Psychology Applied to Medicine 
 
Psychology 
 Applied to Medicine 
 
 Introductory Studies 
 By 
 
 David W. Wells, M.D. 
 
 M 
 
 Lecturer on Mental Physiology, and Assistant 
 Ophthalmology, Boston University Medical 
 School ; Ophthalmic Surgeon, Massachu- 
 setts Homeopathic Hospital, Boston; 
 Oculist, Newton {Mass.) 
 Hospital 
 
 Philadelphia 
 F. A. Davis Company, Publishers 
 
 1907 
 
 
 or THE \\ 
 
 UNIVERSiTY j 
 
^fft£fl41 
 
 Copyright, igoj 
 By David W. Wells 
 
 'Kz.4~oo 
 
 'JBRMIY 
 
Preface 
 
 The present essay has developed as a result of 
 several years' experience lecturing to medical stu- 
 dents. 
 
 The matter presented is an attempt to bridge 
 over the gap between psychology and medicine. 
 Medical education in the past has undoubtedly 
 tended toward an ultramateriaUstic conception of 
 biology. The psychological aspect has been post- 
 poned not merely to a postgraduate period, but 
 more often to a postpractical period, — a very 
 proper study for the veteran after his years of ex- 
 perience. 
 
 Psychology is no longer merely a cultural study, 
 but is the means of solving many practical problems 
 presented to the physician. The subject should 
 therefore be opened up to the undergraduate, at 
 least in an elementary way. This gives him a better 
 understanding of his own mental processes, which 
 will in turn broaden his conception of the factors 
 which make for health and happiness. 
 
 Most standard works on psychic matters pre- 
 
 1GG773 
 
VI PREFACE 
 
 suppose previous elementary knowledge of the sub- 
 ject on the part of the reader. With a majority of 
 medical students this is not the case, and it is for 
 his use especially that these introductory studies 
 are presented. 
 
 Medical technicalities have been avoided as far 
 as possible, in order that the book may prove inter- 
 esting to that constantly growing class of the laity, 
 which recognizes an underlying truth in psychic 
 therapeutics. 
 
 Free use has been made of the available author- 
 ities, to whom, it is hoped, due credit has been given. 
 It would be presumptuous to claim to present many 
 new ideas, but it is hoped that the grouping of facts 
 and theories may accomplish the purpose of the 
 author, namely, to prepare the reader's mind to take 
 up with greater satisfaction the many erudite and 
 comprehensive works on kindred subjects. 
 
 It may seem to some readers that too much space 
 has been given to the psychology of sight. In ex- 
 tenuation it should be remembered that a speciaHst 
 can hardly fail to exaggerate the importance of his 
 own hmited field of practise. 
 
 Three chapters have been devoted to hypnotism 
 in an attempt to sum up the essentials of the history, 
 phenomena, and theories. Every physician should 
 have a working knowledge of this subject, whatever 
 his opinion may be as to the advisability of prac- 
 tising it. 
 
 The great subject of mental healing in its various 
 
PREFACE vu 
 
 forms is a living issue which every physician has to 
 meet. The proposition that " all disease is mental " 
 seems so absurd to the medically trained man, that 
 he is apt to ignore the fact that some disease is mental. 
 It is admitted that the profession has been en- 
 grossed with the physical side, discovering the 
 principles of hygiene, aseptic surgery, antitoxin, 
 scientific medicine, etc. It has not given attention 
 to the psychic side, but there is evident an increased 
 interest, and a few medical schools have estabhshed 
 chairs in psychotherapeutics. 
 
 D. W. W. 
 Copley Square, Boston, January , igoj. 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 REASON AND INSTINCT 
 
 Books recommended: James, " Psychology," Henry Holt; 
 Donaldson, "Growth of Brain," Scribners; Sandford, 
 " Experimental Psychology," Heath ; Waldstein, " The 
 Subconscious Self," Scribners ; Bramwell, " Hypnotism," 
 Lippincott ; Sidis, " Psychology of Suggestion," Apple- 
 ton ; Sidis, " Multiple Personalities," Appleton. — Mod- 
 ern psychology is becoming an important branch of 
 medicine, because it is recognized that " no mental 
 modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or 
 followed by bodily change." — Cerebration is accompa- 
 nied by a temporary association and grouping of nerve 
 cells, but thought is not a physical matter. — Develop- 
 ment of nervous system apart of organic evolution. — 
 Psychic missing Unks. — Instincts, common to man and 
 beast. — Man alone possesses reason. — "No action but 
 such as shows a choice of means can be called indu- 
 bitable expression of mind." — Recepts and concepts. — 
 Man has three sets of impulses : (i) Congenital reflexes, 
 (2) acquired reflexes, (3) reason . . . . 1-15 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 HABIT 
 
 Habit. — Human instincts are transient unless developed 
 into habits. — " As the twig is bent the tree incHnes." — 
 Habits are reflex arcs, which like electric currents follow 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 FAGB 
 
 the path of least resistance. — The development of hab- 
 its. — The moral significance. — " Man is a mere bundle 
 of habits." — The concatenated impulse ; economic value. 
 
 — Professional habits. — Intelligent reading is wise skip- 
 ping. — The conscious and subconscious ; relationship. — 
 The " Moment Consciousness." — Sleep a dissociation of 
 few or many nerve centers. — Dreams are sleeping hallu- 
 cinations ; duration short. — Caused by some centripetal 
 stimulus, somatic or external. — Infinite resources of the 
 subconscious. — Wonderful memory ; how to utilize it. 
 
 — A possible explanation of genius. — Geniuses not well 
 balanced. — Mental epidemics. — Concentration : in the 
 crowd but not <?/■ it 16-34 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Sensation. — Evolution of the special senses. — Doctrine of 
 relativity : noumenon, phenomenon. — Limitations of 
 sense perception. — The threshold. — The greatness and 
 littleness of human intellect. — Special senses, a refine- 
 ment of tactile sense. — The outward reference of sensa- 
 tion. — The correlation of the senses. — Visual percep- 
 tions. — The inverted retinal image, current explanation 
 of erect vision : tactile experience reinverts visual sensa- 
 tion; incorrect, because not analogous to other special 
 senses. — First sight of congenitally blind is always erect. 
 — Mr. Hanna's experience. — Man ignorant of retinal 
 image. Each mathematical point of object is referred 
 back to its proper place, and we see not the retinal image, 
 but the object itself in space 35-54 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 The blind spots; the two optic discs. — Retinal shadows: 
 erect, because cast by objects too near the eye to form 
 image on retina ; outward projection of, produces inverted 
 image. — Outward reference of tactile sense; flexible 
 
CONTENTS XI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 cane. — Monocular estimation of distance. — Difficult 
 without parallax. — Law of corresponding points. — Each 
 ganglion cell two neurons, divide for both retinae. — Ori- 
 entation, with prism. — Diplopia: — physiological at dis- 
 tances farther or nearer than point fixed. — Analogy of 
 digital tactile sense. — Binocular estimation of distance. 
 — Fusing successive double images. — Coordination of 
 convergence and accommodation. — Stereoscopic per- 
 spective. — Pictures correspond to right and left retinal 
 images. — Convergence required to fuse, determines dis- 
 tance ; convergence excessive, nearness ; convergence 
 slight, distance. — May overcome mathematical perspec- 
 tive. — Binocular vision an acquired faculty. — Fusion 
 training. — The amblyoscope. — Phoro-optometer stereo- 
 scope. — Controlled reading 5S~^S 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 HYPNOSIS — HISTORICAL 
 
 Hypnotism. — Historical. — Neuro - hypnotist^. — Nerve 
 sleep, so called by Braid, 1843. — Phenomena are as old 
 as civilization. — Early religions show many instances. — 
 Evident in religious fanaticism of to-day. — Mesmer. — 
 "De Planetarium Influxa," 1776. — The action and virtue 
 of animal magnetism. — The Paris establishment ; mys- 
 tery. — Investigation by Academy of Sciences : " Not 
 worthy of further scientific investigation." — Second in- 
 vestigation of mesmerism. — Eliotson, 1837, University 
 Hosp., London. — Resignation and publication of journal. 
 — Esdaile, 1845, India. — Painless surgery. — Braid, 1843, 
 " Neurypnology." — Rechristened " Hypnotism." — Re- 
 sult of subjective causes. — Liebeault, 1864, Nancy, so- 
 called "school." — Charcot, 1878, Salpetriere school. — 
 Society for Psychic Research, 1882, International. — 
 Bramwell, England, best living exponent. — Quacken- 
 boss, New York, moral reformation. — Morton Prince, 
 Boston, multiple personalities. — Petersen, Boston, trans- 
 lator of Wetterstrand. — Sidis, Brookline, "Psychology 
 
xii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 of Suggestion," "Psycho-pathological Researches," "Mul- 
 tiple Personality." — Methods of hypnotizing. — Physical 
 means not essential but useful. — Patient should be told 
 what to expect. — Narcotics and anesthetics. — Suscep- 
 tibility, almost universal. — Well-balanced individuals 
 best subjects. — Hysterical and weak-willed difiScult. — 
 Hypnotism a physiological function . . . 66-80 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 HYPNOSIS — PHENOMENA 
 
 Hypnosis. — Phenomena. — Classification, difficult and some- 
 what arbitrary. — Mild, catalepsy, conclusive evidence of 
 hypnosis. — Deep, somnambulism, hallucinations ac- 
 cepted. — Catalepsy unwise to exceed at first attempt ; 
 sufficient for slight analgesia; sufficient for therapeutic 
 suggestions. — Anesthesia not practicable for general 
 surgery, because not absolute in more than ten per cent. 
 
 — Character and frequency of pulse may be controlled. 
 
 — Suggestibility increased, raise of threshold. — Amnesia 
 the rule, but subject to suggestion. — The alert stage, 
 seemingly inconsistent with sleep. — Hallucinations : 
 positive, negative ; en rapport with operator, but others 
 may be introduced. — Subject reasons deductively, but 
 not inductively. — Post-hypnotic suggestions; apprecia- 
 tion of time. — Automatism, not absolute, subject may 
 refuse harmless suggestion. — Criminal suggestions, pop- 
 ular literature responsible for belief in ; mistaken deduc- 
 tions from paper dagger experiment. — Refinement of 
 moral sense. — The higher self : avoid being deceived. — 
 Precautions in conducting experiments : avoid self- 
 deception 81-95 
 
 CHAPTER Vn 
 
 HYPNOSIS — THEORIES 
 
 What is hypnotism ? — Theories. — 1766, Mesmer, animal 
 magnetism. — Influence of heavenly bodies. — 1851, 
 Professor Gregory, " Animal Magnetism." — Influence 
 
CONTENTS xui 
 
 PAGB 
 
 of inanimate bodies. — Confirms Reichenbach's odylic 
 force. — Operator's will sufficient to control subject. — 
 Defends phrenology, but suggestion wt// produce same 
 results. — 1843-55, Braid, three distinct theories: (i) 
 Physical theory, "hypnotism" manipulation of cranium 
 produces characteristic phenomena ; (2) Substitute mono- 
 ideism for hypnotism, preconceptions of subject, dominant 
 ideas, suggested by operator, magnets, metals, and sealed 
 medicines, inert except as vehicles of suggestion; (3) 
 Double consciousness. — Modern theories. — Charcot, 
 Salp8triere, the discordant note. — Responsible for mod- 
 ern prejudices. — Bernheim, suggestion, the all-sufficiency 
 of. — Sidis, laws of suggestibility. — Myers, subliminal 
 consciousness. — Volition, subject noi unconscious. — 
 Supra-normal : clairvoyance, clairaudience, prevision, tel- 
 epathy, the problem of personality .... 96-107 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS 
 
 Psychotherapeutics. — Definition of therapeutics. — Drugs, 
 surgery, orthopedics, electricity, mechanotherapy, refrac- 
 tion, hydrotherapy, massage, in all a physical element. — 
 Psychotherapeutics, elimination of the physical agent. — 
 Man a suggestible animal. — Historical : " Thy faith hath 
 made thee whole;" royal touch; shrines; prayer cure; 
 Christian Science; "mental healing;" Whipple, New 
 York ; Newcomb, Boston. — Claim everything, but refuse 
 to substantiate. — Silent treatments, accord with Sidis' 
 law. — Indirect suggestions, accord with Sidis' law. — 
 Bernheim, a-hypnotic suggestion. — Hypnosis necessary 
 to overcome auto-suggestions. — Method of giving treat- 
 ments. — Sphere of psychotherapeutics : subconscious 
 memory of pain, hallucinations, insomnia, neuralgia, con- 
 stipation. — Drug habit and degeneracy, Quackenboss. 
 
 — Dubois : nervous diseases. — Organic disease ? — 
 Anderson's "muscle bed." — Thinking out an exercise. 
 
 — An adjunct to general medicine .... 108-124 
 
XIV CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 PSYCHIC ELEMENT IN MEDICINE 
 
 The psychic element in the practise of medicine. — The 
 personality of the physician. — Genuine good - will. — 
 Healthful suggestions. — Suggestions adverse to health. 
 — Diet. — Suggestion present in all forms of therapeu- 
 tics : in surgery, in refraction, in electrotherapy, in mas- 
 sage, in materia medica. — The hidden suggestion. — Pop- 
 ular belief in efficacy of drugs. — " Posf hoc ergo propter 
 hoc." — "It cured me." — Profession not given to crit- 
 ical analysis. — Responsible for erroneous theories. — 
 Shattuck : " Some of our patients get well." — Flint's 
 law, the natural history of disease. — Percy : eight thera- 
 peutic influences : {a) Natural history of the morbid 
 processes; {b) The recuperative energies of the organ- 
 ism ; {c) The favorable agencies of hygiene ; {d) The 
 power of personal magnetism, in the practitioner ; [e) 
 Suggestion and auto-suggestion ; (/) Faith ; [g) Courage ; 
 (K) Drugs. — Attempt to eliminate suggestion from drug 
 pathogenesis. — The reproving by the Am. Hom. O. O. 
 and L. Soc. — The placebo, a vehicle of suggestion . 125-136 
 
^£Al.F< 
 
 Psychology Applied to 
 Medicine 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 SUMMARY 
 
 Books recommended: James, "Psychology," Henry Holt; Don- 
 aldson, " Growth of Brain," Scribners ; Sandford, " Experi- 
 mental Psychology," Heath ; Waldstein, " The Subconscious 
 Self," Scribners ; Bramwell, " Hypnotism," Lippincott ; Sidis, 
 " Psychology of Suggestion," Appleton ; Sidis, " Multiple Per- 
 sonalities," Appleton. — Modern psychology is becoming an 
 important branch of medicine, because it is recognized that 
 " no mental modification ever occurs which is not accompa- 
 nied or followed by bodily change." — Cerebration is accom- 
 panied by a temporary association and grouping of nerve cells, 
 but thought is not a physical matter. — Development of nerv- 
 ous system a part of organic evolution. — Psychic missing 
 links. — Instincts, common to man and beast. — Man alone 
 possesses reason. — " No action but such as shows a choice 
 of means can be called indubitable expression of mind." — 
 Recepts and concepts. — Man has three sets of impulses : 
 (I) Congenital reflexes, (2) acquired reflexes, (3) reason. 
 
 Professor Ladd has defined psychology as " the 
 science which describes and explains the phenomena 
 of consciousness." 
 
 While abstruse logic and cosmic philosophy are 
 
2 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 still legitimate departments of the subject, the new 
 psychology is not strictly metaphysics, it is a physio- 
 logical psychology, in fact a mental physiology. 
 The very word experimental, as applied to the sub- 
 ject, suggests appliances and individual research 
 quite beyond the scope of logic. 
 
 It is a recognition of the law laid down by Pro- 
 fessor James, that " no mental modification ever 
 occurs which is not accompanied or followed by a 
 bodily change," which renders it imperative that a 
 physician should be well grounded in the funda- 
 mental truths of psychology. 
 
 The comprehensiveness of the subject is over- 
 whelming. The present essay is an attempt to pre- 
 sent only a few well-recognized facts which bear 
 directly on the subjects of physiology and hygiene. 
 
 It may be well at the outset to have a clear idea 
 of our limitations. The old controversy between 
 the spiritualist and the materialist is perhaps not 
 yet ended, but there has been a decided reaction 
 from the ultramaterialism of fifty years ago. The 
 attempt to identify thought and molecular motion 
 has few defenders to-day. It used formerly to be 
 said by this class of thinkers: " The brain secretes 
 thought as the liver secretes bile." This is a dis- 
 tressing confusion of two distinct realms in nature, 
 — the psychical and the physical. 
 
 Recent developments in neurology have thrown 
 much light on the phenomena of brain activity. 
 Cerebration is now thought to be accompanied by a 
 
SENSATION 3 
 
 temporary association of nerve cells; but were we 
 able to trace the nervous impulse, thru all its in- 
 tricacies, to the brain centers, did we know the 
 exact molecular changes which cause the efferent 
 impulse, — the nature of a thought would be as 
 much a mystery as ever. Indeed it is doubtful if 
 the question is ever solved by the finite mind. 
 Tyndall said : " There is no fusion possible between 
 the two classes of facts. The passage from the 
 physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of 
 consciousness is unthinkable." 
 
 It is not claimed that the unknown is necessarily 
 the unknowable, but it is a line of investigation which 
 cannot be taken up in any superficial way. This 
 confession of ignorance is in fact a great step toward 
 a higher knowledge. It is a refined agnosticism. 
 The fact seems to be that the brain is the organ of 
 the mind, just as the body is the organ of the brain. 
 
 SENSATION 
 
 Simple protoplasm possesses irritability, contrac- 
 tility, and elasticity — that is, it has sensation equal 
 to its needs. Professor Sutherland has said : "A 
 nervous system is an arrangement by means of which 
 an organism becomes conscious of its environment 
 (food, friends, and foes) and adapts itself thereto." ' 
 This is a very comprehensive definition suited to 
 any form of life except unicellular organisms, and 
 even here, altho there is no aggregation of nerve 
 
 'Anatomical Lectures, B. U. Med. School. 
 
4 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 elements into a system, yet monocellular forms react 
 to touch, pressure, etc. 
 
 When the ameba envelops and ingests the food 
 particle that touches its periphery, it evidences a 
 " consciousness of environment and adjustment 
 thereto." It is evident that the word consciousness 
 is here used in a general sense. Some psychologists 
 have restricted the term to define a human attribute 
 only, and others have asserted that consciousness 
 without a central nervous system is impossible. 
 From a biological standpoint all life is conscious. 
 
 REASON AND INSTINCT 
 
 By studying the evolutionary scale of life as it 
 exists to-day, it is seen that the nervous system, like 
 its accompanying organism, progresses from the 
 simple to the relatively complex, till in man it 
 reaches a development capable of what we call 
 reason. 
 
 Undoubtedly psychology has drawn too sharp a 
 line between reason and instinct. The reaction from 
 this was the contention that the lower animals 
 reason, the difference being one of degree, not of 
 kind. The earUer idea that reasoning was an 
 attribute of man only was natural in preevolutionary 
 times, and was based on the belief in the immediate 
 creation of perfected organisms, the so-called spe- 
 cial creation, because special creations had distinct 
 endowments. The evolutionist maintains that since 
 the establishment of the general law, " from the 
 
REASON AND INSTINCT 5 
 
 simple to the relatively complex," the burden of 
 proof rests on him who claims that at any time or 
 place it ceases to be of universal application. 
 
 Perhaps no one has a right to affirm that gravita- 
 tion is of universal application, and yet experience 
 warrants one in assuming its universality as a work- 
 ing hypothesis till an exception is proved. So it is 
 assumed that the development of the nervous system 
 has been one continuous upward movement, till 
 we have the mind of man. This would lead us to 
 expect to find the difference between reason and 
 instinct one of degree, and in the last analysis this 
 may be so. Evolution teaches that certain species 
 have become side-tracked, and are forever con- 
 signed to inferior positions. These are the animals 
 whose mentality never rises above the plane of 
 instincts. As morphological connecting links are 
 wanting, so in a still more emphatic way is there a 
 gulf between the highest instinct and the human 
 mind. 
 
 Professor James says : "No actions but such as 
 are done for an end, and show a choice of means, 
 can be called indubitable expressions of mind." 
 Accepting this criterion, that in order to be classed 
 as reason an act must " show a choice of means," 
 it is possible to draw a sharp hne between reason 
 and instinct. 
 
 It is somewhat generally beUeved that instincts 
 are attributes of the lower animals only, and the 
 fact is overlooked that man is richly endowed in 
 
6 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 this direction, especially in infancy. Instincts are 
 impulses. " Theirs not to reason why." In physiol- 
 ogy we call them reflexes. The human infant is 
 born with the instinct to suck fully developed. The 
 tendency to clasp any object that comes in contact 
 with the fingers or toes is very marked. In fact, this 
 instinct is stronger a few hours after birth than at 
 any later period. 
 
 New-born children are able to sustain their own 
 weight by grasping a lead-pencil, often with only 
 one hand. The evolutionary bearing of this is very 
 interesting, and shows very beautifully how natural 
 selection could, in the lower animals, propagate 
 this impulse. The young of the chimpanzee whose 
 grasp of the mother was strongest would by this 
 means escape destruction when pursued by an 
 enemy. Of course in man the law of the " survival 
 of the fittest " is operative in a lesser degree. The 
 transiency of many infantile instincts, when not 
 exercised, will be again referred to under the subject 
 " Habit." Fear and love we possess in common 
 with the animals. The sexual passion is perhaps 
 one of the strongest examples. 
 
 DO ANIMALS REASON? 
 
 Let the great John Burroughs answer it. 
 
 " Apropos of the question, * Do animals think? ' 
 a correspondent, writing from Washington, says 
 that I deny this power to the lower animals because 
 I use the word in a too restricted sense. He then 
 
REASON AND INSTINCT 7 
 
 proceeds to say that if we use the word ' chin ' 
 to signify ' exclusively a portion of the human 
 face, meaning that portion which is extended 
 perpendicularly downward from the mouth, we 
 would hesitate to say that lower animals have 
 chins. So if we define "laugh" as spreading the 
 mouth in merriment we could not say that animals 
 laugh.' 
 
 " I am quite ready to admit that animals think 
 in as strict a sense as they have chins or as they 
 laugh. A feehng of play and merriment they cer- 
 tainly have, but tliis feehng is practically entirely 
 physical. I don't suppose an animal could appre- 
 ciate a joke, or the comic, or the absurd. Man is 
 the only animal that laughs or weeps, though tears 
 may run from the eyes of a suffering beast. And 
 the chin of a bird or beast is a very rudimentary 
 affair indeed. 
 
