in which he
was thrown into hypnotic condition, with
the direction by suggestion to sleep sound
ly. A French general, aged ~, who con-
tracted bowel looseness in the Crimean
war, and had not been free from the dis
ease for day since then, and suffering all
the while intensely, was cured in three
trials, the suggestion each time being to
have only natural motions In both these
cases, as in the next, the patients were
extremely nervous people, and were affected
seriously by any emotional agitation. A
woman of 3S was cured of chronic parox-
ysmal sneezing in one seance. A man of
47.was cured of locomotor ataxia after
month, in which he was hypnotized daily,
his general health all the time improving.
Perhaps the most notable cure claimed,
however, was that OF woman of 81 who
suffered excrutiating tortures from rheu-
matte torticollis. She had for sixteen
days been unable to move her head or
arms without the punishment of torturipg
pain. She was put to sleep by the hyno-
tizer and her head, arms and neck rubbed
and kneaded, and the suggestion made to
her to suffer no more and to move as freely
as in a normal condition. In a few mo-
ments she awakened and was able to move
her head and arms with but little diff
Guilty. On second trial she was dis
charged as cured. A woman of 43 was
cured of headache and post partum pains.
A woman of 80 was cured of writer's
cramp, and girl of 10 had all her life
suffered from nocturnal enuresis, but was
cured by the suggestion order in a hyp-
motto state in four seances. being directed
90 rise at given hour nightly.
DR.. Tuckey, who reports these cases,
was a member Of the International Con-
gress on Hypnotism, of which we heard
very little in this country. 1t must be
assumed that his reports are reliable But
they will remain unsatisfactory as proofs
for two reasons: they are of diverse cases +:
they do not extend TO a sufficiently long
period of time after the "cures" in which
TIE cases could be studied to determine
whether the patients relapsed, whether
there were ills accompanying the hyp-
motto treatment independent OF the disease
treated. 1t would be far more satisfactory
in ascertaining the true value of hypno-
tism as a curative agency, to have single
disease treated in a large number of cases,
and to have careful examination made
into the question, How far does the imagi-
nation aid the operator?
At the recent convention of physicians,
held in San Francisco, hypnotism was so
far recognized that resolutions were passed
memorializing the Legislature to prohibit
anyone experimenting with it, except under
direction of skilled physician, it being
affirmed that in the hands OF ''showmen"
it is dangerous agency. Yet the same,
practically, was resolved by physicians in
the last century concerning mesmerism.
But later royal commission, upon which
BENJAMIN Franklin served, examined into
Mesmer's claims, and reported them to be
hollow and unworthy. But mesmerism
fourished for some time thereafter, and
animal magnetism was defended by promi-
nent physicians in all parts as curative
agency. Finally, however, Mesmer and
his system dropped out of sight and were
succeeded by clairvoyance, under the wing
of which animal magnetism enjoyed a
brief period of revival early in the present
century, and secured from the Royal
Academy of Medicine in Paris a rather
s,vorsble report: but ten years later the