Hypnotism and suggestion in therapeutics, education, and reform

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Preface

The volume here presented does not assume to be a systematic treatise upon hypnotism, nor even upon its therapeutic uses; for that the works of Bernheim, Moll, Wetterstrand, Tuckey, and others may suffice — ^but there are certain phases of hypnotism which seem to the author to be of special interest and present importance, and it is for the purpose of distinctly presenting these special phases inat the following chapters have been prepared.

Hypnotism to the medical orofession has not been a specially welcome guest, either in England or America; it has been neglected, misunderstood, and misjudged; indeed the time for fully appreciating the effects of mental states upon physical conditions, and of one mind upon another, has only newly arrived. The relation which hypnotism bears to the subconscious mind and its strange and varied activities is only now beginvi PREFACE,

ning to be understood. The same is true of the uses of Hypnotism and Suggestion as educational and reformatory agents, and so of their greatly misjudged ethical relations. It is some of these special relations and utilities of hypnotism, as well as its more common therapeutic uses, that the present volume is intended to illustrate.

Acknowledgments and thanks are due to the editors of the following periodicals for permission to revise and reprint material contributed to their columns : North American Review, The Coming Age, The New- York Medical Journal, Pediatrics, The Quarterly Journal of Inebriety, The Journal of the American Medical Association, The Journal of the Society for Psychical Research.

R. O. M.

N^w York, March, 1901.

CONTENTS,

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Subjective Element in the Newer

Therapeutics, i

II. The Relation of Hypnotism to the Subconscious Mind, 47

III. Cases in General Practice Treated by Hyp-

notism AND Suggestion, .... 102

IV. Educational Uses of Hypnotism, . . 133 V. Forms of Suggestion Useful in the Treatment OF Inebriety, 179

VI. Six Miscellaneous Cases Treated by Hypnotism without Suggestion . . . .195

VII. Concerning " Rapport," 214

VIII. The Ethics of Hypnotism, .... 294

HYPNOTISM AND SUGGESTION.

Chapter I. The Subjective Element In The Newer Therapeutics

It is only recently — one might say within the past twenty years — that the psychic element in therapeutics has been recognised in any practical way by the medical profession; and it is through hypnotism mainly that its recognition, partial and insufficient as it is to-day, has been brought about. Along with this new element, and almost a part of it, another important psychological fact has come into view, namely, the existence and function of the subconscious mind. These constitute what may be called the subjective element in therapeutics, in distinction from the use of drugs and other objective means of cure.

Subjective methods have received little attention and little sympathy from the majority of minds trained in modern scientific thought and method. They have been considered too nearly allied with the supernatural and visionary, especially when applied to the cure of disease, to be worthy of serious attention. It may not prove unprofitable to notice the cause of this reluctance on the part of scientific men to observe and investigate subjective or psychic phenomena, especially as related to the practice of the healing art — ^and also to note the utility and need of this same subjective element in therapeutics.

Undoubtedly, the most progressive and productive mental work that has been accomplished during the past three hundred years has been done by means of processes chiefly objective in character. Such is par excellence the method of science. It insists that there must be facts, thoroughly established and accepted, from which properly viewed and compared general principles may be drawn; these in turn serving as helps in the discovery of still other and greater truths. The Occidental, and especially the Anglo-Saxon, mind demands this method; otherwise it finds scant and insufficient premisses from which to reason. It depends upon the senses for its material and upon the intellect for the use which it makes of this material.

But there is another method of discovering truth — more intuitive, more daring, and much broader in its scope, though in a sense less sure in its conclusions. It is subjective in character and more in accord with Oriental thought and method. Instead of looking outward and observing the external world its method is to turn thought inward and to seek principles there; it reasons subtly upon the principles which it discovers and then endeavours to square the external world, which it accounts altogether a secondary affair, with these excogitated principles. This is especially the method of the Oriental mind.