 " Take the case of the Uttle yellow warbler when 
 the cowbird drops her egg into its nest — does any- 
 thing Uke a process of thought or reflection pass 
 in the bird's mind then? The warbler is much 
 disturbed when she discovers the strange egg, and 
 her mate appears to share her agitation. Then 
 after a time, and after the two have apparently 
 considered the matter together, the mother bird 
 proceeds to bury the egg by building a new nest on 
 top of the old one. If another cowbird's egg is 
 dropped in this one, she will proceed to get rid of 
 this in the same way. This all looks very like reflec- 
 
8 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 tion. But let us consider the matter a moment. 
 This thing between the cowbird and the warbler 
 has been going on for innumerable generations. 
 The yellow, warbler seems to be the favorite host of 
 this parasite, and something hke a special instinct 
 may have grown up in the warbler with reference 
 to this strange egg. Thg bird reacts, as the psychol- 
 ogists say, at sight of jt, then she proceeds to dispose 
 of it in the way above described. All yellow warblers 
 act in the same manner, which is the way of instinct. 
 Now if this procedure was the result of an individual 
 thought or calculation on the part of the birds, they 
 would not all do the same thing; different lines of 
 conduct would be hit upon. How much simpler and 
 easier it would be to throw the egg out — how much 
 more hke an act of rational intelligence. So far as 
 I know no bird does eject this parasitical egg, 
 and no other bird besides the yellow warbler 
 gets rid of it in the way I have described. I have 
 seen a green-backed warbler rearing the young 
 cowbird. 
 
 " Another correspondent is sure his dog thinks 
 when he sits up in front of him while he is reading, 
 and taps him on his back or leg as a reminder that 
 he wants the ball in his master's pocket to play with ; 
 and that his parrot thinks when, on hearing him 
 enter the house, it begins savagely to bite its cage 
 and to make hideous noises, all with a view to ob- 
 taining its freedom, so that it can make its way to its 
 beloved master, and caress and play with him. If 
 
REASON AND INSTINCT 9 
 
 such things indicate powers of thought, then nearly 
 all animals think. The bee does when it goes forth 
 from the hive in quest of honey ; the big midsummer 
 spider does when it shakes its net to frighten you 
 away; the mother bird does when she flutters over 
 the ground at your feet to decoy you away from her 
 nest, etc. But none of these acts can properly be 
 called the result of thinking. 
 
 " When a parrot takes a crust of bread and soaks 
 it in its cup of water before eating it, that looks much 
 more hke the result of a mental process." ' 
 
 There are many instances of animal sagacity 
 which seem to show a certain degree of reasoning. 
 
 The following is quoted by Professor James: 
 
 " I have two dogs, a small, long-legged pet dog, 
 and a rather large watch-dog. Immediately beyond 
 the house court is a garden, into which one enters 
 through a low lattice gate which is closed by a latch 
 on the yard side. This latch is opened by hfting it. 
 Besides this, moreover, the gate is fastened on the 
 garden side by a string nailed to a gate-post. Here, 
 as often as one wished, could the following sight be 
 observed. If the little dog was shut in the garden 
 and wanted to go out he placed himself before the 
 gate and barked. Immediately the large dog in the 
 court would hasten to him and raise the latch with 
 his nose, while the little dog on the garden side leaped 
 up, and catching the string in his teeth, bit it thru. 
 
 " Certainly reasoning here seems to prevail. 
 
 ' Outing Magazine, 1905. 
 
lO PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 " In face of it, however, and altho the dogs arrived 
 of themselves and without human aid at the solution 
 of the gate question, I am able to point out that the 
 complete action was pieced together out of acci- 
 dental experiences, which the dogs followed, I might 
 say, unconsciously. 
 
 " While the large dog was young, he was allowed, 
 like the Uttle one, to go into the garden, and therefore 
 the gate was usually not latched but simply closed. 
 Now if he saw any one go in he would follow by 
 thrusting his snout between the gate and the post, 
 and so pushing the gate open. When he was grown 
 I forbade his being taken in, and had the gate kept 
 latched. But he naturally still tried to follow when 
 any one entered, and tried in the old fashion to open 
 it, which he could no longer do. Now it fell out that 
 once, while trying, he raised his nose higher than 
 usual, and hit the latch from below, so as to lift it 
 off its hook, and the gate opened. From thence- 
 forth he made the same movement of the head when 
 trying to open it, and of course with the same 
 result. He now knew how to open the gate when it 
 was latched. 
 
 " The little dog had been the large one's teacher 
 in many things, especially in the chasing of cats, and 
 catching of mice and moles, so when the httle one was 
 heard barking, the other always hastened to him. 
 
 " If the barking came from the garden he opened 
 the gate to get inside. 
 
 " But meanwhile the little dog, who wanted to get 
 
REASON AND INSTINCT II 
 
 out, the moment the gate opened shpped out between 
 the big one's legs, and so the appearance of his having 
 come with the intention of letting him out arose, and 
 that it was simply an appearance transpired from the 
 fact that, when the little dog did not succeed at 
 once in getting out, the large one ran in, and nosed 
 about the garden, plainly showing that he had 
 expected to see something there. 
 
 " In order to stop this opening of the gate, I fas- 
 tened a string on the garden side, which, tightly 
 drawn, held the gate firmly against the post, so 
 that if the large dog raised the latch, and let go, 
 it would every time fall back on the hook, and this 
 device was successful for quite a time, until it hap- 
 pened one day that on my return from a walk upon 
 which the Httlc dog had accompanied me, I crossed 
 the garden, and in passing through the gate the dog 
 remained behind, and refused to come to my whistle. 
 
 "As it was begirming to rain and I knew how he 
 disHked to get wet, I closed the gate in order to punish 
 him in this manner. 
 
 " But I had hardly reached the house ere he was 
 before the gate, whining and crying most piteously, 
 for the rain was falling faster and faster. The big 
 dog, to whom the rain was a matter of indifference, 
 was instantly on hand, and tried his utmost to open 
 the gate, but naturally without success. Almost in 
 despair, the Uttle dog bit at the gate, at the same 
 time springing into the air in the attempt to jump 
 over it, when he chanced to catch the string in his 
 
12 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 teeth. It broke and the gate flew open. Now he knew 
 the secret, and thenceforth bit the string whenever he 
 wished to get out, so that I was obliged to change 
 it."' 
 
 If every story of animal intelligence could be care- 
 fully analyzed and the history of its development 
 known it would probably be evident, as in this case, 
 that the mentahty displayed was hardly worthy the 
 name Reason. There is an association of means and 
 end. The dog remembered that a certain result fol- 
 lowed a certain action. In the first instance, when 
 the gate was not hasped, simply pushing against it 
 caused it to open. Accidentally discovering that 
 raising the hasp with his nose, the result — open 
 gate — foUowed, simple memory of the association 
 of the two occurrences caused him to repeat the move- 
 ment. To this class of phenomena psychology- has 
 given the name Recept. This word is derived from 
 Latin re (back), capio (to take), meaning something 
 remembered. 
 
 This is in distinction from the larger word Concept, 
 from the same root, but the prefix con, together, shows 
 that it covers the association of things received. 
 This term is applicable only to reasoning. In reason- 
 ing we put things together and pick out the essential 
 quality of observed facts. In this instance, that the 
 pushing of the gate must take place while the hasp 
 was hfted, so that the hasp would not drop into its 
 place again. Then there is formed in the mind a 
 
 * Psychology. 
 
REASON AND INSTINCT 1 3 
 
 concept, the principle of hasps in general, and the 
 test of a concept is the power to use the idea under 
 similar circumstances. 
 
 This leads to Professor James' proposition: 
 " The ability to deal with novel data is the technical 
 differentia of reasoning." This is very well shown 
 by the further history of the two dogs which I quote 
 again : 
 
 " That the big dog in raising the latch did not in 
 the least know that the latch closed the gate, that the 
 raising of the same opened it, but that he merely 
 repeated the automatic blow with his snout, which 
 had once had such happy consequences, transpires 
 from the following : 
 
 " The gate leading to the bam is fastened with a 
 latch precisely hke the one on the garden gate, only 
 placed a Httle higher, still easily within the dog's reach. 
 
 " Here, too, occasionally the little dog is confined, 
 and when he barks the big one makes every possible 
 effort to open the gate, but it never has occurred to 
 him to push the latch up. The brute cannot draw 
 conclusions, that is, he cannot think." 
 
 These recepts might be defined as acquired in- 
 stincts, or if that seems a contradiction of terms, 
 acquired reflexes. It is certainly one step higher 
 than the primary instincts, and is quite suggestive 
 of the way in which our ancestors may have repeated 
 certain actions till a tendency to do the same ap- 
 peared in the offspring. The reason for many of our 
 human instincts is now lost. Yet it never occurs to 
 
14 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 US to question these actions in ourselves. " It takes 
 what Berkeley calls a mind debauched by learning to 
 make the natural seem strange, so far as to ask for 
 why of any instinctive human act." ' 
 
 It was just said that the transmission of acquired 
 habits might account for instincts, animal and human. 
 This was the generally accepted view, altho it was 
 recognized that the evidence was meager in the ex- 
 treme. But in 1889 Weismann, of Freiburg,^ pub- 
 lished a strong denial, outHning a theory which in- 
 creases the scope of natural selection, 
 
 Weismann denies that functional qualities are 
 transmissible, denies that the blacksmith's son is 
 capable of any greater physical development than 
 he would have been had his father followed some 
 sedentary profession. 
 
 This view has gained many adherents in the intel- 
 lectual world, and while it would be out of place to 
 introduce the argument here, it must be mentioned 
 that Herbert Spencer was strongly opposed. The 
 principle of inheritance of acquired characteristics 
 is part of the groundwork of his Synthetic Philos- 
 ophy, and in the later controversy ^ with Weismann 
 he held his ground manfully. 
 
 What we need is to bear in mind the fact that we 
 are richly endowed with instincts, and that these 
 form a basis from which are developed habits, habits 
 
 ' James : Psychology. 
 
 * Essays upon Heredity. 
 
 3 Contemporary Kdview, September, 1893, October, 1894. 
 
REASON AND INSTINCT I 5 
 
 of reasoning as well as of bodily movements. Rea- 
 soning is also based upon experience both individual 
 and ancestral. 
 
 Man may therefore be said to be dominated by 
 three sets of impulses. 
 
 (i) Congenital reflexes. 
 
 (2) Acquired reflexes. 
 
 (3) Reason. 
 
 The second, acquired reflexes, is a somewhat ar- 
 bitrary division, and its boundaries are difficult to 
 determine. It is the transitional form, and, altho 
 on its upper and lower sides it merges into the two 
 extremes, its very existence tends to emphasize the 
 gulf between instinct and reason. This difference is 
 thus seen to be not merely one of degree but one of 
 kind. The hights to which human reason may mount 
 are indeed uncomprehensible to the common mind. 
 The vast range of phenomena which a great mind 
 can assimilate at a glance often makes him impatient 
 with us common mortals who have to grope our way 
 step by step. It is frequently quoted that Bow- 
 ditch, who translated one of Laplace's books, said : 
 *' Whenever his author prefaced a proposition by 
 the words ' It is evident,' he knew that many 
 hours of hard study lay before him, ere it became 
 evident to him." ' 
 
 ' James : Psychology. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 SUMMARY 
 
 Habit. — Human instincts are transient unless developed into 
 habits. — " As the twig is bent the tree inclines " — Habits 
 are reflex arcs, which like electric currents follow the path of 
 least resistance. — The development of habits. — The moral 
 significance. — " Man is a mere bundle of habits." — The con- 
 catenated impulse ; economic value. — Professional habits. — 
 Intelligent reading is wise skipping. — The conscious and sub- 
 conscious ; relationship. — The " Moment Consciousness " — 
 Sleep a dissociation of few or many nerve centers. — Dreams 
 are sleeping hallucinations ; duration short. — Caused by some 
 centripetal stimulus, somatic or external. — Infinite resources 
 of the subconscious. — Wonderful memory ; how to utilize it. 
 — A possible explanation of genius. — Geniuses not well bal- 
 anced. — Mental epidemics. — Concentration: in the crowd 
 but not ^it. 
 
 HABIT 
 
 Preyer has said that instincts are observable in 
 the human animal only in infancy. This may not be 
 strictly true, yet the preponderance of the instinctive 
 in early life has for us some very fmportant lessons. 
 The other fact of immense practical value is the 
 transiency of these instincts. Take, for example, 
 the sucking instinct. Every experienced nurse rec- 
 ognizes the importance of putting the baby to the 
 breast before the milk comes. If this be omitted and 
 if there be any delay in the natural food, it is often no 
 easy task to teach a child to nurse. This is espe- 
 
HABIT 17 
 
 dally true of the lower animals, for there is evident 
 in man a great lengthening of the period of infancy 
 or helplessness. 
 
 As with the sucking instinct, immediate obedience 
 makes continuance easy, so in a hundred ways in- 
 stincts may be made permanent by carrying out the 
 action, that is, by the estabUshment of a habit. The 
 advantage of a lengthened infancy is the extension of 
 the time of initiating habits.' 
 
 Obviously our habits are not all formed in infancy, 
 but the difficulty of the acquisition increases with age. 
 The longer the infancy, the longer the period of 
 plasticity, the greater the number of lines of thought 
 and action which can be implanted. 
 
 " As the twig is bent the tree inclines " is a 
 principle never lost sight of by educators and 
 reformers. 
 
 With the majority of people moral habits formed 
 in the " teens " become dominant thru life, while 
 the period between twenty and thirty fixes the pro- 
 fessional habits. This general truth need not dis- 
 courage us in attempting the acquisition of new 
 habits if we have a clear conception of the actions 
 necessary to the formation of a habit. 
 
 Without considering the question of whence, we 
 are constantly subject to impulses. This may be an 
 impulse to whistle. Now two courses are open, the 
 individual may or may not carry out this impulse. 
 Whether or not he be a free moral agent does not 
 
 ' See John Fiske's Essay : The Meaning of Infancy. 
 
1 8 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 concern us. Neither is the question if the impulse 
 be good or bad. 
 
 Yielding to the impulse, doing the thing impelled, 
 makes it very much more probable that the next time 
 that same impulse is felt, the action will follow. This 
 establishes a path of motor discharge, which is per- 
 haps the best physiological definition of habit. All 
 reflex arcs follow this law, the sensation having gotten 
 in, the efferent impulse probably follows the path of 
 least resistance. We can imagine that with the 
 initial impulse, like the brook trickling from a 
 snow-bank, the slightest obstacle may divert its 
 course, but the grooving effect soon converts this 
 slight obstruction into a high bank, so that nothing 
 less than a freshet can overcome the barrier. 
 
 It is not claimed that the psychical is absolutely 
 predestined Uke the physical. Were it so, effort at a 
 change would be unavailing. Here comes in the 
 human will, the impulse from without, if you please. 
 Given the impulse to change a habit, or to form a 
 new one, the one essential is the immediate action, 
 the breaking down of the barrier for this once. As 
 Emerson puts it : " When the divine moment of 
 the soul comes, leave your theory Uke Joseph his 
 coat in the hands of the harlot and flee." ^ 
 
 The next time this same impulse is felt, the pre- 
 vious action serves as a groove, be it ever so shallow. 
 The moral impUcation is so much in evidence that 
 it is difficult to wholly exclude it. Perhaps the 
 
 ' Essay on Self-reliance. 
 
IMPULSES 19 
 
 easiest way to surmount the difficulty is to enlarge 
 our definition of morals. Such aphorisms as " Man 
 is a mere bundle of habits," and " Order is Heaven's 
 first law," show that, after all, the really impor- 
 tant thing is care in forming one's habits. 
 
 There is also an economic side to the question. 
 Take, for example, the act of buttoning one's coat, 
 it is really a very complicated composite of afferent 
 and efferent impulses, and all done unconsciously. 
 Watch the young child as he painfully learns each 
 part of the process. 
 
 With the adult all that is necessary is the initial 
 impulse, either conscious or unconscious. The re- 
 sulting action of the contact of the finger with the but- 
 tonhole becomes the impulse for the next specific 
 act, and so on thru the whole series. The psy- 
 chological term for this is a concatenated impulse. 
 The word is derived from con (together) and catena 
 (a chain), meaning literally chained together. 
 
 It thus becomes apparent that, after the formation 
 of the habit, cerebration has simply to concern itself 
 with one impulse instead of the many to bring about 
 a complicated series of movements. Were it not for 
 this fact we could accomplish very little during a 
 lifetime. But the act of yesterday becoming the 
 habit of to-day, leaves time for further research and 
 progress. Just in proportion as habit may become a 
 strong ally, so it may also become a terrible enemy. 
 
 Professor James tells us that professional habits 
 become fixed between the twentieth and thirtieth 
 
20 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 years. What shall these habits be? Reading and 
 study must occupy a large part of the physician's 
 spare time. He should form the habit of extracting 
 the important items from a mass of unimportant 
 detail. Certain general principles apply, whether 
 it be a current magazine or an exhaustive treatise. 
 
 Euclid is credited with the saying, " There is no 
 royal road to geometry." Yet there is a royal habit 
 to be cultivated, which will make the road easy to the 
 acquisition of any subject. Nearly every book has 
 a preface and a table of contents. Many people 
 form the very bad habit of skipping both. This 
 plunges one into the details of a subject without 
 any comprehensive view. The logical habit is just 
 the reverse. A general idea of a subject as a whole 
 is the first essential. 
 
 One can seldom do better than to commence with 
 the title-page, which furnishes information about the 
 author, his position in the professional world, and 
 some hint as to the rehability of his statements. 
 The table of contents gives in a broad way the matter 
 presented, and, what is also of equal importance, 
 the logical sequence of the data and argument. In- 
 telhgent reading is said to be wise skipping, but wise 
 skipping requires a general grasp, else the skipping 
 is a dangerous habit. This habit \\\\\ ensure the 
 student against plodding thru a mass of detail, 
 which he soon forgets because he fails to see its re- 
 lation to the whole. The secret of remembering is 
 this. Details are imi)ortant only as they cluster 
 
INTELLECTUAL HABITS 21 
 
 around and attach themselves to the main thoughts. 
 This method of study will enable one to retain. 
 
 An educated man has been defined as " one who 
 knows where to go to get information." This is in 
 distinction from the person whose brain is full of 
 jumbled incoherent facts. The relationship between 
 phenomena should be carefully noted, perhaps it 
 would be better to say the relationships between 
 different sets of phenomena. Let them all be con- 
 catenated, then recollection becomes literally a i£- 
 coUection. One idea suggests another with which 
 we have associated it, and so on thru the series. 
 It is only necessary to remember the beginning of the 
 chain, and the rest is suggested. This is the principle 
 in most of the so-called " memory helps." 
 
 But above all is it necessary to read understand- 
 ingly. One chapter read well is better than the whole 
 book read badly. Evidently each man's ability to 
 digest a given subject will depend upon his education 
 and previous habit. Emerson has said : " He must 
 take himself for better for worse as his portion, 
 though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel 
 of nourishing corn can come to him but through his 
 toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given 
 to him to till."' 
 
 The economic value of intellectual habits becomes 
 apparent when it is understood that habits of mind, 
 as well as of body functions, are soon relegated to 
 the domain of the subconscious. Idiosyncrasies of 
 
 ' Essay on Self-reliance. 
 
22 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 thinking and talking are so much a matter of com- 
 mon experience that the importance of the subject 
 has been very generally overlooked. The next time 
 you are at a club meeting and some one is called 
 upon to discuss a paper, it will be of interest to you to 
 forecast and predict, not only the Httle mannerisms 
 of address and phraseology, yes, even the argumen- 
 tative machinery. 
 
 You may not know this man's opinion on the spe- 
 cial subject at hand, but if he be a person to whom 
 you have often Hstened, you can safely infer his 
 method of taking up the subject. The relationships 
 of any fact are so numerous, that one is almost sure 
 to see this thing from the same point of view, as on 
 other occasions he has seen other things. And the 
 interesting part of it all is that the man himself sel- 
 dom realizes that he has well-defined campaign plans 
 ready made for all ordinary occasions. 
 
 The soldier knows, unconsciously (if you will al- 
 low that a thing can be known unconsciously), just 
 what maneuvers a certain charge or retreat demand. 
 His whole education from private to officer is a rec- 
 ognition of this principle. The story is told of an 
 old soldier going home with his dinner. Altho 
 having long since retired from service, the old sub- 
 conscious habit was so strong, that when some one 
 shouted " Attention ! " his arms came down to the 
 sides and his dinner dropped to the gutter. The 
 ordinary explanation would be that he did it " with- 
 out thinking." This is not far from the truth, if it 
 
THE SUBCONSCIOUS 23 
 
 be added that he did it because he had previously 
 thought and acted this way. 
 
 SUBLIMINAL CEREBRATION 
 
 It is such facts as these which have led to theory 
 of " unconscious cerebration." A more modem 
 name is the subconscious mind. The word sub- 
 liminal is also used by some psychologists. To 
 understand its applicability it should be dissected. 
 The root is the Latin limen (a threshold). Thresh- 
 old in metaphysics has come to mean the smallest 
 stimulus to which a given sense organ will respond, 
 for example, the lowest tone, about sixteen vibra- 
 tions to the second, of which the ear is conscious, 
 is the threshold of sound. 
 
 So in psychology subliminal means under conscious 
 or subconscious. It is conceived that the mind is 
 divisible, not by a hard and fast anatomical hne, but 
 physiologically into the conscious and subconscious. 
 
 The reflexes belong to the subconscious, they are 
 actions laboriously thought out by prehistoric indi- 
 viduals, transmitted as impulses or mental grooves 
 to posterity, with their automatic machinery in 
 perfect running order. 
 
 It was said that the cleavage was physiological, 
 but this does not mean that it is absolute. Many 
 actions are ordinarily subconscious, yet are under 
 control of the will, if given conscious attention. In- 
 dividuals vary greatly in the classification of their 
 actions, those which are subconscious in one being 
 
24 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 impossible save by conscious thought in others. 
 Moreover, in the same individual there is a constant 
 shifting of the dividing line. 
 
 THE MOMENT CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 The experiences of the moment, which Sidis calls 
 the " Moment Consciousness," consist of that 
 of which we are directly conscious, the fact upon 
 which the attention is fixed, and all the other en- 
 vironmental facts which are also perceived by the 
 senses. These impressions may not be intense enough 
 to rise into consciousness, and yet are indelibly regis- 
 tered in the subconscious. The next moment an- 
 other cluster of sensations is perceived, and a large 
 part, perhaps all, of the content of the previous " mo- 
 ment consciousness " becomes subconscious. 
 
