The San Francisco call., 1897-01-24

- %CCASIONALLYa a medical journal
H&H will recite the employment of
eS hypnoticm experimentally in some
hospital in France, with the commentary
Of a view OF some physician upon case
which has fallen under mis- observation in
this country, but few persons in San Fran
cisco are aware that hypnotism as regu-
lar department of therapeutics is daily
successfully practiced in one OF the Govern
ment hospitals in this department, and
that it has been so practiced with varying
success for no less than three years.
This hospital is on Angel Island, and
the Introduction of hypnotism into the
formulas Of treatment there is due to the
progressive spirit and wide learning of its
physician in charge, Major Pope. The
major is wonderfully read in hypnotic
lore, and, while he does not himself hyp-
notice the operations are done under his
directions, and ne keeps careful watch
over the subject during the period of his
treatment. But hypnotism is not practiced
in the Government service alone on
Angel Island it is now quite common in
nearly all hospitals of this character
throughout the country. The reason
numerous reports of cases in medical
journals, framed in the scientific language
which SO few laymen care TO read, is the
usually removed situations of these cara
vansaries, whereby they are generally out
of the ken of the daily prints. In this
respect it might be said that the military
hospitals are leading like establishme nts
of the civil sort, for the surgeon-general
of the army has reported on it time and
again, always protesting the fullest faith
in it and speaking interestedly of the
progress of its use in the hospitals OF the
Z service.
II would seem that the army presented
\ held the most suggestive of the employ
ment OF hypnotism in treating the cases
which are commonest to rise within it.
These are soldiers afflicted with the liquor
habit. Soldiers are proverbially drinkers; /;
many of them are hard drinkers, and, as
liquor is always obtainable at the post ex-
change or store, called the "canteen,"
there is opportunity TO drink to excess
even on the reservation. 1t is after a pro-
tracted spree, and perhaps a SOLDERING up
IN the guardhouse, that Johnny, the SOL
dier, IS sent to the hospital, to be there
dealt with according TO this recent school
OF application OF the mysterious and but
slightly understood forces in ami NAL life
which our ignorance terms odic, and reIe-
gates to the occult.
That pale and insidious DESTROYER. the
cigarette, contributes its annual quota of
victims to the candidature for hypnotic
treatment, for the callow, smooth-f faced
Johnny like his counterpart in civilian
life, shows the sallow skin and bronze
finger stains of the creature succumbed to
the demon Nicotine, and who has become
iiend of his family.
Experience at the hospital has shown
that all persons are not susceptible to
hypnotic influence, neither are all persons
capable of becoming operators. Major
Pope himself frankly admits that he is
not organized to develop into an opera.
tor. He finds those persons make the
best subjects who are nervously pros
\ rated; the fellow so Jagged" that he
sees snakes when he shuts his eyes, the
cigarette victim whose nervousness occa-
sions extreme diffidence, Sc that his hands
tremble and his speech falters, the suffer.
ers from bad habits which render them
wrecks and prostrates-these are the be.
ings who presenting the opposite extreme
in the clements essential to the seldier,