Western knowledge is in the main objective, exoteric, derived from without; Eastern knowledge is subjective, esoteric, derived from within. The West, with youthful pride, is inclined to scorn the inwardly acquired wisdom of the East and sees neither proof nor profit in its reasoning; and the East, with its hoary conservatism and subtlety of thought and reasoning, looks upon Western science as hew and crude — reaching results which they of the East consider rudimentary — even though not proven by the objective methods of the West. Is the West altogether right in its estimate of Oriental thought ? Is the East altogether wrong in its estimate of Western knowledge? Is there not a point of view in which the true value of each is considered and appreciated, and does not each gain by appropriating the strength of the other? An instance of the antagonism of these two methods of thought and their need of each other has been going on, as it were, under our own eyes, particularly during the last half century. It has been witnessed in the antagonism between science and religion; and it is pertinent to our purpose briefly to notice this conflict.

Religion, as we have been accustomed to consider the term, is essentially Oriental. It came from the East, it partook of the nature of Eastern thought. It was the embodiment of duties, laws, and ceremonials which had reference to a concep-

PSYCHIC ELEMENT IM THERAPEUTICS. 5

tion of God existing in and derived from the inner consciousness of the men who devised it. It purported to be supernatural and to be absolute truth. Among other things it presented a cosmogony — a statement of the manner in which the universe and man came to be what they are.

Three hundred years ago, when modern science was just appearing, Western thought began to rebel against this cosmogony. The young objective science began to make observations upon the heavenly bodies and the relation of the earth to them, and it found as a fact that the earth as well as other heavenly bodies moved — that the earth was only one of several planets which revolved not only around the sun, but also on their own axes. Eastern subjective thought, as developed in at least one Oriental religion, was at fault, and Western objective science scored a victory.

This was followed by a series of victories; Kepler and Newton discovered that nature was governed according to law instead of the caprice of a humanly constructed deity. Cuvier and LyeU discovered that fossils were not freaks of nature, but remains of real animals and plants, distributed in an orderly manner throughout the strata of the earth's crust, forming a series of once living organisms extending back through millions of years; so the meaning of the six days of creation must needs be changed to immense periods of time. Then Darwin and Wallace and their followers appeared and showed that, instead of sudden successive creations of individuals or new species, the whole series of living forms was the result of evolution carried on by means of minute and slow variations. Religion seemed vanquished and science victorious all along the line. It had changed creation into evolution and arbitrary government to law in nature — and the need of either creator or governor seemed banished. Deity was reduced to an unsatisfactory statement of force and law — and a lifeless materialism and uncertain agnosticism seemed to be the last word of science.

But slowly there arose a protest from the inmost soul of man; it increased until it became a roar like that of the strong wind which precedes the bursting of the tempest. It was the voice of a universal sentiment in man, and with stern purpose it demanded an efficient cause. This resistless voice cried out: ''you have shown us law; show us the giver of law. You have shown us a universe teeming with force, beauty, intelligence, sentiment, soul; show us the source of form, of beauty, of sentiment, of soul. If Jehovah did not make the world — who did ? " And lo ! there was silence, and the contending hosts stood still.

Then again was heard a voice — it was no chorus of triumph — no rising tempest of protest or of sentiment. It was a single voice; there was a note almost of sadness in it, because it was alone — but it was no uncertain sound which it uttered— it was like the clear tone of a trumpet. And there stepped forth one of noble mien, between the hosts; full panoplied and wearing the well-won insignia of science. And thus he spoke :

" The confession which I feel bound to make before you is, that I prolong the vision backward across the boundary of experimental science and discover in matter itself . . . the promise and potency of every form and quality of life."

Then there was clamour and confusion on either side. " He has gone out of the realm of science," quoth the conservative scientist. " He has found God," growled the agnostic and materialist. " But it is not our God," cried the religionist; and so they all turned their weapons upon Tyndall.