 The reverse of this process is equally true, sub- 
 conscious memories by association loom up into con- 
 sciousness, both prompting and modifying in a thou- 
 sand ways the sensations of the conscious. As Ufe 
 experiences multiply, the stored up facts increase. 
 The content of the present " moment consciousness " 
 includes the essence of all previous " moments con- 
 sciousness." 
 
 Moreover, it must not be assumed that a sub- 
 conscious memory must rise into consciousness in 
 order that it shall become an active factor. Cases 
 of hallucination studied by Doctor Sidis show that 
 ofttimes some forgotten psychic shock is sufficient to 
 give rise to the mental aberration. This leads Sidis 
 
DREAMS 25 
 
 to conclude that " hallucinations are waking dreams 
 and that dreams are sleeping hallucinations." As 
 brain activity is functional association of nerve 
 clusters, so sleep is a dissociation of few or many 
 brain centers, just as it is less or more profound. 
 
 As we know, some people seem to sleep " with one 
 eye open," being aroused by the sHghtest unusual 
 sound, while others fall into a profound lethargy. 
 Dreams do not occur in the sound sleeper, except 
 when he is in the transition stage between sleeping 
 and waking. We are often conscious of having 
 dreamed, but find it impossible to recollect the sub- 
 ject matter. At other times the dream is so vivid 
 as to waken one with a start. 
 
 Sidis argues that the cause is always a centrip- 
 etal stimulus, that is, something from outside the 
 brain, since the brain does not originate impressions. 
 For example, indigestion giving rise to pain may 
 cause in the dissociated cell groups of the brain a 
 sleeping hallucination of a gastric ulcer, and cold 
 applied to a sleeper's feet call forth a dream of an 
 arctic expedition. 
 
 A recent experience of the writer is such a perfect 
 illustration of this point that he cannot refrain from 
 introducing it. 
 
 At a dinner with some medical friends a large 
 dish of anchovies was allowed to remain on the 
 table during several courses. Without thinking of 
 how many I was eating I continued nibbhng during 
 the meal. 
 
26 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 Before going to sleep I was not conscious of any 
 unpleasant sensations from the indulgence, but in 
 the middle of the night I dreamed that I was seated 
 at a caf6 table, and opposite sat my friend of the 
 evening. 
 
 I do not remember giving the order, but the waiter 
 brought to my friend a large glass bowl which would 
 hold two or three quarts. This was filled with some 
 light pink sherbet, and completely encircHng the 
 dish was a row of most luscious strawberries. 
 
 With some impatience I asked the waiter why he 
 did not serve me with the same. He repHed, '' In 
 just a minute, sir." 
 
 My friend very politely said he would wait till 
 I was served, but I insisted that he should not. 
 
 He ate very leisurely, and all the time my thirst 
 increased, and wth equal rate my anger rose at that 
 waiter and his repeated " Yes, sir, just a minute." 
 But the cHmax came when he finally put before me 
 a bowl similar to the one from which my friend was 
 eating, but alas ! empty. 
 
 To add to my exasperation, the bowl had a red 
 stain around the top where the strawberries had been. 
 My anger became uncontrollable, and I waked with 
 such a parched mouth that I immediately drank off 
 several glasses of water. 
 
 The short duration of the dream state, notwith- 
 standing the varied experiences thru which one 
 passes, is well illustrated by the following account 
 which was given the writer by a telegraph operator. 
 
DREAMS 27 
 
 " One evening in the summer of 1882, or possibly 
 1 88 1, while taking press report for the Rochester 
 Herald, at Rochester, N. Y., I had what appears 
 to me to be a somewhat unusual experience, — so 
 unusual, in fact, that its impression has been lasting. 
 
 " At the time of this occurrence I had been doing 
 some extra work, and was feeling considerably worn 
 out and extremely sleepy. 
 
 " At about ten o'clock p. m. I was engaged in 
 taking a baseball score by innings. The sending of 
 these scores, I will state for the benefit of the un- 
 initiated, would require not to exceed one-half a 
 minute on a wire worked at the speed the report 
 wires are worked. I had taken the first team score, 
 which would appear about as follows: 
 
 " Chicago — 000 QIC 001 — 2 
 
 " Boston * — 000 001 000 — I 
 
 " At the point marked * I dropped asleep. I 
 dreamed that I started on a long vacation trip. New 
 York being my first stopping- point. The trip from 
 Rochester to New York City over the Central, 
 especially that part from Albany down the Hudson, 
 vdth its beautiful scenery, was one of the many 
 details noted. 
 
 " After reaching New York I seemed to have 
 plenty of time to spare, and this was spent in visiting 
 points of interest, calhng on friends and acquaint- 
 ances. About two weeks were spent in this manner, 
 when I started for Europe. 
 
 " The voyage across the Atlantic was a pleasant 
 
28 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 one, the sightseeing in London was intensely inter- 
 esting, and the return trip all that could be desired, 
 in fact, the whole trip was delightful, the more so as 
 I seemed to have no cares. 
 
 " The entire trip occupied about six weeks, and 
 I seemed to be greatly benefited thereby. 
 
 " When I awoke my first thought was that I had 
 about finished the night, and instinctively reached 
 for the telegraph-key to find out how much ' report ' 
 I had lost, supposing, of course, that I was in for 
 trouble. Upon asking New York what he was 
 sending he replied : ' Ball scores, Chicago-Boston.' 
 I started him on the Boston score, which I had put 
 down in very small figures (as per above) during 
 my sleep. 
 
 " How it was done, I will make no attempt to 
 explain, I simply give it up. The figures were there, 
 and furthermore they were correct. 
 
 " The actual time consumed by me in taking this 
 imaginary trip could not have exceeded ten seconds. 
 I had absolutely missed nothing in the report. 
 Neither had the circuit been interrupted in any way, 
 which I took pains to verify. The explanation of 
 all this, I leave to those better informed on such 
 matters. 
 
 " My friend Mr. Lee,^ to whom I related this 
 little experience at about the time it occurred, \\'ill 
 doubtless remember it, as will also others, were it 
 really worth the trouble to look them up." 
 
 ' Mr. Lee is a friend of the author. 
 
THE SUBCONSCIOUS 29 
 
 A good deal is being said just now about the 
 education of the subconscious. In mercantile affairs 
 a man is spoken of as a good organizer, which means 
 that he can call others to work out certain details, 
 confining his attention to the larger concern, and the 
 relation of the whole to the outside world. . 
 
 So in the psychic realm, in proportion as one is 
 developed intellectually has he relegated to the sub- 
 conscious the routine work of life. So long as things 
 run smoothly in his mental workshop he pays no 
 attention to it. Should an accident happen in any 
 department, the central office is immediately in- 
 formed, and the necessary steps taken to meet the 
 emergency. 
 
 So the education of the subconscious is simply 
 the formation of correct habits, and, as was said 
 before, the formation of a habit requires acting on 
 the impulse. FaiHng to act, the next time the impulse 
 is felt, its impulsiveness is lessened, the very failing 
 to act has established a habit of inaction. 
 
 Impulsiveness must, it is true, be curbed by 
 moderation, but excessive indecision is worse. 
 
 Many a man will fire with enthusiasms over some 
 project, but failing to act, soon cools down to a state 
 of disinterestedness. People who devote an excessive 
 amount of time to fiction and the theatre, often 
 mistake their sympathy for the hero for a real virtue. 
 This sentimentality soothes their consciences in 
 lieu of genuine philanthropy^ and their fine impulses 
 are barren of any actual good deeds. 
 
30 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 Most of our evidence of the outer world comes 
 thru the eyes and ears, that is, every object 
 pictured on the retina and every sonorous vibration 
 the unfaiUng afferent nerves transmit to the brain. 
 There are many examples of the fact that " having 
 eyes we see not and having ears we hear not," at 
 least consciously. 
 
 A well-authenticated case illustrative of this is 
 as follows: A lady was startled by seeing on the 
 wall, as if thrown by a flash-Hght, a notice of the 
 death of a friend. The wording was such as would 
 appear in a newspaper notice. Naturally she was 
 very much startled, and the wonder grew when 
 the inquiry revealed that the person had died as 
 stated. 
 
 Reference to the morning paper discovered the 
 identical notice. This paper she had read. More- 
 over, she remembered having read something else 
 which was in the same column, and the presump- 
 tion is that the notice was also read in what we 
 commonly call an " absent-minded way." The 
 conscious mind was certainly absent. 
 
 Every one has had the experience of reading on, 
 sometimes for pages, and then suddenly discovering 
 that he had been thinking of something entirely 
 foreign to the matter read, of which he was really 
 ignorant. Probably it was registered in the sub- 
 conscious, but ordinarily the subconscious is a 
 sealed book, until some abnormal experience brings 
 it to the surface. 
 
THE SUBCONSCIOUS 3 I 
 
 This ability to ignore noises and sights, and to 
 .apply one's self to other problems or acts, marks 
 the strong mind, the power to be in the crowd but 
 not oj it. This power of concentration is the power 
 of inhibiting extraneous impressions, and it may 
 go to the extent of absent-mindedness. Every one 
 is famihar with stories of mural painters so engrossed 
 in their work that they have fallen from their scaf- 
 folding or been rescued only by some timely inter- 
 ference. 
 
 On the other hand, when we realize of what un- 
 speakable value a perfect memory would be, we 
 long for some method of tapping this reservoir. 
 
 DECENTRATION 
 
 It is a somewhat common experience that one is 
 able to recollect some lost fact by a process of 
 dehberate ^attention. By assuming a passive non- 
 concentration the mind wanders to some of the 
 associated elements of the " moment consciousness " 
 of which the desired item was a part, which is thus 
 reached by direct continuity. This is in striking 
 analogy to retinal perception. In looking for faint 
 stars, one should look a little to one side of where 
 the star is known to be. This brings the retinal 
 image a Uttle to one side of the fovea centraHs, and 
 thus aids perception, because such portions are more 
 sensitive to light stimulus. The visual acuity of the 
 fovea, or the power of definition, is immensely 
 superior to peripheral portions. This phenomenon 
 
32 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 in both instances might be called </ecentration of 
 attention. 
 
 Sidis suggests closing the eyes and putting one's 
 self into a passive state, as a means of discovering 
 the subconscious. This will again be referred to 
 under auto-suggestion. 
 
 GENIUS 
 
 It is said there is no accounting for genius. The 
 authorship of Shakespeare's plays has been discussed 
 at great length, and while (to use the words of Sir 
 Roger de Coverley) " a great deal might be said on 
 both sides," the principal argument against the 
 Shakespeare claim is that his education, " knowing 
 little Latin and less Greek," was too meager to make 
 it possible. But in his time the ale-house was the 
 resort of those great lights of the Elizabethan Era. 
 There he might easily have absorbed the stories 
 and learned talk of Ben Jonson, Beaumont and 
 Fletcher, and hanging around the theater would 
 have made him famihar with the plays of the time. 
 Indeed the free use of anything he could lay his 
 hands on, the close following of the Holinshed 
 Chronicles in the English historical plays, has caused 
 him to be called a plagiarist. 
 
 But poets have been notoriously erratic and 
 unbalanced. The artistic mood seems to be incom- 
 patible with that dignified self-control which we so 
 much admire. The scientific thinker has no patience 
 with it. Darwin was great enough to recognize the 
 
GENIUS 33 
 
 incongruity of the two types of mind, and said of 
 himself, that ahho quite musical in his youth, he 
 had gradually lost the power to enjoy music. The 
 drunken Bobbie Bums is regarded by many as our 
 greatest English poet. Byron and Poe were cer- 
 tainly not well balanced. It is said that Coleridge's 
 " Ancient Mariner " was the result of an opium 
 dream. 
 
 There have been numerous boy calculators whose 
 powers transcend anything attainable by the greatest 
 mathematicians. The writer once heard an ** in- 
 spirational " speaker rattle ofif poetry for a quarter 
 of an hour on an impromptu subject. Upon this 
 occasion the writer offered the subject of the " Canal- 
 boat," thinking it not one of which the bards had 
 frequently sung. The production may not have been 
 of a high order, but the meter was good and it was 
 about the canal-boat, the words recurring very 
 frequently. The recitation began almost imme- 
 diately after the subject was assigned, and lasted 
 over ten minutes. 
 
 Now all of these facts, which demand explanation, 
 suggest the possibility that they are manifestations 
 of subliminal consciousness, the outpouring of 
 material unconsciously absorbed. It is admitted 
 that little proof is at hand, and that even as a theory 
 it fails to cover all the abnormal manifestations. 
 
 There are other psychic phenomena, such as 
 clairvoyance, or the power to see without the eyes, 
 and clairaudience, or the power to hear beyond the 
 
34 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 range of the ears, which seem to be well established. 
 Telepathy, or thought transference, is believed by 
 many whose scientific attainments and recognized 
 standing command respect of their opinions. 
 
 It is cheerfully admitted that these manifestations 
 are at present abnormal. Moreover, genius and 
 insanity are closely allied, and it is not always easy 
 to differentiate them. The expediency of cultivating 
 these experiences by present methods is perhaps 
 questionable. That the imagination may take con- 
 trol even with a sound mind is often seen in children 
 who want to play bear. As the play goes on, espe- 
 cially if some fur rugs be used, the auto-suggestion 
 may be accepted with so Httle discrimination, that 
 the child really becomes terribly scared. 
 
 History is replete with mental epidemics, crusades, 
 and financial panics, which are thoroly irrational. 
 
 Undoubtedly it is safer to keep the conscious at 
 the helm, to challenge all new impulses. But the 
 problem for the future is to develop some rational 
 method of utilizing the vast resources of the sub- 
 conscious. The possibilities are infinite. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 SUMMARY 
 
 Sensation. — Evolution of the special senses. — Doctrine of rela- 
 tivity : noumenon, phenomenon. — Limitations of sense per- 
 ception. — The threshold. ^ The greatness and littleness of 
 human intellect. — Special senses, a refinement of tactile 
 sense. — The outward reference of sensation. — The correla- 
 tion of the senses. — Visual perceptions. — The inverted 
 retinal image, current explanation of erect vision : tactile 
 experience reinverts visual sensation ; incorrect, because not 
 analogous to other special senses. — First sight of congen- 
 itally blind is always erect. — Mr. Hanna's experience. — Man 
 ignorant of retinal image. Each mathematical point of object 
 is referred back to its proper place, and we see not the retinal 
 image, but the object itself in space. 
 
 EVOLUTION OF SPECIAL SENSES 
 
 Sensation is the means of communication be- 
 tween an organism and the outside world, — the 
 material universe. 
 
 When a nutrient particle comes in contact with 
 the periphery of an anieba,- there would be no con- 
 tractility, no ingestion, were it not for the fact that 
 the cell possesses sensation, of which the various 
 properties of protoplasm are manifestations. The 
 organism would remain unconscious of its environ- 
 ment, — would stance tho surrounded by an ocean 
 of food. The nervous system is avowedly of the 
 35 
 
36 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 lowest order, but the point to be here noted is that 
 it is sufficient for the needs of its ovm organization. 
 However meager the knowledge thus obtained may 
 be, it immensely transcends no knowledge at all. 
 
 Without attempting to trace the stages from the 
 ameba to man, it may suffice to say that there is 
 evident all along the hne an elevation of the function 
 of sensation. This has followed the general law of 
 evolution " from the simple to the relatively com- 
 plex," that is, sensation has become specialized. 
 Besides common sensation, man has the so-called 
 five senses: touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight. 
 
 DOCTRINE OF RELATIVITY 
 
 To most people it has never occurred that this 
 beautiful array of talents leaves anything more to 
 be desired. We think we know the material universe 
 because we can touch, taste, smell, hear, and see 
 some of it. But what reason have we to presume 
 that these are the only phases of matter? 
 
 The deaf mute has no conception of music. To 
 him it is a sealed book. A race of deaf mutes would 
 be sure that they knew the material universe, be- 
 cause they could touch, taste, smell, and see it. 
 Imagine their idea of a piano or a barking dog. 
 
 Is it not thus apparent that we are probably 
 obhvious to many phases of matter? These five 
 senses are like so many doorways, or windows thru 
 which the ego catches glimpses of the outer world. 
 
 Instead of saying that we have in matter some- 
 
DOCTRINE OF RELATIVITY 37 
 
 thing wc really know, it may be nearer true to say 
 that we really know more of the attributes of mind, 
 about which we are confessedly ignorant. For 
 example, one may know certain facts about a table, 
 that it is two feet wide and three feet long, that it 
 is harder than his knuckles, but the sum of his 
 knowledge may be so meager, and the special facts 
 so unimportant, when compared with all the facts 
 about it, that he may have an entirely erroneous 
 conception. 
 
 Perhaps this can be illustrated by this poem by 
 John G. Saxe. 
 
 "THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT 
 
 "A HINDOO FABLE 
 
 " It was six men of Indostan, 
 
 To learning much inclined, 
 Who went to see an elephant 
 
 (Tho all of them were blind), 
 That each by observation 
 
 Might satisfy his mind. 
 
 " ThQ first approached the elephant, 
 
 And happening to fall 
 Against his broad and sturdy side, 
 
 At once began to bawl : 
 « God bless me, but the elephant 
 
 Is very like a wall.' 
 
 «' The second, feeling of the tusk, 
 Cried : ' Ho, what have we here 
 So very round and smooth and sharp ? 
 To me 'tis mighty clear 
 
38 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 This wonder of an elephant 
 Is very like a spear.' 
 
 '« The lAz'rci approached the animal, 
 
 And happening to take 
 The squirming trunk within his hands, 
 
 Thus boldly up and spake : 
 ' I see,' quoth he, ' the elephant 
 
 Is very like a snake.' 
 
 " Tht fourth reached out his eager hand 
 
 And felt above the knee. 
 'What most this wondrous beast is like 
 Is mighty plain,' quoth he; 
 
 ♦ 'Tis clear enough the elephant 
 
 Is very like a tree.' 
 
 " Tht/ifth, who chanced to touch the ear, 
 Said : ' E'en the blindest man 
 
 Can tell what this resembles most : 
 Deny the fact who can ? 
 
 This marvel of an elephant 
 Is very like a fan.' 
 
 " The sixth no sooner had begun 
 About the beast to grope, 
 Than seizing on the swinging tail 
 That fell within his scope, 
 
 • I see,' quoth he, ' the elephant 
 
 Is very like a rope.' 
 
 <• And so these men of Indostan 
 
 Disputed loud and long 
 Each in his own opinion 
 
 Exceeding stiff and strong, 
 Tho each was partly in the right 
 
 And all were in the wrong. 
 
DOCTRINE OF RELATIVITY 39 
 
 " MORAL 
 
 " So oft in theologic wars 
 
 The disputants, I ween, 
 Rail on in utter ignorance 
 
 Of what each other mean, 
 And prate about an elephant 
 
 Which none of them has seen." 
 
 NOUMENON AND PHENOMENON 
 
 John Fiske expresses this in his " Cosmic Philos- 
 ophy," thus: "The doctrine of relativity affirms 
 the existence of an unknowable reality of which all 
 phenomena whatever are the knowable manifesta- 
 tions." To this unknowable is given the name of 
 noumenon or the real thing, in distinction from 
 phenomenon, which is the increment man knows 
 of the real thing. 
 
 The story is told that when a missionary visited 
 some Indians and explained to them the Christian 
 theology, vdth considerable emphasis on the final 
 state of the unredeemed, the chief showed con- 
 siderable skepticism. With an arrow he drew a 
 small circle in the sand, then a larger circle enclosing 
 the first. Pointing to the inner circle, he said : 
 " This is what Indian know." Pointing to the 
 outer circle: "This is what white man know." 
 Then sweeping the arrow outside the periphery of 
 the larger circle : " Out here Indian know just as 
 much as white man." 
 
 As a further illustration may be mentioned the 
 old story of the doctor who denied the existence of 
 
40 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 the soul, because his dissecting knife failed to reveal 
 anything of this nature. He would believe nothing 
 that he could not see. Then the minister asks him 
 if he can see a pain, and if not why he believes in 
 pain. Of course he rephes that he feels the pain, 
 whereupon the clergyman rephes that he knows 
 of spiritual matters by other senses, which are 
 (perhaps) in the doctor undeveloped. 
 
 The mental attitude which is undaunted by the 
 restraints of the evidence of the senses is undoubt- 
 edly dangerous to the attainment of truth. To claim 
 that one possesses transcendental royal roads to 
 knowledge is intolerable to the scientific mind, yet 
 a recognition of the hmitations of our knowledge 
 of the simplest fact must have a salutary efifect upon 
 our egotistic tendencies. 
 
 This relativity is especially apparent when we 
 consider the special senses. For example, the 
 membrana tympana is made to vibrate in unison 
 with waves of air emanating from some sonorous 
 body, but those waves must reach a velocity of 
 sixteen per second before they are audible to the 
 human ear. We have abundant evidence that the 
 solar spectrum extends far beyond the visible 
 spectrum. The wonderful development of the sense 
 of smell in the dog simply baffles our comprehension. 
 
 " Thus we learn," as Spencer says in his " First 
 Principles," " the greatness and the httleness of 
 the human intellect — its power in deahng with all 
 that comes within the range of experience; its 
 
EVOLUTION OF THE SENSES 4 1 
 
 impotence in dealing with all that transcends ex- 
 perience." 
 
 THE TACTILE SENSE 
 
 As the more delicate senses have evolved from 
 simple sensitiveness to contact or the touch sense, 
 it may be interesting to note that a simple refinement 
 of this contact sense is evident thruout. Taste 
 requires that the article brought in contact with 
 the sense organ shall be soluble. In smell, which 
 is closely allied, the contact of finely divided particles 
 of matter is effected by their floating in the air. The 
 matter may be as finely divided as the gaseous state. 
 Hearing requires only the contact of air itself in 
 waves, but still contact is here. The hammer-hke 
 form of the organ of Corti is very suggestive of this 
 essential element contact. 
 
 The end organs of the optic nerve are the rods 
 and cones of the retina. The contact here is the 
 extreme refinement of touch. The ether wave 
 initiated by the luminous body is condensed by the 
 lenticular system of the eye into an irritant point, 
 the focus, which touches the retina. This principle 
 of contact and the fact that the special senses are 
 merely a refinement of the same are of immense 
 advantage in explaining some of our sight percep- 
 tions. 
 
