The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-04-11
HYPN0TISM CURE
 FOR DRUNKARDS
 IN CHURCH WORK
Rev. Dr. Batten Says Few Back sliders Among His Patients
 by This Treatment.

New York, April 11-The Rev. i Dr. Loring W. Batten, rector of St.
 Marks Church, at 232 East Eleventh | street, told the members of his con | gregation last night that their future donations will go into his new work 1 of retaining drunkards by hypnot- l ism.
 Dr. Batten said that he had been treatment for inebriates for several
 years, and had at last evolved a
 record of fifty cures. All that is
 necessary, he said, is for the patient with the drink habit to wish for a
 cure, and the treatment open to him in the rector's study will do the rest Dr. -Batten in outlining results on
 some of his fifty patients said that
 but he added that there was one
 backs1ider who took a night off to
 celebrate when he was first pro
 nounced cured. After his spree he
 came back for postgraduate
 course, however, and finally left in a prinkproof condition. Another of the
 fifty backslid three times, and went on debauch covering a period of two months, but he, too, repeated the hypnotic treatment, and was finally cured so completely that he fairly hated the sight of a beer glass.
 The work of Dr. Batten with those whose will power has been broken visit he made some years ago to the Bowery Mission.
 t'It is the steady drinker that is the easiest to cure,'' he said. 'fThe man whose periods of debauchery are far apart is the difficult patient, and he most often becomes the backslider when the lust for drink returns to his fighting strength"
 pr. Batten said the chief enemy of his patients during the course of treatment was the fact that often, three saloons on the way home, they were more than likely to meet dozen or more, and that somewhere twelfth the power of auto suggestions from the open doors would be strong enough to lure them in.
 "A woman te1ephoned me yester- day. he said, and told me excited1y that her husband had come home dead drunk and they had him tucked away in bed. She wanted me to come right. over and hypnotic him before he could wake up. and cure him.
 esNow, I can't do that, nor could help a man whose fellow-cIubmen telephoned me today. The man was raving around in the club, I was told over the phone. They had him backed into a corner and were keep ing him there till could rush over, as they hoped, to lead him through a trance into sobriety.
 <+No, that's not the way I do it. I do not deeply hypnotize my patients. 1 I procure 8 lightly hypnotic state and then force upon i1 the pa patient 1;, mental nts
  usual course is from six to twelve l lessons. and the only reason for hypnosis is that in that state the | mind is more subject to mandatory l
 ssT never let a patient touch a drop after I start. Many people say that i an old inebriate will go to pieces if drink is suddenly shut off, but in the case of a girl whom cured l stopped her off short, and after three days without drink she looked and acted and seemed in very truth a re-created woman. Her youthful beauty return ed to her, her mind resumed it's former keenness, and she did not show a sign of any i11-effects of the sudden shutting off of her drink pr. Batten said to reporters after his sermon that he had kept the work out of the newspapers 1p to now on account of it's experi- mental nature, but that from now on ne wished it to have publicity, as hat might attract more patients to 1is study. He said the treatment would be given without cost as a part of the Church extension work.