But the word had gone forth and was heard throughout the civilised world; it signified that there was a psychic quality in Nature even in its lowest inorganic forms, striving through the aeons of time past for more and more perfect expression through the gradually ascending grades of organism. This is the psychic potency which gives form to organism and which expresses itself through organism.

The clamour which TyndalFs statement aroused has gradually subsided; the scientific world is coming to see that no objection can be urged against it that cannot with equal force be urged against any statement of a necessary self-

PSYCHIC ELEMENT IN THERAPEUTICS. g

existence or adequate cause; and the religionist finds God — only in a different form from that in which he had been accustomed to view him. So both the intellectual or objective and the emotional or subjective side of man's nature can be satisfied and harmonised; and, what is equally important, a subjective element is introduced into scientific method which has greatly increased its power and adapted it to the higher uses which the problems of to-day are demanding.

It presents the initial force in evolution as a psychic force, permeating every particle of matter and every form of organism — securing higher and higher expression through more and more complex, and more nearly perfect organisms, until finally by this same psychic power the human organism is evolved and regulated.

The psychic element in man thus viewed is both dignified and powerful; it is part and parcel with the Divine force that is in nature, and is the highest expression and representative of that Divine in nature as revealed to our senses. This psychic element in nature, taking its place as the Divine energy permeating the universe — dwelling in it and working through it, instead of a humanly evolved Deity, dwelling and working outside of it — is the basis of the New Thought which is at present so powerfully influencing Christendom and indeed civilised man. It is thought, mind, the psychic element which, though subjective, is still active and efficient in nature; while form, organism, and its activities are its phenomena — its objective manifestations. It is this fact — that the human organism is evolved by a psychic power within itself — that is the basis of the newer thought in therapeutics — for if the human organism is evolved by a psychic force within itself, then that force is recuperative as well as formative. And this, as a matter of observation and fact, we know to be true — so true and so thoroughly accepted that the vis medicatrix natures is a power most confidently relied on in nearly every school of medicine, and is the foundation upon which every sensible method of cure is established. As usually considered, this recuperative power in nature is active without the consciousness or

PSYCHIC ELEMENT IN THERAPEUTICS, ii

will of the patient. Is this process in any way influenced by the conscious mind and will ? Here again the consensus of all forms of medical belief and practice would be at least that a cheerful and hopeful frame of mind, and a strong and affirming will, assist this recuperative process in nature, while despondency, doubt, and a feeble will just as surely hinder nature's benign efforts at cure. But, still further, can the conscious mind and will directly influence a person's own organism, so as to produce physiological changes and therapeutic effects; and can the mind and thought of one person so influence and impress the mind and thought of another person, as through that means to produce the same psysiological changes and the same therapeutic effects? Upon these last questions the medical world, and indeed the whole intelligent, thinking world, is divided.

Glance for a moment at the development of the therapeutic idea as shown in history. It is seen that the idea of cure was at first associated entirely with the supernatural. The cause of disease and the cure were equally according to the will of the gods; and certain rites and ceremonies were practised whose purpose it was to placate the gods and insure their good offices to ward off disease and cure the afflicted. Not until the time of Greek civilisation, as represented by Homer, does the office of the physician and surgeon as a distinct profession come into view, and even then the gods played a conspicuous part. It was the invisible arrows of Apollo that caused the epidemic which destroyed first the mules and hounds, and then sent whole legions of Greek heroes " to the dark cave where no light comes." And it is Calchas, the priest and soothsayer, who suggests the remedy, while Machaon and Podalirius, representing medicine and surgery, attended to the common casualties of war and camp. From this time on medicine has had a history; and it exhibits the same contest between science and sentiment regarding therapeutics as was exhibited on so grand a scale between science and sentiment regarding religion.

