The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1897-01-11
LADIES LEARNING
TO HYPNOTIC
Leap Year Privilege Now
Extended Through
All the Years.
Grave Danger to Men While
Intending to Be Only a
Brother to Her.
Tie Indiscriminate Teaching of Hyp-
notism as Now Practiced
in San Francisco.

Two young men of respectable appear
ance have rented front room with an
i'm posing bay-wirdow on Howard street
and have established what the card on the
stairs announces-a school of hypnotism.
As one OF the young men said yesterday,
they will teach this marvellous and dan
gerous power to any one who has the
price" According to this the most de-
PRAYED person south Of Market street is
Just as eligible to become master OF this
strange phenomenon as the purest-minded
man or woman.
''Can all persons be taught hypnotism %
was asked by THE CALL reporter.
About so per cent of ali people can
learn to be hypnotists." said Mr.. BoGg
one of the teachers ''The remaining 20
per cent are prevented from learning by
certain scarcely definable characteristics.
The difficulty to overcome in teaching
hypnotism is to get the subject into a
passive condition. Some persons d.lude
themselves into thinking they are in that
state when their nervous attention, TO the
contrary, is greatly strained. They watch
every move the teacher makes. 1t is very
hard then 10 hypnotic them. L have
never been hypnotized. l was advised, If
intended TO teach it, never to allow my
self 10 be put in a hypnotic state. / can
| tell by intuition and in a few moments
whether person can be nypnouzea or
not"
is there not danger to society in this
| indscriminats teaching of this power?
There is danger in the evil use of 1t.
but we cannot control that. We exact
| from the pupil promise not to make a
bad use of it, but, as matter of fact, all
that amounts to is a promise. When
J. 10 in tsai f-nn
state. Put a wooden dagger in the hand
of a subject and tell him to stab certain
person, he will not hesitate to do 1t, but
we claim that if you give him real dag
ger and tell him 10 do the same thing, he
will not DO it, that Is if The man IN his
heart, while in his normal condition, wou
| do no m urder. II would be the same with
a man who is strongly prejudiced against
Intoxicating liquors. Though you bid
him to do it he would not drink. In the
same way we claim that no advantage could
be taken of woman.
.sWha reasons do your pupils give for
wanting to learn to hypnotize2
various reasons, replied young Bodge.
Some want to learn it for business rea-
sons, some for pleasure and entertain
ment, some for the curative or alternative
properties that there may be in it. That
man who was in here when you came, !"
ne said, referring to middie-aged man
who had called to arrange for the taking
OF his first lesson, says he wants to use 1t
on his wife who is i'll, and who will not
consent to let any one else hypnotic her.
Physicians are using the power more and
| more A physician who cannot hypnotic
a patient is scarcely up to date.
''They claim that they are the only peo-
pie who should be allowed TO use hypnot-
| ism. / do not see it in that light. Why has
not that man who wa here little while
ago as much right to use it for the allevia-
ton of pain in his wife as ply
do women learn hypnotism?"
"Quite as easily as men. We have about
as m any ladies, young and old, among our
pupils as men. The ladies use it for par
| Tor amusement, and we have one or two
who are quite proficient They can make
a man think he is his own grandmother"
] With this power the new woman be-
comes tie possessor of powerful leap year
| privileges during the lapse of this and the
centuries to come.