 The other general principle which should be 
 recognized is the outward reference 0} sensation. 
 The common experience of striking the ulnar nerve 
 at the elbow and feeling the sensation at the tip of 
 
42 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 the little finger illustrates a general principle which 
 applies to all the senses. 
 
 This outward reference may be made to extend 
 beyond the finger. Tap the floor with a somewhat 
 flexible cane with the eyes closed and we feel the 
 contact at the end of the cane. 
 
 Perhaps we have all had the unpleasant experience 
 of " seeing stars " from a blow on the eye. This is 
 because an irritation of the optic nerve gives a sen- 
 sation of light which is referred outward into space. 
 This is also proof of the specialization of the optic 
 nerve. Moreover, the testimony of those from whom 
 it has been necessary to remove the eye without an 
 anesthetic is that, when the optic nerve is divided, 
 not pain but a flash of light is the resulting sensation. 
 
 This outward reference of the sense of hearing is 
 one means of estimating direction. Notice the in- 
 voluntary turning of the head so as to put the auricle 
 at right angles to the sound wave. This is in obedi- 
 ence of the general law that all irritations reaching 
 these special senses are referred back to their source. 
 
 SIGHT 
 
 The refinement of touch and outward reference 
 reaches its highest development in sight. 
 
 Primitive eyes and ears bear a strong resemblance 
 to each other. Later the eye has for its prototype the 
 pigment spot. This suggests that sight developed 
 first as an actinic susceptibility, the pigment spot ab- 
 sorbed the heat of the luminous body, and thus be- 
 
THE INVERTED IMAGE 43 
 
 came conscious of that which had heretofore been an 
 unknown world. 
 
 It is necessary to touch upon the embryolog}' of the 
 eye only for its psychological bearing, that is, the 
 development of sight. Notice then that the sensitive 
 area becomes depressed, then cupped. This shape 
 protects better and also increases the recognition of 
 direction. For greater protection the cavity becomes 
 closed and the cornea and lens develop. For what 
 purpose? Evidently to collect the scattered rays of 
 light and converge them, and focus them in a minute 
 point on the retina. Acute sight demands perfect 
 focusing. 
 
 Now let us apply the general law of sense percep- 
 tion and the outward reference of sensation to one of 
 the psychological problems of sight, one which has 
 been very generally misinterpreted. 
 
 The Inverted Image. — It is well known that the 
 image on the retina is inverted. How does it hap- 
 pen that we see objects erect ? The vmter devoted 
 considerable attention to this subject some years 
 ago, ransacking all attainable literature. 
 
 Most of the physiologies agree that it is wholly the 
 result of experience, that the child learns by touch 
 to reinvert the retinal picture. Foster's explanation 
 is as follov^'S : 
 
 " As a matter of fact the field of vision, in one im- 
 portant particular, does not correspond to the field 
 of external objects. The image is inverted. The 
 rays of light proceeding from an object which hy 
 
44 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 touch we know to be on what we call our right-hand 
 fall on the left-hand side of the retina. If, therefore, 
 the field of vision corresponded to the retinal image 
 the object would be seen on the left hand. We, how- 
 ever, see it on the right hand, because we invariably 
 associate right hand tactile locaHzation with left hand 
 visual sensation. That is to say, the field of vision, 
 when interpreted by touch, is a reinversion of the 
 retinal image." ' 
 
 Martin, in his work on " The Human Body," says : 
 " A new-born child, even supposing it could use its 
 muscles perfectly, could not seize a reachable object 
 which it saw. It would not yet have learned that 
 attaining a point exciting that part of the retina above 
 the fovea (center) meant reaching a position in space 
 below the visual axis; but very soon it learns that 
 things near its brow, that is, up, excite certain visual 
 sensations, and objects below its eyes, others; and 
 learns to interpret retinal stimuli, so as to locahze 
 accurately the directions, with reference of its eyes 
 to outer objects, and never henceforth gets puzzled 
 by retinal inversion." 
 
 These two statements are fairly representative, and 
 altho clear and lucid, are not only inadequate, but 
 erroneous. 
 
 First. This reversal by one sense, the tactile, of 
 the testimony of the outer world, as given by another 
 sense, the visual, is not analogous to the other spe- 
 cial senses; and during the learning lapses would 
 
 ' Physiology. 
 
THE INVERTED IMAGE 45 
 
 occur and pathology would furnish instances of 
 mistakes. 
 
 Second. Certain forms of congenital blindness, 
 such as cataracts and complete closure of the pupil, 
 can be remedied by operation. These children learn 
 by touch the correct (erect) position of objects, and 
 their first impression when sight is restored would be 
 an inversion of the object, according to the current 
 theory. As far as the author knows no case of this 
 kind has ever been recorded. 
 
 Dr. J. L. Minor, Memphis, Tenn., reported to the 
 writer in November, 1898, two cases of congenital 
 cataracts. The patients were brothers between 
 thirty and forty years of age, and had never seen. 
 After removing the cataracts the doctor kept these 
 men under observation for a month, and assures us 
 " there was never even a suggestion of inverted im- 
 ages." 
 
 The case of Rev. Mr. Hanna, reported by Sidis, 
 who after falhng from his carriage lost all memory 
 of his former life experience, is a unique bit of evi- 
 dence. He was as a newly bom infant opening his 
 eyes for the first time on the world. So totally ob- 
 literated from memory were the experiences of his 
 past life that even the simplest mental processes, like 
 the appreciation of distance, form, size, and mag- 
 nitude, were effaced from his mind, but objects were 
 seen erect. 
 
 Mr. Hanna's subsequent statement is as follows: 
 " The eyes suddenly opened quite involuntarily, 
 
46 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 and here indeed was a new world of wonder and 
 study. Objects were all alike as to distance, shape, 
 and thickness, but the variety of color was the feature 
 of interest. The room was a great beautiful picture, 
 absolutely without movement or distance beyond the 
 eye." ^ 
 
 Furthermore, this is a misconception, based on the 
 old theory of special immediate creation of perfected 
 organisms, and finds no place in the scientific thought 
 of to-day. It is inconsistent with the facts of evolu- 
 tion, which means a regular progression from the 
 simple to the relatively complex ; and the explanation 
 of the phenomena of sight must cover the primitive 
 eye, as well as the perfected organ. 
 
 The function of the primitive eye must have been 
 limited to simple sensitiveness to hght, and the im- 
 pHcation of the law of natural selection, that every 
 minute change which was continued was of greater 
 advantage to its possessor than a preceding stage, 
 absolutely excludes the tactile reinversion theory. 
 The speciahzation of a sense organ in such a way 
 that its evidence of the outer world was misleading 
 (inverted) until corrected (reinverted) by some other 
 sense organ (touch), could not have been of more ad- 
 vantage to its possessor than a less highly developed 
 organ which could be trusted ; and natural selection 
 would have carefully avoided propagating any such 
 variation. 
 
 The inversion is an accomphshed fact as soon as 
 
 ' Sidis : Multiple Personality. 
 
THE INVERTED IMAGE 47 
 
 the primitive eye is able to locate an external point 
 in space, for it can never see the point till it can tell 
 its direction. 
 
 The subsequent changes are all along this hne of 
 so perfecting the mechanism that a luminous point 
 in space shall produce an irritant point on the retina. 
 Thus there is no break in the contemporaneous de- 
 velopment of the organ of seeing and the psychical 
 act of seeing. They advance with equal step. There 
 is no catastrophe; no period when the optical ap- 
 paratus gives wrong impressions to the sensory. 
 
 It is indeed strange that ophthalmologists have so 
 universally neglected to elucidate this puzzhng phe- 
 nomenon, and in what follows the author is borrow- 
 ing from Le Conte,' whose explanation is the only 
 satisfactory one which has come to his notice. 
 
 A cone of light emitted by a radiant point falling 
 on a convex refracting surface is again converged to 
 a point behind the refracting surface. These two 
 points are called conjugate foci (Hterally yoked to- 
 gether), because if the radiant be placed at either 
 focus the hght will be brought to a point at the other 
 focus. (Fig. I.) 
 
 Fig. I. — Conjugate Foci. 
 
 In the normal eye, at rest, a luminous point twenty 
 feet or more distant is focused as a point on the 
 ' Sight, i88o. 
 
48 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 retina. (Fig. 2.) If the luminous point be nearer 
 than twenty feet, the refracting or bending effect of 
 the eye must be increased (accommodated) so that 
 
 Fig. 2. — Normal Eye at Rest, Focused for Distance. 
 
 the conjugate focus shall still be at the retina. (Fig. 
 3.) This is accomplished by increasing the thickness 
 of the crystalline lens, shown by the dotted line, Fig. 
 
 Fig. 3. — Accommodation for Near Vision by Increased 
 Thickening of the Lens. 
 
 3. As before stated, when the eye is able to reproduce 
 a luminous point in space as an irritant point on the 
 retina, the optical requirements for perfect vision are 
 secured. 
 
 Now "outward projection " means that the retina 
 is touched at this mathematical point, and, like all 
 other senses, it refers the sensation back to the source ; 
 in this case along the central hne of the pencil of rays. 
 
 The size of the image on the retina of the largest 
 object that can be seen at all clearly at one time with- 
 
THE INVERTED IMAGE 49 
 
 out moving the eye or the object is probably not 
 greater than three miUimcters. 
 
 Conversely, the field of vision — of clear vision — 
 with an immovable eye is extremely limited. At 
 the length of the arm a circle the size of the thumb- 
 nail represents all that can be seen clearly, and it is 
 only by rapid excursions that the eye sees in detail 
 those portions that were only outhncd before.' The 
 field of vision has been compared to a painting which 
 is hazy and indistinct except a circle one-half inch 
 in diameter, in which the most minute details are 
 worked out. This small area may be any portion of 
 the picture which is desired, by turning the eye 
 toward that spot, but no two places at once. It is 
 hard to beheve this, for the eye, by rapid excursions, 
 so quickly covers a large field that the separate sen- 
 sations are fused into one. 
 
 Now, the analogy and bearing of this is important 
 when it is understood that we do not see even this 
 one-half inch object as a whole. Each mathematical 
 point of which the object is composed sends out its 
 bundle of rays, which are again converged to a point 
 upon the retina, and from this irritation conveyed to 
 
 1 According to Suter: " Refraction and Motility of the Eye," 
 page 142. "The fovea centralis, upon which falls the image of 
 every object attracting mental attention, does not exceed 0.4 
 mm. in diameter." Taking the distance of the nodal point in 
 front of the retina to be 15 mm. (Dennett), by a very simple 
 problem of similar triangles, it is demonstrable that, at a dis- 
 tance of one-half meter, an object to be discerned with normal 
 acuity cannot exceed 13.5-t- mm. in diameter. 
 
50 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 the brain sensation (sight) results, which refers the 
 irritant right back along the ray-line of each pencil 
 to its source. So point after point irritates the retina, 
 and is referred to its appropriate place in space until 
 the luminous object is reproduced in the external 
 world by the outward projection of an infinite num- 
 ber of luminous points. 
 
 To make this clear, a very simple object should be 
 used; let it be a vertical line. (Fig. 4.) Now a lumi- 
 
 c 
 Fig. 4. — The Outward Projection of the Retinal Image. 
 
 nous point at the top of this line produces an irritant 
 point at the lower side of the retina, which is referred 
 back to its source above and seen there in space. 
 
 A luminous point at the bottom of this Hne pro- 
 duces an irritant point on the upper side of the retina, 
 and is referred back to its position in space, which is 
 below. A point from the center is referred back to 
 its place in the centre for the same reason. And so 
 vdth a point midway from the center to the top, and a 
 point midway from the center to the bottom ; and the 
 process goes on simultaneously for each point of 
 which the Hne is composed, and a sort of mental 
 composite results, which is the exact counterpart of 
 the object, occupying the identical position in space ; 
 
THE INVERTED IMAGE 5 I 
 
 somewhat as a spiritual body is conceived to be im- 
 manent in the natural body. 
 
 The soHd lines represent the pencils of rays, the 
 broken lines the axial rays of each pencil, showing 
 the direction of the outward reference of the three 
 irritant points illustrated. 
 
 To recapitulate: By the law of conjugate foci, a 
 luminous point in space corresponds to an irritant 
 point on the retina. By the law of outward projec- 
 tion it is referred to its proper place in the object, and, 
 as the object is not seen as a whole, an infinite num- 
 ber of such luminous points of which the object is 
 composed are referred to their respective positions, 
 and furnish a synthetic conception, which must be 
 erect because each of its constituent points is in its 
 place. 
 
 Since Newton, scientists have recognized that for 
 one body to act upon another at a distance, some 
 medium must intervene. So vrith sight, the pro- 
 visional ether is that intermediate something which 
 reaches from the lumJnous point and " touches " the 
 retina. The unhmited extent of the ether gives 
 to sight unlimited range, and, altho light travels 
 186,000 miles per second, it takes three and 
 a half years for Hght to reach us from the nearest 
 star. 
 
 Professor Dolbear says : " The light which reaches 
 us to-day from some of the more distant stars 
 left them before America was discovered ; before 
 Jesus was bom; before the pyramids were built, 
 
52 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 and, for all we should be ab]e to see, they may 
 have ceased to exist long ago, tho their hght still 
 shines." ^ 
 
 While this work was in press there appeared in 
 Current Literature, September, 1906, an article en- 
 titled " A New Theory of Vision." This was a quo- 
 tation from Cosmos, Paris, of the work of Mr. George 
 Poullaine, who claimed to have discovered " a loop 
 or twist in the optic nerve." The twist is in the pro- 
 tuberance of the outer and posterior parts of the 
 optical layer of the brain. " The pecuHar conforma- 
 tion explains," says Cosmos, " the reinversion of the 
 retinal image. 
 
 " The optic nerves, after emerging from the eye- 
 balls, converge to the optic chiasma. Here they 
 partly cross, or seem to exchange part of their fibers. 
 The two nerve bundles thus modified separate and 
 pass around the peduncles. In this part of their 
 course they are known as the optical bands or Gas- 
 set's hemopic nerves, 
 
 " These bands enter the brain. Their fibers can 
 be traced in the pulvinar, where they describe con- 
 centric curves. They can be traced also in other 
 portions of the optical layer, where they are known 
 as Gratiolet's optic rays. 
 
 " In order to more correctly ascertain the paths of 
 the fibers, Poullaine studied and measured sections 
 of the loop made by a horizontal plane and by two 
 vertical planes, anterior, posterior, and transverse. 
 
 * Matter, Ether, and Motion. 
 
THE INVERTED IMAGE 53 
 
 . . . The theory," according to Cosmos, " makes it 
 easy to understand the mechanism of the reinversion 
 of the retinal image. The double curve efifects a 
 complete reversal of the order of the nerve fibers 
 both from top to bottom and from right to left, the 
 two half-turns being exactly equivalent to a half- 
 twist or rotation thru i8o degrees about the axis of 
 the bundle." 
 
 Individual anatomical variations of all parts of 
 the human body are frequently discovered by sur- 
 geons. The location and number of the branches 
 of the arteries, veins, and nerves are not the 
 same in different individuals. Is it reasonable to 
 presume that the optic nerves are an exception to 
 this rule? If not, then there are many people 
 whose optic nerves do not twist the exact i8o degrees 
 required. 
 
 If erect vision depends upon this condition, it is evi- 
 dent that a faulty or anomalous development would 
 furnish instances of partial or complete inverted 
 vision. Very many cases of this kind are needed to 
 substantiate this very ingenious theory, and none are 
 given. Moreover, the theory is based on the mis- 
 conception that we see the image, not on the retina, 
 as the tactile reinversion theory presumes, but at some 
 other portion of the cranium. In a very recent work 
 Doctor Souter says : " It is apparent that the retinal 
 image is always inverted with respect to the object 
 of vision. The mind, however, takes no cognizance 
 of this inversion, since it possesses the power 0} exter- 
 
54 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 not projection so that we see not the image but the 
 object in its true position." ' 
 
 Then the writer proceeds to repeat the old argu- 
 ment of tactile reinversion as follows : " This power 
 has doubtless been derived thru association with the 
 sense of touch. We have learned that a stimulus 
 conveyed to the brain from the upper part of the 
 retina proceeds from an object situated below the eye, 
 and vice versa, and that a stimulus on the temporal 
 side of the retina must proceed from an object on the 
 nasal side of the eye, and vice versa." 
 
 » The Eye and Nervous System. Posey and Spiller. Lippin- 
 cott, April, 1906, p. 35. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 SUMMARY 
 
 The blind spots ; the two optic discs. — Retinal shadows : erect, 
 because cast by objects too near the eye to form image on 
 retina; outward projection of, produces inverted image. — 
 Outward reference of tactile sense ; flexible cane. — Monocu- 
 lar estimation of distance. — Difficult without parallax. — Law 
 of corresponding points. — Each ganglion cell two neurons, 
 divide for both retinas. — Orientation, with prism. — Diplopia : 
 
 — physiological at distances farther or nearer than point fixed. 
 
 — Analogy of digital tactile sense. — Binocular estimation of 
 distance. — Fusing successive double images. — Coordina- 
 tion of convergence and accommodation. — Stereoscopic per- 
 spective. — Pictures correspond to right and left retinal 
 images. — Convergence required to fuse, determines distance ; 
 convergence excessive, nearness ; convergence slight, distance. 
 
 — May overcome mathematical perspective. — Binocular vis- 
 ion an acquired faculty. — Fusion training. — The amblyo- 
 scope. — Phoro-optometer stereoscope. — Controlled reading. 
 
 THE BLIND SPOTS 
 
 Each optic disc, which is the head of the nerve, 
 is a blind spot, but the fact escapes our attention be- 
 cause ordinarily the image cannot fall on both at the 
 same time, so that one or the other eye can always 
 see every point in the binocular field. Indeed, if 
 only one eye be used, the blind spot is so small and 
 eccentric that it is never noticed. 
 
 To demonstrate in right eye. (Fig. 5.) 
 Close left, hold paper so that 2 is directly in front 
 55 
 
56 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 of and on level with the right, about eight inches 
 away. Fix the sight on i and bring the paper slowly 
 
 + 5 
 
 !• 
 
 Fig. 5. — Diagram to Demonstrate the Blind Spot. 
 
 toward face. At about five inches distant 3 disap- 
 pears, reappearing again at about four inches. The 
 figure may be reversed for left eye. 
 
 RETINAL SHADOWS 
 
 Objects too near the eye to be focused on retina 
 cast shadows which are erect, but the outward refer- 
 ence of a direct shadow gives an inverted image in 
 space. 
 
 Demonstration (Fig. 6). — Hold pin, head up, 
 so close to eye that it touches the lashes. A visiting- 
 
 FiG. 6. — The Inverted Retinal Shadow. 
 
 card with pinhole perforation is now brought up 
 with hole in fine with head of pin. The object is 
 seen in space beyond the card, that is, the shadow 
 is referred to the place which an object would occupy 
 
PARALLAX 
 
 57 
 
 normally to produce such an image on the retina. 
 This is indicated in figure by broken Hncs. 
 
 Outward reference of tactile sense may be made 
 to extend beyond the finger. 
 
 Demonstration. — With a flexible rattan cane one 
 should feel his way about the room blindfolded. 
 The sense of feehng the point of contact between 
 cane and wall or floor is very vivid. In . 
 the same way the surgeon feels with the 
 point of probe or knife. 
 
 Estimation of distance depends upon 
 the refinement of muscle sense. It is 
 both monocular and binocular. That 
 this is not a congenital faculty is illus- 
 trated by the child reaching for the 
 moon. 
 
 When Doctor 
 Sidis' patient, Mr. 
 Hanna previously 
 referred to, first 
 opened his eyes, 
 " a great fiat pic- 
 ture was before 
 him." Objects were seen in their proper direction, 
 but he could not distinguish between far and near. 
 
 To illustrate our dependence on parallax, with one 
 eye closed, attempt to bring the finger down on the 
 point of a pencil held by another. If this is held against 
 a side wall the parallax makes the estimation easy. 
 
 Let A (Fig. 7) be the pencil. We learn by expe- 
 
 FiG. 7. — Monocular Estimation 
 OF Distance by Parallax. 
 
58 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 rience just how much contraction of the muscle M 
 is required to turn the eye so as to " fix" i, 2, and 
 3, respectively, and so determine distance by this 
 muscle sense. 
 
 A good method of eliminating parallax is to look 
 at a coin on a table with the eye a Httle below the 
 level of the table, so that the edge of table and coin 
 are visible, but not the top of table. (Fig. 8.) As 
 before, the other eye must be closed and the coin 
 
 'MSMmm 
 
 Fig. 8. — Diagram to Illustrate Difficulty of Esti- 
 mating Distance without Parallax. 
 
 must be placed by another person after the eye 
 has taken the correct position. Several trials will 
 be necessary to bring the finger down on the coin. 
 
 Binocular single vision depends upon the law 
 that images falling on identical portions of the two 
 retinae cause the sensation of one object. 
 
 This is because each ganglion cell has two neurons 
 which run together in the optic tracts, but part 
 company at the chiasm, one going to the outer half 
 of the retina of the same side and the other crossing 
 over to the inner half of the retina of the other 
 eye. (Fig. 9.) 
 
 Pathology furnishes additional proof of this, in 
 cases of hemianopsia or one-sided bhndness. Here 
 
BINOCULAR VISION 
 
 59 
 
 a lesion of the right optic tract will cause loss of the 
 left field of both eyes. 
 Orientation. — If a prism of six diopters be held 
 
 UuESJoH 
 
 Fig. 9. 
 
 ■ The Partial Crossing of the Fibers of the 
 Optic Nerves. 
 
 base down before one eye, diplopia results, because 
 the prism deflects the light from the object to some 
 other than the corresponding point. 
 
 Fig. 10. — False Orientation Produced by Prism. 
 
 The image will fall on the lower part of the retina, 
 and the object will be referred to a point above, which 
 would normally excite that portion of the retina. 
 This is called false orientation, and is exactly what 
 happens when the inferior rectus is paralyzed, and 
 
6o PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 the resulting diplopia produces false orientation. 
 The patient has a false idea of his own position in 
 space with relation to other objects. 
 
 It is difficult to realize that objects farther or 
 nearer than the objects looked at are always seen 
 double. For example, if the eyes fix a point (A, 
 Fig. ii) the images A' A' fall on corresponding points 
 
 Fig. II. — Physiological Diplopia of Objects Farther 
 OR Nearer than the Point Fixed. 
 
 which^are end organs corresponding to a pair of 
 neurons, therefore a single impression is the result. 
 