At the acme of Greek civilisation, and contemporary with the best Greek philosophers and statesmen, Hippocrates appeared as a representative of medicine. Of the science of medicine as now understood he knew but Httle, but he had a high conception of the office and status of the physician, as is shown by the Hippocratic oath still taken by so many educated physicians. He recognised disease as a process, running a course and governed by law, which the physician must understand in order to know the needed remedy and whether his medicines helped or hindered this natural course of the disease. So close observation of disease, its symptoms, its course and probable termination, together with a belief in the power of Nature to accomplish much toward recovery, and also the belief that art could often assist Nature in her efforts to restore health, was the foundation upon which scientific medicine was established and has been built up. It was sound common sense making use of the true scientific method, namely, observation and induction.

On the scientific side the foundations have been widened and deepened by new knowledge, slowly acquired century after century. First came a knowledge of anatomy, as studied at Alexandria three hundred years before our era; then by Galen, and then by Vesalius in the sixteenth century. Then, in the seventeenth century, came the discovery of the circulation of the blood by Harvey, and, as a natural consequence, the indications of the pulse, and a new physiology. Then came the closer study of special organs and their diseases, as, for instance, the diseases of the kidneys by Bright; of the chest, and especially of the heart, by Stokes; of the lungs by Laennec, and of the skin by Willan. No non-professional person can form any idea of the great value of these contributions to scientific medicine made by each of these and many other scientific workers. Think of the vast amount of comfort and usefulness which has come to the human race through the scientific study of the eye amd its diseases and deficiencies! Think of the vast saving of life, and the incalculable amount of relief from suffering and misery, which have come to woman through the scientific work of Sims and McDowell and their followers in the development of gynecology!

But Still again, consider the immense saving of human life through the discovery of vaccination by Jenner! Epidemics of small-pox no longer exist among people where vaccination is compulsory or is even voluntarily practised. Where human beings were formerly swept off by thousands and tens of thousands, both in city and country, and physicians of every school were helpless to prevent, now to this disgusting, death-dealing plague it can with authority be commanded, '' Thus far shalt thou come and no farther." Consider the saving of human life by antiseptic surgery and midwifery, and by antiseptic measures applied in hospitals and sick-rooms everywhere; and again by the potent means of preventing and cutting short diseases which have come to us through the discoveries relating to microscopic organisms known as bacilli and bacteria !

Such is only a faint outline of what has been accom.plished by scientific methods by scientific medical men. At first weak and comparatively ignorant, scientific medicine has always pursued the one course — observation of facts, and common sense in endeavouring to find the principle which lay hidden in the facts. True, it has often erred, but it has desired truth.

From first to last there has always been opposed to this scientific or objective school of medicine, as represented by Hippocrates, Galen, Sydenham, and later by the great medical schools of Italy, Germany, France, England, and still later of America, another class of medical practitioners governed by subjective methods — ^by sentiment and feeling. In the Homeric repi sentation of medicine the physician and surgeon, Podalirius and Machaon, were offset by the priest and soothsayer, Calchas; and in the later Greek history the oracle and temples of health vied with the scientific medicine of the time. In Rome, in addition to these esoteric or subjective methods, the regular school of Hippocratic medicine was divided, and a so-called Pneumonic school was founded in the first century of our era. According to this sect the normal as well as diseased actions of the body were to be referred to the Pneuma or universal soul; and even Galen, in addition to his scientific studies, was to a degree influenced by this thought. In the early Middle Ages, when medical as well as many other kinds of learning was confined to the monasteries, science, even such as had previously existed, was almost extinguished, and medicine presented an anomalous mixture of magic and superstition, with the distorted scraps of medical knowledge which had traditionally come down to those times.

During the eleventh and twelfth centuries the influence of th '^rt and philosophy of the Arabians and Spanish Moors began to be felt upon medical science. This influence is best represented by Averroes of Cordova, with his theory of the oneness of intellect — ^humanity being the chosen vehicle through which this intellect was revealed, and its difference in individuals being simply difference in their degree of enlightenment. These ideas greatly influenced his conception of medical science, and made the curative principle to reside within man himself, but to be guided by the highest obtainable medical knowledge.

Early in the sixteenth century Paracelsus taught in his vigorous and arrogant fashion the doctrine that the human body was a microcosm corresponding to the macrocosm, or external universe, and to know man, sun, moon, and stars — all nature — must be studied. There was also an indwelling Archus which controlled all. Disease was not natural, but spiritual. His whole teaching was in opposition to accepted scientific medicine. In the next century Van Helmont revived the Archus of Paracelsus with variations and changes, and the symptoms of disease were supposed to be caused by the passions and perturbations of this Archus; and medicines were accordingly given to modify these perturbations.

Late in the eighteenth century Mesmer, an educated and scientific physician with a tendency to transcendental theories, appeared with his theory of animal magnetism, which afterward took his name and was known as mesmerism.

Without stopping to indicate minor attacks upon regular scientific medicine, we will hasten to notice the most important one of the early years of the present century, namely, homoeopathy as first set forth by Hahnemann. Here again appears the Archus of Paracelsus and Van Helmont as our spiritual, vital principle, and disease is the derangement of that principle. Psoria, or itch, was the chief cause of the chronic diseases. Hahnemann also held that the power of nature was not to be relied upon for the cure of disease — on the contrary, it rather tended to do harm; but nature had provided remedies which, when properly applied, were sufficient for cure; that the law of cure was " like cures like," and that, disease being spiritual in character, the remedies must, as nearly as possible, approach to the spiritual condition, and accordingly the potency of medicines increased with their approach to this spiritual condition. Hence the dilutions which characterise the homoeopathic pharmacopoeia.

The latter part of the present century has been prolific in protests against scientific medicine. They have come in the form of spiritual healing, the various faith cures, mind cures, and especially metaphysical healing and Christian Science. The nature and attitude of these last-named methods of cure are well known, and need not now be rehearsed. It is not my present object to criticise these various schools or methods of cure, but simply to indicate them and their relation to the great body of objective or scientific medicine. Their appearance all along the way has been a protest of the transcendental, spiritual, emotional side of man's nature against the purely physical and intellectual; of the subjective against the objective; of the esoteric, or that which comes from within, against the exoteric, or that which is learned from without. First it was supernatural — the direct interposition of the gods. Then it was the intellectual and spiritual oneness of Averroes carried out in philosophy, religion, and medicine; then the Archus of Paracelsus and Van Helmont; then the influence of animal magnetism as taught by Mesmer; then the spiritual nature of both disease and remedies of Hahnemann; and last the departure, quite outside the profession of medicine, — faith, mind, and spiritual cures, and, most important and imposing. Christian Science and metaphysical healing, — all except a more conservative

PSYCHIC ELEMENT W THERAPEUTICS. 21

portion of the last-named cult discarding and ignoring both science and medicine.

While science was in swaddling-clothes, and sentiment only expressed itself in the supernatural, but little mutual influence was exerted by these two widely differing modes of thought; but little by little the claims of the sentimental, the subjective, became more and more definite and positive, and were met by more and more determined hostility on the part of science. It was the old battle between science and religion, between objective and subjective, over again upon another field. In each case the aggressors have obtained their object. It is fully recognised by religion, representing the psychic and transcendental side of human nature, that the intellect, the understanding, which is represented by science, cannot be ignored or stultified; and the intellectual — the scientific — side now fully recognises the fact that there is a psychic element which has its laws and must be respected. So, in the struggle for adjustment regarding disease and its treatment, scientific medicine is coming to recognise a psychic element and to see that it is potent, and to-day that psychic element is being studied and observed from a scientific standpoint as it has never been studied before; and, on the other hand, the psychic, the transcendental element is learning and has yet further to learn that the intellect is an important factor in any system that is to endure, and that the results of scientific investigations cannot be ignored. In the adjustment of these two ideas is the construction of the Newer Therapeutics.

Having thus briefly indicated the two elements which have entered into the contest regarding the cure of disease, it is well to examine somewhat carefully the contribution which each has made to the system of therapeutics which must in the near future become dominant.