 Light from B falls upon end organs belonging 
 to neurons not pairs from the same ganglion cell. 
 In fact, in this illustration they may belong to 
 opposite tracts. The result is two images of B, B'B'. 
 
 Demonstration. — Most people find it difficult to 
 see the double images of a single object like a pencil. 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL DIPLOPIA 6 1 
 
 Look at some object on the opposite side of the 
 room, and bring up the two index fingers into the 
 line of vision. Keep the eyes focused on the wall, 
 but notice the fingers. Separate the fingers shghtly 
 and a double-ended finger will appear between the 
 other two. This is the composite of the extra image 
 seen by each eye. 
 
 Touch perception may be doubled in a similar 
 way. Cross the second finger over the index finger, 
 and then feel of one marble held in another person's 
 hand. A sensation is felt on the side of each finger 
 which normally would necessitate two marbles, and 
 the doubHng sensation is very vivid. 
 
 The estimation of distance with the two eyes 
 is very much more exact than with one. To avoid 
 diplopia we converge the eyes till the retinal images 
 fall on corresponding points. The nearer the object 
 the greater must be the convergence. 
 
 By muscle sense we associate far and near vdth 
 relatively slight or great convergence. 
 
 This arrangement is quite similar to a problem 
 in surveying, where we have given two angles and 
 included side to solve the triangle. 
 
 Let A B (Fig. 12), the pupilary distance = the 
 base line. Angles A and B = amounts the muscles 
 (M M) must converge the eyes, in order to see C 
 as a single object. 
 
 If the object has three dimensions, each eye sees 
 a different picture. 
 
 Stereoscopic pictures are right and left like the 
 
62 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 retinal images, and when artificially combined by 
 the proper arrangement of lenses and prisms repro- 
 duce for us the perception of distance in a landscape 
 
 Fig. 12. — The Binocular Estimation of Distance. 
 
 with great vividness. After some practise one can 
 manipulate his eyes so as to combine these pictures 
 without a stereoscope. It requires </z5sociation of 
 accommodation and convergence, and as the normal 
 relation of these two functions is association, it is 
 much better to use the stereoscope than to cultivate 
 this habit. 
 
 In this figure (Fig. 13) the smaller circles are 
 decentered toward each other, so in order to fuse 
 these two into one, the eyes must be more strongly 
 converged than is necessary to fuse the larger circles. 
 The sensation is therefore a conic section with the 
 smaller end toward the observer. 
 
BINOCULAR PERSPECTIVE 63 
 
 Decenter the small circles the other way (Fig, 14) 
 and we reverse the position of the cone. 
 
 It has been shown by Worth,' of London, that 
 
 Fig. 13. — Diagram to Demonstrate Binocular Per- 
 spective; THE Smaller End Should Appear to Be 
 toward the Observer. 
 
 the movements of the two eyes are largely controlled 
 by a fusion sense, and that a faulty development 
 of this faculty is frequently the cause of cross eyes. 
 If taken early many of these cases can be cured 
 without operation by developing the fusion faculty. 
 For this purpose he has devised an instrument 
 called the amblyoscope, with which even a cross- 
 
 FiG. 14. — Diagram to Demonstrate Binocular Per- 
 spective; THE Larger End Should Appear to Be 
 toward the Observer. 
 
 eyed person can fuse simple images. This he carmot 
 do with the ordinary stereoscope. 
 
 This instrument does not allow of one's watching 
 the eyes while they are being exercised. In order 
 
 ' Squint : Its Causes, Pathology, and Treatment. 
 
64 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 to observe the motions of the eyes and make it 
 possible to measure exactly the deviation during 
 binocular vision, the author has devised a stereo- 
 scopic attachment to a well-known instrument called 
 the phoro-optometer. With this instrument the 
 strength of the prisms may be varied to suit the 
 individual case. 
 
 Fig. 15. 
 
 Author's Stereoscopic Attachment to the 
 Phoro - optometer. 
 
 In order to ensure the use of both eyes for one's 
 reading, writing, etc., and other near work, the 
 author has contrived a control device which consists 
 of a band of blackened aluminum, held by a head- 
 band midway between the eyes and the printed page. 
 The fields seen by the two eyes overlap, and if 
 binocular vision exists one experiences no difficulty 
 in reading thru the obstruction, but if either eye is 
 
LE CONTE 65 
 
 suppressed the band obscures some of the letters 
 in each line. 
 
 Without entering into a discussion of the peculiar 
 mental condition which causes a cross-eyed person 
 to suppress the image seen by the squinting eye, 
 the fact is here mentioned as an illustration of the 
 intimate relation between psychology and medicine. 
 
 Le Conte says : " As a means of scientific culture 
 the study of vision seems to me almost exceptional. 
 It makes use of and thus connects the sciences of 
 physics, physiology, and even psychology. It makes 
 the cultivation of the habit of observation and ex- 
 periment possible to all; for the greatest variety of 
 experiments may be made without expensive appara- 
 tus, or indeed apparatus of any kind. And, above 
 all, it compels one to analyze the complex phenomena 
 of sense in his own person, and is thus a truly 
 admirable preparation for the more difficult task 
 of analysis of those still higher and more complex 
 phenomena which arc embraced in the science of 
 psychology." * 
 
 • Sight, p. 4. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 SUMMARY 
 
 Hypnotism. — Historical. — Neuro - hypnotism. — Nerve sleep, 
 so called by Braid, 1843. — Phenomena are as old as civiliza- 
 tion. — Early religions show many instances. — Evident in 
 religious fanaticism of to-day. — Mesmer. — •' De Planetarium 
 Influxa," 1776. — The action and virtue of animal magnetism. 
 
 — The Paris establishment ; mystery. — Investigation by 
 Academy of Sciences : " Not worthy of further scientific in- 
 vestigation." — Second investigation of mesmerism. — Eliot- 
 son, 1837, University Hosp., London. — Resignation and pub- 
 lication of journal. — Esdaile, 1845, I»dia. — Painless surgery. 
 
 — Braid, 1843, " Neurypnology." — Rechristened "Hypnotism." 
 
 — Result of subjective causes. — Liebeault, 1864, Nancy, so- 
 called " school." — Charcot, 1878, Salpetriere school. — Soci- 
 ety for Psychic Research, 1882, International. — Bramwell, 
 England, best living exponent. — Quackenboss, New York, 
 moral reformation. — Morton Prince, Boston, multiple person- 
 alities. — Petersen, Boston, translator of Wetterstrand. — 
 Sidis, Brookline, " Psychology of Suggestion,"' " Psycho-patho- 
 logical Researches," "Multiple PersonaHty." — Methods of 
 hypnotizing. — Physical means not essential but useful. — 
 Patient should be told what to expect. — Narcotics and anes- 
 thetics. — Susceptibility, almost universal. — Well-balanced 
 individuals best subjects. — Hysterical and weak-willed diffi- 
 cult, — Hypnotism a physiological function. 
 
 HYPNOTISM — HISTORICAL 
 
 Hypnotism is a contraction of the term neuro- 
 hypnotism (nerve sleep), coined by Dr. James 
 66 
 
HYPNOTISM — HISTORICAL 67 
 
 Braid, of Manchester, Eng., 1843, to cover certain 
 psychic phenomena, which under varied forms and 
 names are as old as civiUzation. The well-known 
 power of the snake to " charm " the bird while he 
 approaches his prey, would suggest that it even 
 antedates the evolution of man. 
 
 The early history of all reUgions is to such an 
 extent a record of trances, ecstasies, and visions of 
 their votaries that we must believe that these now 
 comparatively unusual manifestations were, in the 
 childhood of the race, of rather common occurrence. 
 The priests of all ancient peoples have exercised 
 these arts, and no doubt owed their unUmited power 
 over the common herd to their knowledge of this 
 mysterious force. This was not limited to any one 
 nation, as it was practised by the Chaldeans, Babylo- 
 nians, Persians, and Egyptians. 
 
 Aristides, a Grecian who lived about 120 A. d., 
 has left a description of a disordered mental state, 
 which possessed him for thirteen years, which was 
 probably a form of auto-hypnosis. The lives of 
 Christian saints furnish many instances. 
 
 Even to-day the power to " throw a fit " is in 
 some communities regarded as a manifestation of 
 divine approval. Besides the religious element 
 there was in all this a therapeutic power; wonderful 
 cures were effected in and by the person thus tal- 
 ented. 
 
 The first important effort at therapeutics without 
 theology was the appearance of Mesmer. He was 
 
6S PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 a German physician, and in 1766 published a book 
 entitled " De Planetarium Influxa," giving an 
 account of his discoveries in animal magnetism. 
 This, to use his own words, is " a fluid universally 
 diffused, the medium of mutual influence between 
 the heavenly bodies. There are observed, partic- 
 ularly in the human body, properties similar to 
 those of a magnet. . . . The action and virtues of 
 animal magnetism may be communicated from one 
 body to another. Animal magnetism is capable 
 of healing diseases of the nerves immediately and 
 others mediately. It perfects the action of medicines. 
 In animal magnetism nature presents a universal 
 method of heahng and preserving mankind." ' 
 
 Mesmer was at this time thirty-three years old 
 and had studied medicine under the best men at 
 Vienna. His behef in astrology was not then incon- 
 sistent with a man of parts. He treated the sick 
 by stroking them with magnets, evidently supposing 
 that in this way he transferred some of the " mag- 
 netism " of the heavenly body to the human body. 
 
 By this means the patient became cataleptic or 
 hysterical, or fainted, probably depending on his 
 idiosyncrasy. Whichever state was manifested, 
 curative results followed. In 1776 he met in Switzer- 
 land a priest named Gassner, who effected cures by 
 manipulations (laying on of hands) without the use 
 of magnets. So Uke a true scientist, Mesmer dis- 
 carded the magnets. 
 
 ' Encyclopedia Britannica. J. G. M. 
 
HYPNOTISM - HISTORICAL 69 
 
 Two years later he opened an establishment in 
 Paris for treating patients, and achieved such great 
 success as to arouse the envy of the medical frater- 
 nity. They regarded him as a charlatan, and his 
 method of conducting his stances would seem to us 
 to-day to justify the charge. 
 
 " Appreciating the effects of mysterious surround- 
 ing on the imagination of his patient, he had his 
 consulting- rooms dimly lighted and hung with 
 mirrors; strains of soft music occasionally broke 
 the profound silence; odors were wafted through 
 the room ; and the patients sat around a kind of vat 
 in which various chemical ingredients were con- 
 cocted or simmered over a fire. Holding each other's 
 hands or joined by cords, the patients sat in ex- 
 pectancy, and then Mesmer, clothed as a magician, 
 ghded amongst them, affecting this one by a touch, 
 another by a look, and making passes with his hands 
 toward a third. The effects were various, but all 
 were held to be salutary."^ 
 
 Notwithstanding all this " machinery," we may, 
 I think, believe in his honesty of purpose, for, at 
 his own request, the Academy of Sciences appointed 
 a committee to investigate his claims. Benjamin 
 Franklin was a member of this committee, which 
 reported that the cures were genuine, but that the 
 effects were due to the imagination of the patient, 
 and that the subject was not worthy of further 
 scientific investigation. 
 
 ' Encyclopedia Britannica. J. G. M. 
 
70 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 We are amused to-day at the dictum of these men 
 that a system of therapeutics which they admitted 
 made genuine cures was not worthy of further 
 scientific investigation. 
 
 Let us take heed that we fall not into a similar 
 blunder concerning some of " irregular " mental 
 cures of our own times. The physician has no right 
 to neglect any ism or pathy that he admits is 
 curative. 
 
 Whether from this adverse report or from increas- 
 ing extravagance of mysticism, mesmerism, as it 
 was then called, fell into disrepute, and Mesmer 
 went to Switzerland, where he died 1815. One of 
 his disciples who remained in Paris attempted to 
 divest it of the marvelous, but met with httle prac- 
 tical success, and it was not until ten years after 
 Mesmer's death that it came again into prominence, 
 and another investigation followed by the Academy 
 of Sciences. 
 
 After six years' labor, the committee reported con- 
 firming the therapeutic value, but a majority of the 
 Academicians wanted an adverse report, and another 
 committee was appointed properly " instructed." 
 Two subjects were examined and no results obtained. 
 
 This negative result satisfied the majority of the 
 scientific men that the positive results of the earlier 
 committee were untrue, and it became more unpopu- 
 lar than ever to be known as interested in this sub- 
 ject. The very name mesmerism was an offence to 
 medicine. 
 
HYPNO TISM — HISTORICAL 7 1 
 
 But the influence of Mesmer was far-reaching. 
 In 1837 in England appeared a doughty champion 
 in the person of Dr. John Eliotson, p rofessor of prac- 
 tise^of medicine/ University Colle ge, London . ~ His 
 demonstrations in the hospital wards became very 
 popular with the students, but the dean advised him 
 to desist. This he refused to do, and a year later the 
 council of the university passed a resolution forbid- 
 ding the " jgractise of mesmerism or animal magnet- 
 ism/' This naturally caused his resignation. But 
 Eliotson's influence was made greater than ever by 
 the pubhcation of a journal " for the collection and 
 diffusion of information connected with cerebral 
 physiology and mesmerism." This appeared as a 
 quarterly for twelve years. The contributions were 
 from Eliotson and others, and reports of their work 
 were thus put on record. 
 
 .^csthcsia was the one phase now emphasized, 
 and thus surgery, even capital operations, wa5_r_en- 
 dered painless. This was before the discovery of 
 chloroform and ether, and when we remember the 
 description of surgical operations without anesthetics, 
 it would seem as if the demonstrated possibDities of 
 mesmerism would have been hailed with delight by 
 the profession. Bitter editorials appeared in the 
 Lancet, claiming that the subjects who said they 
 felt no pain were impostors or persons naturally in- 
 sensible to pain. Eliotson was a man of advanced 
 ideas in many other directions, especially in the use 
 of the stethoscope and posology. 
 
^/ 
 
 72 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 Dr. James Esdaile, an English surgeon in the In- 
 diaiTservTce^Raving read Eliotson's journal, in 1845 
 mesmerized a patient before operating for hydrocele, 
 and as the operation was entirely painless he adopted 
 it as a routine measure, doing over one hundred pain- 
 less operations during the year,^ 
 
 A committee of investigation, appointed by the 
 governor, made such a favorable report that Esdaile 
 was put in charge of a small hospital in Calcutta for 
 further experiment and demonstration. Here his 
 work was equally successful, but the medical pro- 
 fession of India denounced him as " an honest fool 
 deluded by his patients," and the medical journals 
 ■^'^ refused to publish any account of his wonderful 
 
 record. 
 
 About this same time, 1843, i^ England, James 
 Braid, of Manchester, published " Ncuiypnology," 
 in which he announced the subjective nature of the 
 phenomena, introducing the term hypnotism,. Prob- 
 ably nothing but the new name gained him a hearing. 
 The scientific method was coming into vogue, and 
 Braid applied it here. He discovered that t he sta te 
 could be induced by fixed gaze, and contended that' 
 animal magnetism had nothing to do with it: '^ 
 
 He beheved it the result of physical causes. His 
 belief in phrenology led him to think that pressure 
 on certain portions of the skull would produce special 
 phenomena. His advocacy of the physical cause re- 
 instated the subject as " worthy of further scientific 
 investigation." 
 
HYPNOTISM — HISTORICAL 73 
 
 The ultramaterialists of the day felt that since it 
 had a material cause, there was nothing degrading 
 to their intellects in giving it some consideration. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that, at the time, the 
 tremendous power of suggestion had not been recog- 
 nized. Later in life Braid modified this idea of a 
 physical cause, announcing very clearly his beHef 
 in mental concentration or monoideism as the all- 
 important factor, altho he still held that the monoide- 
 ism " depended on a definite physical change in the 
 subject." 
 
 But it must not be supposed that Braid escaped 
 professional persecution and ostracism. He said ; 
 " Like the originators of all new views, however, 
 hypnotism has subjected me to much contention; 
 for the skeptics, from not perceiving the difference 
 between my method and that of the mesmerists, and 
 the Hmited extent of my own pretensions, were equally 
 hostile to hypnotism as they had been to mesmerism ; 
 and the mesmerists, thinking their craft was in dan- 
 ger, — that their mystic idol was threatened to be 
 shorn of some of its glory by the advent of a new rival, 
 — buckled on their armor, and soon proved that the 
 odium mesmericum was as inveterate as the odium 
 iheologicum.'' ' 
 
 Braid w rote extensively and practised special 
 surgery. Some idea of the extent of his work may be 
 gainedjrom the statement that two years before his 
 " Neurypnology " appeared he had operated on 
 
 ' Bramwell : Hypnotism. 
 
74 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 262 cases of clubfoot, and seven hundred cases of 
 _strabismus. "" "^ 
 
 After Braid's death little attention was paid to the 
 subject for twenty years, but this period saw the rise 
 of the Nancy school, which has been the inspiration 
 of most of the later interest in the subject. 
 
 " Good Father Li^ beault," as he was fondly called 
 byhis patients, settl ed in Nancy in 1 864, and soon 
 built uj) a large free cUnic, giving up all remunerative 
 practise. H e had been interested in mesmerism for 
 three or four years. Without _kno:adng oL Braid's 
 work he independently discovered the subjectiv e 
 nature of hypnotism. He discar ded all medicine s 
 and workeH along quietly ^ dealing out therapeutic 
 suggestion with a li beral hand / 
 
 TnT882 jie cured a case of sriatir.?j whirh_ Bemheim 
 had treated in vain with dr ugs for six months.^his 
 converted Bemheim, who became a zealous pupil, 
 and a few years later ptibhs hed " S uggestlyeThera- 
 peuticil !^ 
 
 Altho the Nancy hypnotists disclaim the term 
 " school," as their individual opinions are quite at 
 variance, yet there is among them a consensus of 
 opinion which is opposed to the claims of the Sal- 
 p^tribre school, which was so called from certain 
 dogmatic statements of Charcot, which will be con- 
 sidered later when dealing with " Theories." 
 
 Altho Braid was translated into German in 1881 
 by Preyer, yet i a Engla nd little was heard qj thc^sub- 
 ject. till the formation in 1882 of the Society for 
 
H YPNO TISM — HISTORICAL 7 5 
 
 Psychic Research. This society numbers among its 
 members many of the most eminent scientific men, 
 both in this country and in Europe. The reports 
 of hypnotic investigations have appeared from time 
 to time in its " Proceedings." Among these none 
 has been as clear-cut and convincing as the con- 
 tributions of Bramwell, who has given us the re- 
 suhs of his labors in his recent treatise, to which I 
 am indebted for many of the facts of this brief his- 
 tory. 
 
 Besides the public^__exhibitions, little has been 
 done in this country in the legitimate practise of 
 hypno tism. Doctor Quackenboss, of New York, 
 has written, lectured, and practised. 
 
 His practise has been largely in the line of moral 
 reform, and he is accompHshing a noble work. He 
 will be referred to again under " Methods of Induc- 
 tion." 
 
 In our own city (Boston) some of the names one 
 frequently hears mentioned as interested in this 
 subject are Dr. Morton Prince, professor of dis- 
 eases of the nervous system. Tufts College Medi- 
 cal School; Dr. Boris Sidis, formerly director of 
 the New York Pathological Institute; Dr. Henrik 
 G. Petersen, the translator of Wetterstrand ; Prof. 
 Hugo Munsterberg, of Harvard University, and 
 Dr. James J. Putnam, of Harvard Medical School. 
 
 Doctor Prince has written quite extensively for the 
 Psychic Research Society and medical journals. His 
 "Dissociation of a Personahty" is a most exhaustive 
 
76 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 Study of what he beheves are several different person- 
 alities occupying one body. 
 
 Doctor Sidis' most important contributions to 
 the subject are the following books: " Psychology 
 of Suggestion," " Psycho-pathology," " Multiple 
 Personality." 
 
 METHODS 
 
 The methods of inducing hypnosis have been as 
 varied as the theories concerning it. 
 
 It has gradually developed that magnets, relics, 
 and paraphemaha are superfluous. Even fixed 
 gaze is not essential, as Braid discovered by success- 
 fully hypnotizing a bhnd patient. Physical methods 
 are entirely unnecessary, and possess no virtue in 
 themselves, but are a powerful means of making in- 
 J (direct suggestions. The patient comes to the hypno- 
 ^(iizer with an unknown quantity of preconceived 
 ideas, among which are sure to be the efficacy of 
 passes and fixed gaze, so that all operators have 
 found it expedient to use physical methods in con- 
 junction with verbal suggestions. It is always ad- 
 visable to begin with some explanation of what is 
 expected. The patient should be assured that the 
 sensation vdll be agreeable and that success will be 
 in proportion to his ability to cooperate. 
 
 The eyes may be closed and the idea of sleep sug- 
 gested. This idea is more readily accepted if the 
 patient be put in a comfortable position with the 
 head resting. The patient should be told to think 
 only of sleep, and this idea should be repeated suf- 
 
HYPNO TISM — METHODS 7 7 
 
 ficiently often to secure his attention. He should be 
 told to breathe regularly and deeply, and that his lids 
 are getting heavy and that he is drowsy. Gradually 
 the strength of the suggestion should be increased 
 till the lids cannot be opened. 
 
 The patient is still conscious of all that is transpir- 
 ing, but his lids are firmly closed. Catalepsy in the 
 most awkward positions is now easily secured, by 
 stroking the part and suggesting increasing stiffness. 
 Anesthesia is also easily produced. In fact, all that 
 follows is as the operator directs, provided that the 
 subject be sufficiently suggestible. 
 
 The superficial stages are easily obtained with the 
 majority of people, but trance and somnambulism 
 are obtainable only vdth a few. 
 
 Before hypnotizing it is well to suggest that it vdll 
 be a pleasant experience, and as soon as one gets 
 control of the eyes, to say with decision : " No one 
 shall ever be able to hypnotize you against your 
 wishes, or except for your good, or no one but your 
 physician," and before waking, suggest that an agree- 
 able feeling will be experienced hke waking from a 
 refreshing sleep. 
 
 Fixed gaze on some bright object like a coin held 
 above the eyes is also a very common method. This 
 serves to fatigue the muscles that raise the eyes and 
 hastens the result. The subject should not be awak- 
 ened suddenly, but told that he will awake after you 
 have counted ten. This is more like the normal 
 waking from sleep. The operator should conduct 
 
78 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 himself in a perfectly natural, matter-of-fact manner. 
 While an ignorant subject may be sometimes over- 
 awed by Svengah attitudes, your inteUigent patient 
 will be disgusted, and you will forfeit his respect and 
 confidence. PubKc hypnotists often assume these 
 airs of his Satanic majesty. Perhaps this is not so 
 much to impress the patient as a play to the gallery. 
 One should not feel nor exhibit any discourage- 
 ment if the first attempt be unsuccessful. Infinite 
 patience may be required, as success may crown one's 
 efforts after fifty failures. In obstinate cases it may 
 be necessary to resort to mild anesthesia. Some 
 operators administer a hypnotic drug to induce 
 drowsiness. Doctor Quackenboss informs me that 
 he invariably commences with a dose of paraldehyde. 
 There is no way of determining susceptibihty except 
 the initial effort. 
 
 SUSCEPTIBILITY 
 
 The late Doctor Charcot claimed that hypnosis 
 is a morbid condition, which can be induced only in 
 the hysterical. The insufhciency of the data upon 
 which this statement rests must be apparent from 
 the admission that " only a dozen cases of true hypno- 
 sis have occurred in Salpetriere in ten years, and that 
 a very large proportion of the experiments were con- 
 ducted on one subject, who had long been an inmate 
 of that hospital." 
 
 The fact is just the reverse: hysterical subjects 
 are very difficult to hypnotize. Hypnosis is a physio- 
 
HYPNOTISM — SUSCEPTIBILITY 79 
 
 logical function. " Some years ago Bernheim had 
 already attempted to hypnotize ten thousand hospi- 
 tal patients with over ninety per cent, of successes, 
 while Wetterstrand recently reported 6,500 cases 
 with 105 failures. International statistics published 
 in 1892 gave 8,500 cases, from fifteen observers in dif- 
 ferent countries, with six per cent, oj failures. 
 
 " Mr. Wingfield, demonstrator of physiology at 
 Cambridge, Eng,, attempted to hypnotize 170 indi- 
 viduals, all but eighteen being undergraduates. In 
 eighty per cent, hypnosis was induced at the first 
 attempt, but as no second trial was made with the 
 unsuccessful cases, these results undoubtedly under- 
 state the susceptibihty. Lidbeault found soldiers 
 and sailors particularly easy to influence. 
 
 " Grossman, of BerUn, recently asserted that the 
 hard-headed North Germans were almost univer- 
 sally susceptible. Bramwell, of England, observed 
 that healthy Yorkshire farm laborers made remark- 
 ably good subjects. 
 
 " Professor Forel hypnotized nearly all his asylum 
 warders. He states that he himself selected these 
 men for this important position, and that he did not 
 choose them from the ranks of the hysterical. Forel 
 claims that every mentally healthy man is naturally 
 hypnotizable." ' 
 
 Moll says : "If we take a pathological condition 
 of the organism as necessary to hypnosis, we shall be 
 obliged to conclude that nearly everybody is not 
 
 ' Bramwell : Hypnotism. 
 
8o PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 quite right in his head. The mentally unsound, 
 particularly idiots, are much more difficult to hypno- 
 tize than the healthy. InteUigent people and those 
 with strong wills are more easily hypnotizable than 
 the dull, the stupid, or the weak-willed." ' 
 
 ' Bramwell : Hypnotism. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 SUMMARY 
 
 Hypnosis. — Phenomena. — Classification, difficult and somewhat 
 arbitrary. — Mild, catalepsy, conclusive evidence of hypnosis. 
 — Deep, somnambulism, hallucinations accepted. — Catalepsy 
 unwise to exceed at first attempt ; sufficient for slight analge- 
 sia ; sufficient for therapeutic suggestions. — Anesthesia not 
 practicable for general surgery, because not absolute in more 
 than ten per cent. — Character and frequency of pulse may 
 be controlled. — Suggestibility increased, raise of threshold. — 
 Amnesia the rule, but subject to suggestion. — The alert 
 stage, seemingly inconsistent with sleep. — Hallucinations : 
 positive, negative ; en rapport with operator, but others may 
 be introduced. — Subject reasons deductively, but not induct- 
 ively. — Post-hypnotic suggestions ; appreciation of time. — 
 Automatism, not absolute, subject may refuse harmless sug- 
 gestion. — Criminal suggestions, popular literature responsible 
 for belief in ; mistaken deductions from paper dagger experi- 
 ment. — Refinement of moral sense. — The higher self : avoid 
 being deceived. — Precautions in conducting experiments : 
 avoid self-deception. 
 
 The hypnotic state varies in intensity in different 
 individuals, or in the same individual at different 
 times, from a slight drowsiness to almost complete 
 coma. Many attempts have been made to classify 
 these stages by the phenomena exhibited, but it 
 should be understood that these are but arbitrary 
 divisions. 
 
 Drowsiness, being almost wholly a subjective symp- 
 
 8i 
 
82 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 torn, can hardly be considered hypnosis. Until cata- 
 lepsy is produced the patient is not hypnotized. 
 Inability to open the eyes is a catalepsy of the orbic- 
 ularis muscle. After this, rigidity of legs or arms 
 in awkward positions follows the suggestion of the 
 operator. The patient may be perfectly conscious, 
 indeed may really be amused at his helplessness. 
 While many other phases may now appear, yet for 
 purposes of definition, the cataleptic stage signifies a 
 certain well-recognized condition. 
 
 With certain restrictions, which will be fully consid- 
 ered later when speaking of automatism, the suc- 
 ceeding manifestations appear as suggested. Som- 
 nambulism has come by general consent to mean a 
 state in which hallucinations are accepted, of which 
 the patient has no recollection on waking. When 
 this stage is reached analgesia and anesthesia are 
 easily effected, and the patient is sure to be en rap- 
 port with the operator. He is oblivious to all other 
 persons until they are introduced to him. 
 
 It is therefore well to keep clearly in mind these 
 two stages, catalepsy and somnambulism, as distin- 
 guishing mild and deep hypnosis. 
 
 It is usually unwise to carry the patient deeper 
 than catalepsy at the first sitting, as there is some- 
 thing uncanny in feehng one's self in the power of 
 another. As a matter of fact, unless the person has 
 considerable knowledge of the subject, most opera- 
 tors simply talk to him for the first visit, explaining 
 what is to be expected. He may be asked to close his 
 
HYPNOTISM — PHENOMENA 83 
 
 eyes and put himself in a passive state. He should be 
 assured that suggestibiUty is well-nigh universal in 
 healthy individuals, but that his cooperation is abso- 
 lutely essential. 
 
 As soon as catalepsy has been secured one should 
 say with some emphasis : " No one shall ever be able 
 to hypnotize you against your will, or except for your 
 good, or no one but your physician." This suggestion 
 is very reassuring. This cataleptic stage is sufficient 
 for giving many therapeutic suggestions, indeed 
 when we treat of this, we shall see that a-hypnotic ^ 
 suggestions are made by many therapeutists, many 
 claiming that the passive state is all that is required. 
 It is surprising how easily analgesia to a pin-prick 
 may be secured. Anesthesia or complete insensi- 
 bihty to contact is not secured short of sonmambu- 
 lism. 
 
 One would hardly hke to depend on the analgesia 
 for surgical purposes short of the somnambulic 
 stage. 
 
 In treating a stricture of the tear duct in a child 
 of twelve years, the probing was so painful that very 
 little progress was made in several visits. Catalepsy 
 with analgesia to the prick of a needle was easily 
 secured. The w^riter then suggested that the probing 
 would not be painful, at the same time massaging 
 over the region of the duct. The child was perfectly 
 conscious, and in response to the question said it 
 did not hurt when the probe was forced thru a tough 
 stricture, opening the duct to the nose. Nevertheless 
 
84 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 altho she maintained it did not hurt, there was evi- 
 dent considerable muscular reaction. 
 
 It will be remembered that Esdaile's use of 
 hypnotism was almost entirely as an analgesic in 
 surgery. He devoted half an hour to the hypnosis 
 as a routine measure, and there can be little doubt 
 that somnambulism was secured. 
 
 Bramwell hypnotizes on several successive days 
 before attempting any very painful operations. He 
 has secured complete anesthesia in only about ten 
 per cent. This uncertainty evidently lessens its 
 \^y value as a general anesthetic, but where it is effective 
 it is devoid of danger, which cannot be said of 
 chloroform and ether. Not only does the patient 
 suffer no pain, but the reflexes are abolished. This 
 is certainly objective proof of anesthesia. 
 
 Analgesia in surgery has been demonstrated over 
 and over again before representative medical soci- 
 eties. At the Boston Homeopathic Medical Society 
 a few years ago Prof. George H. Earl reported a 
 dispensary confinement case, where it became 
 necessary to use forceps with no ether at hand. 
 The patient was hypnotized and the delivery was 
 practically painless. This naturally leads us to 
 inquire why normal childbirth cannot thus be made 
 painless, and Bramwell quotes numerous instances 
 of its successful employment. 
 ^' I have seen no reference to its use preliminary 
 ' to giving an anesthetic. It would seem that it might 
 here be of greatest value, in reassuring the patient 
 
H YPN OS IS - PHENOMENA 8 5 
 
 and controlling the after vomiting. The value of 
 hypnotism in medicine will be considered under 
 " Suggestive Therapeutics." 
 
 The hypnotic control of the pulse has been fre- 
 quently secured by the author. As an example a 
 recent experience may be mentioned. When the 
 subject, a medical student, had reached the somnam- 
 bulic stage another physician was asked to take his 
 pulse, but not to mention the result. It was then 
 suggested that in ten minutes the rate would be in- 
 creased ten beats per minute. The patient was left 
 quietly reclining in an easy chair, no suggestions of 
 an exciting or emotional nature being made. A 
 second count showed the exact increase suggested. 
 It was then suggested that in ten minutes the rate 
 would be ten beats less than at first. The same 
 physician announced the result as seven less. 
 
 Doctor Sidis and others have shown by sphygmo- 
 graphic tracings a marked change in the character 
 of the curve under hypnosis. More interesting 
 perhaps are the results of pneumographic tracings. 
 The increased sensitivity of the hypnotic state is 
 graphically shown by the great variations from the 
 normal tracing caused by stimuli of various kinds. 
 Thus laboratory results confirm the observations 
 that suggestibility is greatly increased. The thera- 
 peutic bearing of this fact will be discussed under 
 " Suggestive Therapeutics." 
 
 The transition to the alert stage seems somewhat 
 contradictory. This has always impressed the au- 
 
86 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 thor when telling a subject who has been put into 
 a sound sleep that he can open his eyes and still 
 remain asleep. 
 
 That something of the kind occurs to the subject 
 is often evident from the slight hesitation which he 
 shows. I have frequently said to a patient, " Your 
 sleep is not quite like ordinary sleep because you 
 can open your eyes. You can hear me speak to 
 you, can you not ? " His reply will often show 
 considerable effort and the word " yes " may be 
 whispered. This has been observed so often that 
 one should be suspicious that he is being deceived 
 if the subject should respond in a loud voice at 
 first. 
 
 Hallucinations will now be accepted. These may 
 be either positive or negative. That is, the subject 
 may be told that he is looking at a beautiful land- 
 scape ; this would be a positive hallucination. Or he 
 may be told that the chair which stood in front of 
 him has vanished, that there is no one present in the 
 room; these are negative hallucinations. 
 
 This brings us to the subject of rapport. Before 
 any suggestion of the kind is made the patient 
 appears perfectly oblivious to the presence of all 
 save the operator, and appears not to hear when 
 the operator speaks to others than himself. 
 
 This rapport seems to be a phenomenon of hyp- 
 nosis entirely independent of the suggestion. The 
 operator can, however, introduce an observer either 
 under his true name or fictitiously. 
 
HYPNOSIS - PHENOMENA 8/ 
 
 The deductive nature of the hypnotic state is 
 universally recognized. For example, the subject 
 is told that he is John L. SulUvan, and he imme- 
 diately assumes his idea of the pugilist. 
 
 On one occasion in a public hall the writer saw a 
 washerwoman taken on the stage and told that she 
 was Susan B. Anthony, and informed that she was 
 to address the audience on " Women's Suffrage." 
 In the normal state probably no amount of per- 
 suasion would have induced the woman to say a 
 word in pubhc, and yet she bowed to the audience 
 and made a very good speech. She believed herself 
 to be the person named, and given this premise, 
 deduced a logical sequence. 
 
 Suggestions should be made direct, emphatic, 
 and oft repeated. Sidis has shown this to be in strong 
 contrast to the normal state, in which suggestions 
 are effective in proportion to their indirectness. . 
 For example, if you want your friend to whistle a 
 tune, he would probably refuse your command, but 
 if he be somewhat preoccupied, you pretend your- 
 self the same, but carelessly whistle the tune, and 
 the chances are that your friend will change his 
 tune and whistle yours. 
 
 In like maimer the mental processes differ. The 
 conscious self reasons inductively. He builds up a 
 conclusion by putting together separated and un- 
 related experiences. For example, Newton watching 
 the apple fall conceives that there is a mutual attrac- 
 tion between the earth and the apple, then between 
 
88 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 the earth and the sun, and concludes with a theory 
 of universal gravitation. 
 
 It is claimed that the threshold of sensation is 
 raised by hypnosis, that sight and hearing are more 
 acute. This has not been personally demonstrated. 
 
 Post-hypnotic amnesia usually occurs without sug- 
 gestion, but it can be either increased or dimin- 
 ished, by telhng the patient that he will either 
 remember or forget the events that transpire during 
 his sleep. 
 
 Post-hypnotic suggestion is a very striking phenom- 
 enon. You suggest complete amnesia on waking. 
 Then tell the patient that when you take out your 
 pocket-handkerchief he will immediately get up 
 and leave the room. When he wakes it is well to 
 have one of the observers determine that amnesia 
 is complete. 
 
 No matter what the subject may be doing, when 
 you inadvertently give the signal he responds like 
 a machine, and is entirely ignorant of the cause of 
 his action. On a subsequent hypnosis, however, 
 he would be able to tell you all about it. 
 
 This is the most effective way of reviving sub- 
 conscious memories. Long forgotten happenings 
 of childhood can be brought out. This has been 
 utiUzed in discovering the causes of hallucinations 
 and psychoses. So many experiments in the post- 
 hypnotic appreciation 0} time have been made by 
 many different observers, that we are forced to con- 
 clude that the power greatly transcends that of the 
 
POST -HYPNOTIC PHENOMENA 89 
 
 normal waking consciousness. A very simple way 
 to test this is to suggest that the post-hypnotic 
 suggestion shall be carried out at a certain time, 
 instead of at some stated signal. My own experi- 
 ments in this line have not been very extensive, 
 but sufficient to convince me of the truth of the 
 claim. 
 
 In one instance it was suggested that half an hour 
 after w^aking, the subject, who was one of a company 
 of professional friends, should become aware that 
 his right shoe was hurting him; that it would feel 
 like a stone or nail in his shoe, and that the discom- 
 fort would become so great that he would be com- 
 pelled to take off his shoe and rub his foot. 
 
 After he waked, he remained seated with his back 
 to the clock, and the half-dozen people present were 
 listening to something which I was reading aloud. 
 In exactly twenty-seven minutes, he was seen to 
 look at his foot and move it uneasily in the shoe. 
 The right leg was then raised and thro\Mi across the 
 other and the shoe moved with the hand. In about 
 a minute he interrupted my reading by remarking 
 aloud, " I never knew that shoe to hurt me before." 
 Paying no attention to the remark, I continued 
 reading, when he interrupted again by saying, " I 
 wonder what it is." With some impatience I said, 
 " I wish you would not interrupt me." " I haven't 
 heard a word you have read," was the reply. 
 
 Some one suggested, " Perhaps you have a nail in 
 your shoe." " I don't wear nailed shoes," was the 
 
90 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 impatient reply. At this there was such a general 
 laugh that he said : " Ah, I know, it is a suggestion, 
 you want me to take my shoe off. Well, I won't 
 do it." 
 
 He lighted a fresh cigar and smoked very vigor- 
 ously for a few minutes, but while the company 
 roared with laughter he took off his shoe and rubbed 
 his foot. On being questioned afterward he said 
 that he could have resisted, but he reahzed that he 
 should be uncomfortable till he did it, and there- 
 fore obeyed. 
 
 This absolute obedience has been termed autom- 
 atism, which is a subject demanding careful con- 
 sideration, because of its important bearing on the 
 possibiUty of criminal suggestions. It was formerly 
 beHeved that once the subject succumbed to the 
 operator he became his slave, absolutely unable to 
 refuse any command. This behef is quite univer- 
 sal in the lay mind, and, I am sorry to say, is quite 
 generally shared by the medical profession. 
 
 Bramwell has made most exhaustive experiments 
 on this line, which have, I beUeve, conclusively 
 shown that quite the reverse is true. He has adopted 
 the very rational method of questioning the patient 
 under hypnosis concerning his motives for action 
 and refusing to act. 
 
 In the first place, it should be understood that 
 good subjects frequently refuse suggestions from 
 mere caprice. Numerous instances of this are on 
 record. I do not refer to criminal suggestions, but 
 
POST -HYPNOTIC SUGGESTION 
 
 91 
 
 actions which are absolutely harmless. Bramwell 
 mentions the case of a young girl who had many 
 times carried out post-hypnotic suggestions. On 
 this occasion he directed that on waking she should 
 go to the sideboard and pour for herself a glass of 
 water. Much to his surprise, the suggestion was 
 not carried out. She was rehypnotized and asked 
 why she had refused to obey. She said that she did 
 not feel sufficiently acquainted with him to take such 
 a liberty. 
 
 In my patient the impulse to take off the shoe 
 would undoubtedly have been overcome had there 
 been ladies present. 
 
 At a college society meeting I suggested to one of 
 the company whom I had hypnotized that at a 
 certain signal, after waking, he should go to the 
 punch-bowl and take a drink out of the ladle. He 
 took up the ladle full of punch, raised it as if to 
 drink, then hesitated for several seconds, finally 
 poured it into a glass and drank from it. No com- 
 ment was made, but it was evident that the impro- 
 priety of the act prevented its execution. 
 
 The classic experiment of telling a subject that 
 a lump of sugar is arsenic and that he is to poison 
 his friend has been assumed to prove criminal 
 suggestion. It will usually be carried out. The 
 patient vrill also stab his friend with an imaginary 
 dagger. But further questioning reveals the fact 
 that the subject appreciates the distinction between 
 these experiments and the real things. 
 
92 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 Bramwell tells of an instance of a caretaker who 
 had shown his pluck by shooting at some genuine 
 burglars. He was afterwards hypnotized and was 
 made to beheve that some friends in an adjoining 
 room were breaking and entering. The ball-car- 
 tridges had been secretly replaced by blanks, but he 
 supposed the revolver still loaded. Instead of 
 carrying out the suggestion, he very carefully laid 
 the revolver away. 
 
 Popular literature furnishes innumerable instances 
 of behef in this fallacy. Nearly all hypnotists of 
 the present generation have beheved it till experience 
 has demonstrated the contrary. Bernheim formerly 
 held this view quite strongly, but latterly admits 
 that not more than four or five per cent.of his patients 
 will accept criminal suggestion. Is it unreasonable 
 to suppose that this percentage is normally criminally 
 inclined ? 
 
 As far as I am able to judge, the great majority 
 agree with Bramwell, who says: "I have never 
 seen a suggestion accepted in hypnosis which 
 would have been refused in the normal state. 
 I have frequently noticed increased refinement 
 in hypnosis, subjects have refused suggestions 
 which they would have accepted in the normal 
 condition." 
 
 This may depend on the early education of the 
 subconscious, the development of a finer sensibility 
 than the later volitional years had been able to live 
 up to. Probably all of us have had the experience 
 
CRIMINAL SUGGESTION 93 
 
 of attempting to silence the voice of conscience by 
 reasoning with ourselves that the coveted sin wasn't 
 so bad after all. If one has succeeded in convincing 
 himself in this way, the laying bare of his subcon- 
 scious nobler nature may reveal a higher type of 
 manhood. 
 
 " The question as to whether hypnotism can be 
 successfully employed for criminal purposes must 
 be determined in each individual case by the char- 
 acter of persons engaged in the experiment." " If 
 the subject be a criminal character he might follow 
 the suggestions of a criminal hypnotist and actually 
 perpetrate a crime."' In such a case a resort to 
 hypnotism for criminal purposes would be unneces- 
 sary, except to abohsh fear of detection. The effect 
 upon the will of continued hypnosis is not proved 
 to be detrimental. 
 
 If we accept the statement of Moll, that intel- 
 ligent people and those with strong wills are more 
 easily hypnotizable than the reverse, it would seem 
 that this very strength of will is required to perfectly 
 control one's inhibitory faculties, that extraneous 
 thoughts — other ideas than those suggested — shall 
 be held in abeyance. The proof of this statement 
 is the fact that the good operator, whom it is tacitly 
 assumed must be of strong will, may also be a very 
 good subject. 
 
 Hypnotic experiments should be conducted with 
 great care, to guard against erroneous conclusions. 
 
 " Bramwell : Hypnotism. 
 
94 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 This point is well illustrated by the history of the 
 development of the science. 
 
 One should constantly be on his guard lest he be 
 deceived by the subject pretending influences which 
 are not real. Until one has become somewhat expert, 
 he should never employ a paid subject. It is advis- 
 able to experiment with a small company of friends, 
 assuming the role both of subject and operator. 
 The educational value of being hypnotized has not 
 been properly recognized. In this way you have a 
 practical Imowledge of the phenomena which you 
 witness in your subject. 
 
 Auto-suggestions and preconceived ideas are very 
 important factors in producing unexpected results. 
 The subject is vividly alert not only to the things 
 you say but to your unuttered thoughts. It is not 
 intended by this to claim telepathy, but we all un- 
 consciously disclose our thoughts by gestures and 
 inflections. This is illustrated by the " wiUing 
 game." In this a person is brought into a room 
 blindfolded, it having been arranged that he should 
 find some article. One or two of the company who 
 know what is desired take the " operator " by the 
 hand, and all of the company concentrate their 
 attention on the thing selected. With the attention 
 thus fixed the " guides " unconsciously contract or 
 relax their hand muscles, and really direct the 
 operator to the desired spot. 
 
 This is known as "muscle reading," and often gives 
 surprising results, but it docs not prove telepathy. 
 