I have already indicated some of the more important contributions which scientific medicine has made to the world and to the body of facts which go to make up what may be called the knowledge side of the health-preserving and health-restoring art. To it we owe the knowledge of anatomy and physiology, the two noble pillars standing at the entrance gate to all true knowledge of medical art. To the same source we owe a knowledge of the circulation of the blood and the relation which pulse and temperature bear to disease; to it we owe all the delicate means of exploration of the different organs which characterise all sound medical teaching and practice — auscultation and percussion, or listening to the sounds which different organs produce in health, and variations from the normal sounds in disease, especially of the heart and lungs, and the organs of the abdominal cavity. To science we owe all the instruments of discovery and of precision so necessary to the proper detection and treatment of disease; the discovery and practical use of anaesthetics, especially chloroform, ether, and nitrousoxide gas, and the inestimable blessings of anaesthesia in surgery and midwifery; the discovery of vaccination and the uses of antiseptics both in surgery and in the sick-room; the control of epidemic diseases like cholera and yellow fever by cleanliness and disinfectants, and the as yet only halfdeveloped blessings which have resulted from the scientific study of bacteriology.

These discoveries, quite independent of medicine proper or drugs and their uses, furnish a mere outline of the contributions of scientific medical men to the knowledge side of medicine and to the comfort, safety, and well-being of mankind.

On the other hand, note the contributions which have come from the representatives of the transcendental side of medicine. In the first place they all, from Paracelsus to the most recently inducted practitioner of Christian Science, consciously or unconsciously have helped to press and prove the claim of the psychic element in the cure of disease. Beyond that, the two cults or schools of therapeutics which have contributed most that is of permanent value to the practice of the healing art are that introduced by Mesmer and his followers, and that by Hahnemann and his followers.

In regard to homoeopathy : Its contributions to a true and broad system of cure have been partly positive or direct, and partly incidental. It directly and positively declared a basis of refinement and spirituality in disease and the corresponding cure, and it protested against the violent medication of the time when it was introduced, by showing equally good and often better results while using what seemed practically to be no medicine at all; and incidentally it contributed one of the most important items of knowledge which have been added to scientific medicine during the present century, namely, a knowledge of the self-limited nature of a large class of diseases uninfluenced by medicine in any form. I will illustrate this fact by a single example. Scarlet fever w^as one of the diseases in which homoeopathy in its early days claimed its greatest triumphs; and physicians of the old school looked on with amazement and envy, seeing this scourge of childhood treated with far better results than were obtained by their own more severe methods, and they were led to inquire what was the secret of this success. They did not believe that the third or the thirtieth dilution of aconite or belladonna caused the cure.

In their eyes it was equivalent to no medication at all, and they accordingly commenced to treat these cases entirely without medicine, simply giving the patient the advantage of fresh air, cooling drinks, and general comfort.

The results were startling, and fully equal to those of the homoeopathic treatment. The same course was then pursued with other contagious diseases of childhood, and with the same success. The patients got well without medicine in the same time that they did with the most orthodox old-school or homoeopathic treatment. Hence, the study of the natural limitation of many diseases uninfluenced by medicine was pursued in a truly scientific spirit, and with the result of differentiating a large class of absolutely self-limited diseases, and also establishing the fact of the small value of drugs and the great value of hygiene and good nursing in another large class, namely, incurable diseases. Thus, while the law of siniiUa simiUhiis ctirantur was neither original nor true in any broad sense, and its doctrine of hig"h dilutions seemed opposed to reason and com-

PSYCHIC ELEMENT IN THERAPEUTICS. 2 J

tnon sense, the influence, direct and indirect, of homoeopathy upon the general practice of medicine has been both great and salutary. Of late it is itself acknowledging the value of scientific knowledge, — of anatomy, physiology, and diagnosis, — which it formerly practically ignored, and science is accepting something of its finer sentiment and its use of small doses of medicine; and so an approach to a higher method of medical practice is symbolised.