H YPN OS IS — PHENOMENA 9 5 
 
 It has been claimed that a hallucination of a coin 
 can be doubled by a prism. With a real object a 
 prism gives diplopia, and a patient who knows this 
 property of a prism would by the deductive process 
 perceive a double hallucination. It is possible to 
 secure the hallucination of two coins without a 
 prism, so we need not invoke the principle of false 
 orientation of a hallucinatory image. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 SUMMARY 
 
 What is hypnotism? — Theories. — 1766, Mesmer, animal mag- 
 netism. — Influence of heavenly bodies. — 1851, Professor 
 Gregory, " Animal Magnetism." — Influence of inanimate 
 bodies. — Confirms Reichenbach's odylic force. — Operator's 
 will sufficient to control subject. — Defends phrenology, but 
 suggestion will produce same results. — 1843-55, Braid, three 
 distinct theories: (i) Physical theory, "hypnotism" manipula- 
 tion of cranium produces characteristic phenomena ; (2) Sub- 
 stitute monoideism for hypnotism, preconceptions of subject, 
 dominant ideas, suggested by operator, magnets, metals, and 
 sealed medicines, inert except as vehicles of suggestion ; (3) 
 Double consciousness. — Modern theories. — Charcot, Salpe- 
 triere, the discordant note. — Responsible for modem preju- 
 dices. — Bernheim, suggestion, the all-sufficiency of. — Sidis, 
 laws of suggestibility. — Myers, subliminal consciousness. — 
 Volition, subject not unconscious, — Supra-normal: clairvoy- 
 ance, clairaudience, prevision, telepathy, the problem of per- 
 sonality. 
 
 The acceptance of the phenomena of hypnotism 
 as facts forces upon us the attempt to answer the 
 question, "What is hypnotism?" 
 
 Mesmer's theory (1766) of animal magnetism, 
 a fluid which was transferred from the operator to 
 the subject, seems to have been held in more or less 
 modified form by Esdaile and EHotson. 
 
 William Gregory, professor of chemistry, Edin- 
 burgh University, published in 185 1 his classic on 
 96 
 
ANIMAL MAGNETISM 97 
 
 animal magnetism. In this no mention is made of 
 the influence of the heavenly bodies, but he states 
 in no uncertain terms his belief that some subtle 
 fluid emanates from the body of the operator. For 
 this he adopts the name odylic force, which had just 
 been brought forward by Baron Reichenbach. This 
 force resided, he believed, in numerous physical 
 substances, especially in magnets, in which later it 
 could be seen by sensitives as a red light at the north 
 pole and a blue light at the south pole. 
 
 Gregory devotes a chapter to the confirmation of 
 phrenology, stating the " facts " as follows : "It 
 is really, in many cases, like touching the keys of an 
 organ when the bellows are full of wind, and the 
 sound instantly follows. If Tune be the organ 
 touched, the subject forthwith breaks into song. 
 If it be Self-esteem, he throws back his head, struts 
 with immense dignity, and declares himself superior 
 to the rest of mankind. Touch the organ of the Love 
 of Children, and he dandles an imaginary babe, 
 with most paternal affection. Touch Benevolence, 
 the expression changes to that of compassion; his 
 hand is thrust into his pocket, and held forth with 
 all his store. Touch Acquisitiveness, the griping 
 miser instantly appears, and with appropriate look 
 and speech the money is restored to its original 
 receptacle; it is well if the nearest object, however 
 bulky, be not ' boned,' to use a slang but expressive 
 phrase. If Caution be the stop touched, the music 
 is the most distressing, often appalling pantomime 
 
98 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 of fear or of misery. But if Hope be played on, the 
 clouds vanish and joyous sunshine gilds every feature. 
 Such are a few of the effects produced. It is un- 
 necessary to say that I have done so in cases when 
 no deception was or could be practised." ^ 
 
 Nevertheless, he states that a Mr. Lewis, a man 
 " whose will is singularly powerful," can call out 
 the same faculty by touching many different parts. 
 
 So while there are many cases where " suggestion 
 or the will of the operator or sympathy with him 
 will suffice to explain the facts," " there are other 
 cases in which the explanation does not apply." 
 But the student of to-day suspects that he had 7iot 
 " taken all precautions to avoid the possibiUty of 
 deception." 
 
 One of his conclusions is " that not only the human 
 body, but inanimate objects, such as magnets, 
 crystals, metals, etc., exert on sensitive persons an 
 influence identical, so far as known, with that which 
 produces mesmerism." 
 
 Altho he recognized the principle of suggestion, 
 he evidently had no conception of its tremendous 
 scope. It should be remembered that Braid's 
 " Neurypnology " had been pubUshed eight years 
 previously, in fact Gregory mentions Braid's " meth- 
 ods " as something different from animal magnetism. 
 Evidently Braid did not appear so revolutionar}' to 
 his contemporaries as he does to us. At first his 
 principal claim was for the physical basis — that 
 
 ' Gregory : Animal Magnetism, p. 89, ed, 1877. 
 
BRAID 99 
 
 mesmerism was the result of well-defined physical 
 causes and not dependent upon any animal magnet- 
 ism or odylic force. He shared with many eminent 
 men of his time a behef in phrenology. He con- 
 tended that manipulations of the cranium produced 
 mental and physical phenomena according to the 
 part touched. 
 
 Braid certainly was imbued with the scientific 
 spirit, he was a good example of the growing man. 
 As new facts developed he adapted his theories 
 till soon he had dropped the physical basis entirely. 
 But it was this misconception which gained him a 
 hearing with the scientific world. This with the 
 new name made it " worthy of further investigation." 
 
 Altho Braid's theories were a regular development, 
 yet they may be divided into three epochs, the first 
 being that promulgated in " Neurypnology." The 
 second was the repudiation of the term hypnotism 
 on discovering that fixed gaze was sufficient to 
 produce the state. Evidently this was not sleep, but 
 concentration. Therefore he substituted the term 
 monoideism, but hypnotism as a name had come 
 to stay. 
 
 He proved that the phenomena were the result 
 of dominant ideas, of which there are two classes, 
 the preconceptions of the patient, and the direct 
 and indirect suggestions of the operator. 
 
 He showed that wooden magnets were as effica- 
 cious as steel if the patient supposed them to be 
 steel. He discovered that metals possess no char- 
 
100 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 acteristic mesmeric properties, but are merely 
 vehicles of suggestion. 
 
 About this time there was considerable discussion 
 about the efficacy of medicine in sealed glass tubes. 
 The evidence of medicinal value was proved, but it 
 was also found that water could be substituted for 
 the medicine, and if the patient were unaware of the 
 change the same therapeutic results followed. That 
 Braid advanced beyond this position was not gener- 
 ally known till Bramwell discovered some of his later 
 writings, which either were never published or were 
 but slightly circulated. The third phase of Braid's 
 theory was the idea of double consciousness, which 
 we shall see later is the most generally accepted to- 
 day. While the modem theories exhibit minor dif- 
 ferences, yet there is almost a consensus of opinion on 
 the cardinal points. 
 
 This harmony is marred by one discordant note — 
 Charcot and the Salpetri^re. Bramwell says : " The 
 theories of this school are now almost universally 
 discredited by those practically engaged in hypnotic 
 work. Even as far back as the second International 
 Congress of Psychology (London, 1892), they had 
 almost ceased to attract attention." Nevertheless, 
 Charcot has been very widely read, and I have yet to 
 find an instance where a modem author refers to the 
 " dangers of hypnotism," and its " hysterical na- 
 ture," which is not directly traceable to Salpetri^re. 
 
 For example, in Church and Peterson, " Nervous 
 Disease " (1903), is the statement in reference to 
 
CHARCOT lOl 
 
 susceptibility : " Those of mediocre self- conscious- 
 ness, those accustomed to unquestioningly obey — 
 hence children and some hysterics — are the most 
 ready subjects. . . . There is no longer any doubt 
 that its frequent repetition is harmful to the individ- 
 ual. It tends to destroy self-reliance, and to make 
 patients imaginative, weak-minded, and neuras- 
 thenic. It also has a tendency to bring discredit 
 upon its employer." The adoption of Charcot's 
 classification shows the source of the information on 
 which these misstatements arc based. The question 
 of susceptibility has been sufficiently considered, 
 and the '' disrepute " is evidently being fostered by 
 the Charcot theory. 
 
 It is therefore important to state this in some detail, 
 in order to refute its various dogmas. 
 
 1. Hypnosis is a morbid condition which can be 
 induced only in the hysterical. 
 
 2. Hypnosis can be produced by purely physical 
 means, that is, a person could be hypnotized without 
 his being aware of the fact. 
 
 3. Hysteria may be produced in tr}dng to induce 
 hypnosis. 
 
 4. Magnets and metals induce characteristic 
 phenomena. 
 
 In order to understand the " hysterical " bias, it 
 should be borne in mind that the patients at Sal- 
 petriere are probably all hysterical, and very natu- 
 rally they might under hypnosis exhibit many of the 
 symptoms of their abnormal state, not of the normal 
 
102 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 State of healthy individuals. Then, again, it seems 
 strange, if hysterics are alone susceptible, that the 
 data should have been so largely drawn from " one 
 patient who had long been an inmate of the institu- 
 tion." One would suppose that hypnosis would have 
 been successful in every case. Does not this very 
 paucity of cases prove the insusceptibility of hyster- 
 ics? 
 
 The testimony of almost all other experimenters 
 is that over seventy-five per cent, of healthy individ- 
 uals are susceptible. One needs but to read the 
 history of Braid's hfe, and note how he proved the 
 only virtue in magnets, metals, etc., was due to the 
 suggestion imparted by the operator or the precon- 
 ceived ideas of the patient, to be somewhat wearied 
 at the rejuvenation of the error at Salpetriere. 
 
 That hysteria might be caused by lack of caution, 
 seems, a priori, not to be impossible, but I have yet 
 to learn of an authentic case. The widespread in- 
 fluence of these false ideas is simply another illus- 
 tration that a falsehood travels so much faster than 
 its refutation that the latter never catches up. 
 
 With the ground thus cleared we are ready to con- 
 sider the tenable theories. The key-note of the Nancy 
 school, or rather of Bernheim, is suggestion. " Every 
 one is suggestible, and if you take some one and 
 suggest to him to become more suggestible, that is 
 hypnotism. You suggest to the patient to go to sleep, 
 and he obeys and is asleep." 
 
 The trouble with this theory is that there is an alert 
 
MYERS 103 
 
 Stage, in which the subject reasons and evidences 
 hightened sense perception. Increased suggesti- 
 bility is certainly a manifestation of hypnosis, but 
 this depends upon increased sensitivity. 
 
 Sidis has studied the laws of suggestibility in both 
 the normal and hypnotic state, and formulates them 
 as follows : 
 
 In the waking state. — Suggestion is successful in 
 direct proportion to its indirectness, and the subject's 
 inattention. That is, if preoccupied, he can be more 
 easily influenced to do unconsciously the thing sug- 
 gested. 
 
 In the hypnotic state. — Suggestion is effective in 
 direct proportion to its directness and subject's at- 
 tention. 
 
 The only conception with which the phenomena 
 can be harmonized is the idea of subhminal con- 
 sciousness so ably brought out by the late W. H. H. 
 Myers. Sidis has elaborated this, and it is now — 
 shall we say estabhshed? — well, certainly a good 
 working hypothesis. Altho it was mentioned in the 
 chapter on " Consciousness," it may not be amiss 
 to emphasize it by repetition. Every sight, sound, 
 smell, taste, or tactile sensation which the nerve end 
 organs are capable of appreciating, is conveyed to 
 the brain, there to be stored away as a memory. A 
 large part of these facts never rise into consciousness, 
 or if consciously perceived at the time, are soon rele- 
 gated to the subconscious. This subliminal con- 
 sciousness presides over most of the body functions, 
 
I04 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 some of which have passed absolutely beyond con- 
 scious control, like the inhibitory control of the heart- 
 beat. Others, like respiration, are still subject to 
 conscious control, if the conscious sees fit to exer- 
 cise it. 
 
 The conscious self decides which of the many 
 sense perceptions are relevant to the subject upon 
 which the attention is concentrated, and ignores the 
 remainder. That is, the human will not only decides 
 whether or no it will accept as motives to action cer- 
 tain sense perceptions, but, moreover, refuses to 
 listen to many. 
 
 It is well known that a wiUingness to be hypno- 
 tized is absolutely essential. Now this willingness 
 is a throwing off one's normal seclusion, and in- 
 viting the senses to bring in their retainers. This 
 willingness to listen to suggestions implies the prob- 
 abiUty of accepting them, unless they offend the 
 moral sense. 
 
 One has temporarily estabUshed the operator as 
 the doorkeeper of his mental sanctuary, and has 
 agreed to be polite to his guests, so long as they do 
 not transgress the laws of good breeding. This 
 condition explains why, at first, most hypnotists 
 supposed their subjects to be unable to resist sugges- 
 tions, but afterward discovered that volition was 
 only suspended, not lost. The volition seems to 
 be able to refuse improper suggestions either by 
 arousing the subject or by changing the alert stage 
 into one of lethargy. 
 
PRINCE 105 
 
 Amnesia in the waking state of the events of the 
 hypnotic does not prove that the subject was uncon- 
 scious at the time of their occurrence. In fact, at a 
 subsequent hypnosis the memory of all that trans- 
 pired in the former hypnosis is perfect, which proves 
 quite the opposite of unconsciousness. 
 
 It must be admitted that our modem conception 
 of the hypnotic state as one in which the subject 
 knowingly accepts ludicrous suggestions, forgets his 
 own name, accepts hallucinations, and then forgets 
 it all on waking, necessitates some seeming contra- 
 dictions. It involves a deal of subtle reasoning. 
 
 A number of instances are on record where this 
 double consciousness has become so dissociated as 
 to give rise to double personality — two individuals 
 using the same brain and each unconscious of the 
 other. The case of the Rev. Mr, Hanna is a sample. 
 
 Dr. Morton Prince' has reported a case where 
 hypnosis revealed four distinct aggregations of 
 consciousness, all of which were sufficiently charac- 
 teristic to be called personaUties. 
 
 The problem of personality is manifestly beyond 
 our scope, but we must consider the implication of 
 the theory of double consciousness. The subcon- 
 scious appreciation of time has been referred to. 
 The abihty to wake at a certain time is a very com- 
 mon experience. Many eminent men have stated 
 that they habitually prepare speeches by a process 
 which necessitates what Carpenter called " uncon- 
 
 'The Dissociation of a Personality, 1906. 
 
I06 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 scious cerebration." The essential data are noted 
 and then the mind — the conscious mind — drops 
 the matter. When the occasion arrives the speech 
 is made or the paper is written with a lucidity which 
 indicates that some power has been at work during 
 the subject's conscious neglect. Not only does hyp- 
 notism reveal a hightened moral sense in the sub- 
 conscious, but Sidis has proved by the sphygmo- 
 graph and pneumograph a hyperesthesia of all the 
 senses. 
 
 Concerning the possibility of clairvoyance, clair- 
 audience, prevision, and telepathy, an endless amount 
 of study and investigation is required before one has 
 any right to an opinion or can have an intelligent 
 opinion. The Society for Psychic Research has 
 accumulated a vast amount of evidence which has 
 convinced a portion of the members of these supra- 
 normal occurrences. Another portion still feels that 
 the evidence is insufficient. 
 
 One point should never be lost sight of, that any 
 of these questionable phenomena, to be of evidential 
 value to a third party, should be carefully recorded 
 and attested at the time. Any case of prevision 
 should be so recorded and witnessed prior to the 
 time of fulfilment. 
 
 Hypnotism at a distance is, I believe, unproved. 
 A subject might be given a post-hypnotic suggestion 
 that at a certain time he would fall asleep, and in 
 this sense hypnotism beyond the range of personal 
 contact of operator and subject is quite possible. 
 
HYPNOTISM AT A DISTANCE 107 
 
 The believers in animal magnetism were wont to 
 claim that the operator's will was obeyed quite as 
 perfectly as his spoken commands. I do not re- 
 member seeing this claim put forth by modern 
 hypnotists. 
 
 The greatest caution is here necessary lest one 
 betray his feehngs by inflection or gesture. Many 
 of the errors of recent experiments have arisen from 
 the erroneous conception that the subject was un- 
 conscious. The fact that he is hyperesthetic should 
 be constantly borne in mind. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 SUMMARY 
 
 Psychotherapeutics. — Definition of therapeutics. — Drugs, sur- 
 gery, orthopedics, electricity, mechanotherapy, refraction, hy- 
 drotherapy, massage, in all a physical element. — Psycho- 
 therapeutics, elimination of the physical agent. — Man a 
 suggestible animal. — Historical : " Thy faith hath made thee 
 whole ; " royal touch ; shrines ; prayer cure ; Christian Science ; 
 " mental healing ; " Whipple, New York ; Newcomb, Boston. 
 
 — Claim everything, but refuse to substantiate. — Silent treat- 
 ments, accord with Sidis' law. — Indirect suggestions, 
 accord with Sidis' law. — Bernheim, a-hypnotic sugges- 
 tion. — Hypnosis necessary to overcome auto-suggestions.^ 
 
 — Method of giving treatments. — Sphere of psycho- 
 therapeutics : subconscious memory of pain, hallucinations, 
 insomnia, neuralgia, constipation. — Drug habit and degen- 
 eracy, Quackenboss. — Dubois : nervous diseases. — Organic 
 disease .' — Anderson's " muscle bed." — Thinking out an ex- 
 ercise. — An adjunct to general medicine. 
 
 PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS 
 
 Therapeutics is the science which treats of 
 remedial agents, first and foremost among which, 
 from time immemorial, have been drugs. We have 
 extended the definition to include surgery, electricity, 
 orthopedics, and mechanotherapy. The correction 
 of refractive errors by means of lenses may very 
 properly be classed as orthopedics. In all of these 
 well- recognized divisions of therapeutics there is 
 
SUGGESTIVE THERAPEUTICS IO9 
 
 evident a physical means, namely, the drug, the knife, 
 the electricity, the mechanical appHance. 
 
 As suggestive therapeutics means the elimination 
 of these physical agents, and the use of mental 
 forces, psychotherapeutics would seem to be the 
 most logical term. Psychics is certainly the anto- 
 nym of physics. 
 
 The mental control w^hich every individual ex- 
 ercises over his various functions is a matter of 
 common knowledge. The proposition that this 
 normal control can be interfered with by outside 
 influences needs no proof. 
 
 Now if disease sometimes results from abnormal 
 mental influences, what could be more rational 
 than to expect to cure by reestablishing the mental 
 tone ? The history of civilization is replete vdth in- 
 stances of the application of this principle, tho it is 
 only in recent years that we have come to recognize 
 the underlying truth that " man is a suggestible 
 animal." 
 
 An adequate historical review of this subject 
 would fill many volumes. Rehgious devotees in all 
 ages have practised the heahng art. It is evident 
 that at the beginning of the Christian era it was a 
 matter of common belief. Successful heahng was 
 regarded as the criterion of the truth of the 
 rehgion. 
 
 Jesus seems to have clearly perceived the truth, 
 when he said to the woman who touched the hem of 
 his garment, " Thy faith hath made thee whole." 
 
no PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 The account reads that this power was transferred 
 to the disciples, who " laid hands on the sick and 
 they recovered." 
 
 The doctrine of the di\dne right of kings carried 
 with it the behef in the royal touch. Andrew D. 
 White says: " This mode of cure began, so far as 
 history throws light upon it, with Edward the Con- 
 fessor in the eleventh century, and came dowTi from 
 reign to reign, passing from the Cathohc saint to 
 the Protestant debauchees upon the EngUsh throne, 
 with ever-increasing miraculous efficacy. 
 
 " Testimony to the reahty of these cures is over- 
 whelming. As a simple matter of fact there are no 
 miracles of heahng in the history of the human race 
 more thoroly attested than those wTought by the 
 touch of Henry VIIL, Elizabeth, the Stuarts, and 
 especially of that chosen vessel, Charles II. 
 
 " Altho Ehzabeth could not bring herself to be- 
 lieve in the realities of these cures, Doctor Tooker, 
 the queen's chaplain, afterward Dean of Litchfield, 
 testifies fully of his own knowledge of the cures 
 wrought by her, as also does William Clowes, the 
 queen's surgeon. Fuller in his Church History gives 
 an account of a Roman CathoUc, who was thus 
 cured by the queen's touch and converted to Protes- 
 tantism. Similar testimony exists as to the cures 
 wrought by James I. Charles also enjoyed the 
 same power in spite of the public declaration against 
 its reahty by Pariiament. . . . But the most incon- 
 trovertible evidence of this miraculous power is 
 
ROYAL TOUCH III 
 
 found in the case of Charles II,, the most thoroly 
 cynical debauchee who ever sat on the English 
 throne before the advent of George IV. He touched 
 nearly one hundred thousand persons, and the out- 
 lay for gold medals issued to the afflicted on these 
 occasions rose in some years as high as ;^ 10,000. . . . 
 William III. evidently regarded the whole thing as 
 a superstition, and on one occasion is said to have 
 touched a patient, saying to him : ' God give you 
 better health and more sense.' Whiston assures us 
 that this person was healed notvidthstanding Will- 
 iam's incredulity. This curative power was, then, 
 acknowledged far and wide by CathoHcs and Protes- 
 tants alike, upon the Continent, in Great Britain 
 and America, and it descended, not only in spite of 
 the transition of the English kings from Catholicism 
 to Protestantism, but in spite of the transition from 
 the legitimate sovereignty of the Stuarts to the 
 illegitimate succession of the house of Orange, and 
 yet within a few years after the whole world held this 
 belief, it was dead, it had shrivelled away in the 
 growing scientific light at the dawn of the eighteenth 
 century." ' 
 
 But humanity has not lost its faith in divine heal- 
 ing. Even in the twentieth century the world has its 
 shrines, where we have the best of evidence for 
 believing many genuine cures are wrought. Every 
 year pilgrimages are made to the shrine of St. Ann 
 de Beaupr^, near Quebec. Scarce a week passes 
 
 ' History of the Conflict of Tlieology and Science in Christendom. 
 
112 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 but the press has some notices of the prayer cures 
 of the prophet Sanford at Shiloh, Me. 
 
 The unprecedented growth of Christian Science 
 among the most intelUgent class of the community 
 is proof of an underlying curative principle. 
 
 Mr. Alfred Farlow, who seems to be the spokesman 
 for Boston, says: "Various magnetic and mental 
 forms of treatment have long been in vogue, but 
 their success has never been sufficiently uniform 
 to command any great amount of attention. 
 
 " Mrs. Eddy, the discoverer and founder of 
 Christian Science, was once treated by a magnetic 
 practitioner and temporarily relieved, but the bene- 
 fits were not permanent. After her discovery she 
 recognized that magnetic treatment depended upon 
 the human will, in contradistinction to the Divine 
 Mind, and therefore fell short of the exalted spiritual 
 method which was employed by Jesus and the Apos- 
 tles, hence its inadequacy." ' 
 
 It is difficult to comprehend the subtle distinctions 
 of the various sects of psychic healers. Many phil- 
 osophers have struggled with the problem of the 
 relation of the human will to the divine, and to some 
 of us common mortals it seems somewhat doubtful 
 if these people can always distinguish between the 
 manifestations of human souls and the presence 
 of the great Over Soul. 
 
 Very much like the Christian Scientists are the 
 mental or " metaphysical " healers, so called. 
 
 " TAe Medical Student, April, 1906. 
 
METAPHYSICAL HEALERS 113 
 
 Altho their teaching is quite similar to the views of 
 the followers of Mrs. Eddy, they do not seem to 
 regard her in the light of a discoverer, characteriz- 
 ing the " truths " she has uttered as a mild modifica- 
 tion of theosophy. They do not deny the existence 
 of disease, but regard it as an unnecessary evil — 
 the product of fear, worry, and unrest. They exalt 
 the preeminence of the individual's soul, its com- 
 munion with the Over Soul, from which it can draw 
 unhmited power, and the absolute necessity of cul- 
 tivating a serene and calm inner consciousness, by 
 which they claim man regains his birthright of pre- 
 siding over his physical states. 
 
 The philosophy is lofty, ethical, and, in the main, 
 true. These people, like the scientists, give silent 
 treatments, both patient and healer sitting with 
 closed eyes. A prescription is given to take home, 
 of which the following is a sample : 
 " I trust every organ, 
 I govern myself with Patience and Power." 
 
 This indirect suggestion is, as we know, most ef- 
 fective for the waking consciousness, and if fre- 
 quently repeated is likely to become indelibly 
 stamped in the subhminal consciousness. 
 
 Mr. Charles Newcomb, of Boston, says: " Plain 
 suggestions of confidence, patience, gladness, and 
 decision often bring us back to the trail we have lost 
 thru the uncertainty of our own power and free- 
 dom." ' The philosophy seems to be very largely 
 
 • Newcomb : The Discovery of a Lost Trail. 
 
114 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 Emersonian. These people take Emerson literally, 
 where many have supposed he was dealing in poetic 
 images. It is a philosophy of Hfe itself, and the men- 
 tal power over bodily states is only one of its many 
 beneficent phases. Its watchword is: "No regrets 
 for the past, no fears for the future, live in the pres- 
 ent above time." 
 
 The writer had the pleasure during the spring of 
 1906 of hstening to a course of lectures by Mr. New- 
 comb. He is a man of great breadth of culture, and 
 an earnest student of all matters psychic. But the 
 extravagant claims for the all-sufficiency of psychic 
 heahng is almost painful. He speaks with the most 
 absolute assurance concerning technical subjects, 
 little realizing the imphcations. 
 
 For example, he claims to have cured near- 
 sightedness, when upon inquiry he has no evidence 
 to offer which is of the shghtest value to an investi- 
 gator. He claims to be able to diagnose pathological 
 conditions by psychic sight or clairvoyance, but re- 
 fused to make the experiment with an eye case which 
 the writer proposed to send him. He would, how- 
 ever, treat a case which was sent to him by an oculist, 
 provided the patient was really desirous of being 
 treated, but experimentation was ruled out. 
 
 In 1897 Leander Edmund Whipple estabhshed in 
 New York the American School of Metaphysics. 
 Both didactic and correspondence courses are of- 
 fered. In the preface to " The Philosophy of Mental 
 Healing," Mr. Whipple says: "The writer enter- 
 
WHIPPLE 1 1 5 
 
 tains the opinion that absolute truth can safely 
 invite any amount of investigation, together with the 
 most thoro and accurate tests that can be applied 
 thru logic, reason, and philosophical thought or 
 in scientific experiment of the most accurate de- 
 scription." Noticing in one of his announcements 
 that, among other anomahes of the eyes, astigmia 
 could be cured by his system, the writer communi- 
 cated with him, asking if he had any cases of this 
 defect which had been examined by a competent 
 ocuUst both before and after the cure. 
 
 Astigmia is a deformity of the front of the eye — 
 the cornea — and can be accurately measured by 
 the keratometer, which is an inStiument in nearly 
 every ocuHst's office. Altho it may vary some in 
 the course of years, oculists cannot cure it, they 
 can only correct it with glasses. 
 
 The follo\\-ing very courteous reply was received : 
 
 " Your esteemed favor was duly received. I do 
 not know of tests made imder the full requirements 
 suggested by your question, tho many cases have 
 similar testimony in a partial way. It is difficult to 
 bring about from the standpoint of medical diagno- 
 sis and of metaphysical practise. Tests for the sake 
 of experiment never succeed. There is mental 
 law underneath it I feel sure. Consequently such 
 records as you ask for are not obtainable as far as 
 I know. More complete methods will become es- 
 tablished in time, I believe. The mental law that 
 
Il6 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 can result in a radical cure will not withstand much 
 of the different kind of action in the way at the time 
 and results do not appear unless the action is very 
 clear and free. Naturally enough, the medically 
 trained mind thinks that the same methods of exam- 
 ination and test as appUed in medicine should apply 
 with metaphysics, but the conditions are vastly 
 different. An experimenting thought destroys most 
 of the power. I recognize the value of such tests and 
 records, but I have not seen yet how they can be 
 brought about. Abnormal physical conditions have 
 their complete correspondences in mental states or 
 experiences which act as causes. After these causes 
 are stopped in action physical conditions can be- 
 come adjusted to the changed mentality by natural 
 process and wdthout further intervention from out- 
 side. This I believe to be a fact in mental therapeu- 
 tics. The eyes being so closely associated with the 
 nervous system are responsive to about every change 
 in mental action, for the mind controls the nervous 
 system. I have seen total blindness of one eye re- 
 stored upon the removal of the mental shock of a 
 severe injury to the cheek under that eye, and simi- 
 lar results in many varieties of supposed physical 
 conditions. 
 
 *' Yours sincerely, 
 
 " Leander Edmund Whipple." 
 
 To a " medically trained mind " this seems like 
 begging the question. This propensity to " claim 
 
A -HYPNOTIC SUGGESTION II7 
 
 everything " which is so universal mth the practi- 
 tioners of prayer cure, Christian Science, and mental 
 healing seems inconsistent w^ith the high moral tone 
 which these people exhibit. In charity one is forced 
 to believe that they are honest but are self-deceived. 
 The analogy between this state of mind and the de- 
 ductive faculty exhibited by the hypnotized individ- 
 ual is very striking. He is no longer disturbed by 
 the restraints of the critical and judicial normal 
 consciousness. May it not be that this " confidence " 
 contributes greatly to success ? 
 
 A-hypnotic suggestion is a means of treatment 
 recognized by many of the medical profession. It 
 is the method used very largely by Bemheim. Doc- 
 tor Petersen, in describing his visit to Nancy in 
 1891, says: " From bed to bed we went, and after 
 the individual case was examined, Bemheim would 
 address the sufferer in a gentle but firm voice, in no 
 way different from his conversational rhythm. He 
 told them to sleep either at once or before he left 
 the ward, suggesting the alleviation or disappear- 
 ance of their pains, made them imaginary tonics, 
 at times touched the seat of pain, and assured them 
 that when their slumber had ceased — he fixing its 
 duration as well as the right time for it — they 
 \ would then feel comfortable and in a happier 
 mood." ' 
 
 Doctor Petersen continues: " The idea therefore 
 
 ' Translation of Hypnotism and Its Application to Practical 
 Medicine. Wetterstrand. 
 
Il8 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 that to receive a suggestion, which is to be carried 
 out even to an act, necessitates a previous deep / 
 unconsciousness, is erroneous in many respects. 
 The patient has entered into the receptive state by 
 what is explained as an inhibition of the cerebral 
 cortex, and a potent force has taken possession of him 
 by directing both the mental and physical functions." 
 
 The success of this method depends entirely upon 
 the receptivity of the patient, and upon his intellec- 
 tuality. He must certainly be above the average 
 intelhgence or have unUmited confidence in his 
 physician to make it effective. The majority of 
 chronic cases are dominated by preconceived ideas, 
 which they are unable to suppress, and which the 
 operator is unable to overcome. In this emergency 
 there is needed some means of increasing the sus- 
 ceptibihty to healthful suggestions, and of counter- 
 acting harmful ones. Whatever may be one's view 
 as to the exact nature of hypnotism, it is universally 
 admitted that it increases the patient's suggestibiUty. 
 
 Pyschics has taken quite a hold of our Boston 
 mind, and the inteUigent patient has seen enough 
 cures by other than medicinal means to be already 
 convinced of a mental control of body functions. 
 So that often it is only necessary to explain to him 
 the reflex action of the lower brain, and tell him that 
 by properly conducted treatments you can increase 
 his subconscious control of the various somatic 
 functions which make for health. He is then put 
 in a comfortable chair, the head resting, eyes closed, 
 
A -HYPNOTIC SUGGESTION 
 
 119 
 
 and told to banish from his mind all extraneous 
 thoughts, to make himself passive, so as to receive 
 any suggestions you have to offer. 
 
 You then talk to him in a quiet but reassuring 
 way, accompanied by passes over the affected part, 
 expatiating upon the profoundness of mental control, 
 if he only put himself in the receptive state. This 
 is manifestly a-hypnotic treatment. If stronger 
 effects are desired, hypnosis should be induced by 
 any of the methods previously mentioned. In this 
 state the suggestions should be direct, in the form 
 of commands. 
 
 Granted this fact of the subconscious control of 
 functions and bodily states, granted that hypnosis 
 lays the subconscious under the operator's control, 
 what could be more logical than that healthful 
 suggestions could be thus made which would be 
 effectively carried out? 
 
 Every one who has given attention to this subject 
 has found that he can make aw/o-suggestions, which 
 are helpful or harmful as he wills. This refers not 
 alone to mental states, but to physical health. Is 
 it not possible that the coming man vdll become so 
 proficient in marshalling the resources of his sub- 
 liminal consciousness that he vdll become his own 
 physician, exercise an increased power of resistance, 
 and ward off many diseases? Hypnosis to-day 
 furnishes a means of aiding the subconscious mind 
 of the patient, thus working out practical cures, 
 and in it there would seem to be great possibilities. 
 
 <- 
 
I20 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 Without attempting to define the limitations of 
 psychotherapeutics, it is generally admitted that 
 its special sphere of usefukiess is with functional 
 and nervous diseases. The writer reported before 
 the Boston Homeopathic Medical Society some 
 years ago' a case of subconscious memory of pain 
 in the eyes, which yielded to a very few hypnotic 
 treatments after glasses and remedies had failed. 
 
 Sidis has reported some interesting cases of 
 epilepsy, which upon hypnosis proved to be of 
 psychic origin. The patients no longer remembered 
 the cause of the first attack, but under hypnosis the 
 whole history was obtained. Counter suggestions 
 in this state entirely eradicated the abnormal in- 
 fluence, and the seizures ceased. Along this same 
 line is the work being done by Prof. James J. Put- 
 nam, of Harvard, in the treatment of hysteria by 
 " Freud's Method of Psycho- Analysis." ^ 
 
 Insomnia is one of the very intractable symptoms 
 of many diseases and is also idiopathic. Wetter- 
 strand says: " I sincerely beheve there is no better 
 remedy for insomnia than hypnosis, and that it is 
 absolutely harmful to prescribe soporifics, because 
 they only strengthen the invahd's belief that he 
 cannot go to sleep without the accustomed dose." 
 He reports eight failures in forty-two cases treated. 
 
 In neuralgias he says: " The remedy has seldom 
 been a failure when the patient slept soundly." 
 
 ' M E. Medical Gazette, June, 1899. 
 
 * Journal of Abnormal Psychology, April, 1906. 
 
DUBOIS 121 
 
 Cures from epilepsy and chorea are reported by 
 Wetterstrand. 
 
 In stammering Wetterstrand cured fifteen, forty- 
 eight treated. Neurasthenias are difficult cases to 
 treat, as they are hard to hypnotize. The same 
 applies to hysteria. Morphinism has been dealt 
 with very successfully. 
 
 Doctor Quackenboss, New York, has reported 
 great successes in breaking up the cigarette habit 
 and other forms of intemperance. There was pub- 
 lished in a New York paper a report of an interview 
 with Doctor Quackenboss concerning his reviving 
 a moribund patient, who had been calling for him 
 previous to sinking into the comatose state. 
 
 The work of Dr. Paul Dubois, professor of 
 neuropathology at the University of Berne, has, 
 during the present year (1906), been brought to the 
 attention of English readers thru the translation of 
 the French edition of his " Psychic Treatment of 
 Nervous Disorders." Accepting the Bemheim 
 doctrine of suggestion, and believing that every one 
 is suggestible, he ignores all subtle and subconscious 
 methods, and treats these cases " in the open " by 
 what he calls the " reeducation of the reason." 
 After showing his patient that his nervous affection 
 is the result of his misconceptions, he proceeds to 
 reason with him. First of all he teaches him the 
 philosophy of life, adapting the lesson to the patient's 
 mental status. Then he elucidates the power of 
 the mind over somatic functions, and builds up the 
 
122 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 patient's confidence, by seizing upon and emphasiz- 
 ing every evidence of success in the relief of dis- 
 tressing symptoms. 
 
 There is something almost naive in the absolute 
 candor with which he treats his patient, and as one 
 turns the pages of his book he is conscious of a 
 feehng of chagrin in discovering that the laborious 
 and roundabout methods of our ordinary use of 
 psychotherapy are usually superfluous. 
 
 Upon special occasions, he has recourse to hyp- 
 notism and a-hypnotic suggestion of the Bemheim 
 type. ^ 
 
 While he believes that nervous diseases are essen- 
 tially mental in origin, and should therefore be 
 treated by mental means, he nevertheless uses drugs 
 for special emergencies. 
 
 Isolation of the patient from family and friends 
 and the almost routine use of the Weir Mitchell 
 rest treatment are very important factors of his 
 success, but " the only thing that will assure the 
 future of the patient is a rational moraUzing psy- 
 chotherapy which will change the psychopathic 
 mentality which has determined his symptoms. 
 
 Doctor Anderson, medical director of Yale gy 
 nasium, has constructed a table finely balanced, 
 which the student lies down upon his back. The 
 center of gravity is determined and then some 
 problem is given him to solve. That blood rushes 
 to the head is proved by a rise in the center of gravity 
 toward the head. If, on the other hand, he is 
 
SCOPE OF PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS 123 
 
 told to go thru a leg exercise mentally, not really 
 moving a muscle, the center goes toward the feet, 
 showing the mental control of the blood supply. 
 
 The possibility of either raising or lowering the 
 rate of the heart by suggestion to the hypnotized 
 individual has been previously mentioned in the 
 chapter on the " Phenomena of Hypnosis." If 
 the trophic and nutritional centers are under the 
 control of the subconscious, one is not justified in 
 concluding, a priori, that regenerative eflfects — 
 organic diseases — are beyond the possibilities of 
 psychotherapeutics. 
 
 Psychotherapeutics is not a panacea. — The ques- 
 tion as to what extent the physician should make 
 use of this valuable accessory to his armamentarium 
 must be left entirely to his individual judgment and 
 experience. The same statement apphes as to how 
 much surgery he should do. It takes courage and 
 self-rehance openly to advocate and practise it. 
 One will undoubtedly be misunderstood by many 
 of his professional brethren and by many of his 
 patients. He may gain an unenviable reputation 
 of having discarded all physico-ihtrdi'^y. 
 
 On the other hand, the reputation of being versed 
 in the methods of mental healing may save one 
 many a patient who would otherwise seek his psycho- 
 therapy elsewhere. Had the profession taken a 
 more friendly attitude toward the subject the 
 " metaphysician " would have less reason for exist- 
 ence. 
 
124 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 While it is unwise and an encroachment upon 
 individual liberty to attempt by legislation to prevent 
 the various forms of mental healers from practising, 
 it would certainly be conducive to public welfare 
 if the healing art in all its branches were confined 
 to properly educated and hcensed practitioners of 
 medicine. Those who know its Umitations would 
 not waste valuable time in futile attempts at psycho- 
 therapy, while the disease was passing beyond the 
 curable or operable stage. 
 
 There is a class of physicians to-day which 
 reiterates the verdict of the French Academy, " all 
 due to the imagination," mth a sneer of contempt. 
 Granting this therapeutic power of the imagination, 
 does it not behoove the profession to make of it an 
 ally, instead of allowing it "to go about seeking 
 whom it may devour? " Is our success so universal 
 with old chronic cases that any means known to be 
 curative can be ignored? 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 SUMMARY 
 
 The psychic element in the practise of medicine. — The person- 
 ality of the physician. — Genuine good - will. — Healthful 
 suggestions. — Suggestions adverse to health. — Diet. — Sug- 
 gestion present in all forms of therapeutics : in surgery, in 
 refraction, in electrotherapy, in massage, in materia medica. — 
 The hidden suggestion. — Popular belief in efficacy of drugs. 
 — " Post hoc ergo propter hoc." — " It cured me." — Profession 
 not given to critical analysis. — Responsible for erroneous 
 theories. — Shattuck : "Some of our patients get well." — 
 Flint's law, the natural history of disease. — Percy : eight 
 therapeutic influences : (a) Natural history of the morbid 
 processes ; (b) The recuperative energies of the organism ; (c) 
 The favorable agencies of hygiene; (,d) The power of per. 
 sonal magnetism, in the practitioner ; (e) Suggestion and auto- 
 suggestion ; {/) Faith; (g) Courage; {h) Drugs. — Attempt to 
 eliminate suggestion from drug pathogenesis. — The reprov- 
 ing by the Am. Horn. O. O. and L. Soc. — The placebo, a 
 vehicle of suggestion. 
 
 THE PSYCHIC ELEMENT IN THE PRACTISE OF MEDICINE 
 
 — Perhaps the most potent means of giving health- 
 ful suggestion is the personaHty of the physician 
 himself. How often one hears a patient remark of 
 his beloved physician : "It does me good to see 
 him come in." 
 
 Learning and medical skill are certainly desirable 
 qualities, but unless optimism and p^ejiialitv are part 
 
 125 
 
126 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 of his equipment one had better confine himself 
 to laboratory and didactic medicine. 
 
 Brilliant scholarship never made a successful 
 practitioner. Genuine good nature, a hopeful 
 manner, and an honest desire to relieve suffering 
 humanity should be cultivated to their fullest degree. 
 If the study of mental physiology does nothing more 
 than to inculcate this principle into the very fiber 
 of one's being, it will have served no mean purpose. 
 
 The selection of a certain physician presupposes a 
 special confidence in his skill. Whether the means 
 employed be drugs, surgery, or orthopedics, a lack 
 of this confidence seriously cripples his efforts.— 
 
 On the wall of a sanitarium near Boston is the 
 following stanza : 
 
 " Talk Health, the dreary, never ending tale 
 
 Of mortal maladies is worn and stale. 
 
 You cannot charm or interest or please 
 
 By harping on the minor chord — disease. 
 
 Say you are well, or all is well with you, 
 
 And God shall hear the words and make them true to you." 
 
 The author has changed the last two lines as 
 follows : 
 
 When asked if well, if not too ill, say " yes," 
 And haply, e'en this slight untruth may bless. 
 
 The stanza is printed on a small card which is 
 frequently given to a patient inclined to hypo- 
 chondria, with the suggestion that he take it home. 
 It sometimes occasions a smile, but I firmly beUeve 
 that great good is accomphshcd. 
 
SUGGESTIONS ADVERSE TO HEALTH 127 
 
 Hudson, in " Law of Mental Medicine," shows 
 how nearly all our articles of diet, one after another, 
 have come to be regarded as unhealthful. The 
 physician is prone to assume that the particular 
 food which causes indigestion in himself must there- 
 fore be harmful to others, and warns all his patients 
 and friends against eating it. There is a widespread 
 failure to reaUze that " one man's meat is another's 
 poison." When two or three happen to agree upon 
 the indigestibleness of anything, and repeat their 
 fears to one who indulges it, the suggestion is apt 
 to be accepted by the subhminal consciousness, and 
 the normal secretion of the digestive ferments may 
 be inhibited, and another witness against the inno- 
 cent offender is gained. 
 
 Conning over the symptoms of disease often 
 leads to a morbid introspection, which is a veritable 
 looking for trouble. The quack advertiser is keen 
 enough to use this method of malevolent suggestion, 
 and thus lures his victim, at least, into the sympto- 
 matology of a chronic disease. 
 
 Interwoven with all forms of physical therapeutics 
 are the threads of suggestions. These are obtained 
 from the direct statements of the physician, from 
 his manner whether hopeful or discouraged, and 
 also from the preconceived ideas of the patient. 
 
 The recovery from morbid symptoms which 
 frequently follows a simple anesthetizing with pre- 
 tended surgical interference, or simply exploratory 
 incision, is so well recognized that we are apt to 
 
128 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 lose sight of its significance. In mechanical thera- 
 peutics the suggestive element is less conspicuous, 
 but frequent examples have occurred in the prac- 
 tise of the writer. 
 
 A patient came with well-marked symptoms of 
 eye-strain, glasses were prescribed, and the symptoms 
 entirely disappeared. Leaving off the glasses would 
 cause a return of symptoms, again wearing them 
 the pain ceased. The case was one of astigmia, and 
 the lenses for the two eyes were quite different. 
 At a subsequent visit, there having been no return 
 of the symptoms, it was discovered that, in repairing 
 the frames, the optician had carelessly transposed 
 the lenses, and yet the patient felt sure that she could 
 not get along without her glasses. They were a 
 positive detriment to vision when in the wrong 
 positions. 
 
 Probably no physician who has used electricity 
 has failed to note the suggestive element. Undoubt- 
 edly the buzzing of the faradic current and the 
 sparking of the high frequency make these forms 
 especially potent. 
 
 Massage calls the patient's attention to the part 
 rubbed. Is it unreasonable, in the light of Doctor 
 Anderson's experiments, previously mentioned, to 
 assume that the subliminal can be thus roused to 
 greater therapeutic power? 
 
 When we come to the realm of materia medica 
 we find such a confusion of " post hoc " and " prop- 
 ter hoc " that there is the greatest diversity of opinion 
 
SUGGESTION IN MEDICINE 129 
 
 among the profession concerning the value of drugs 
 as a whole, and what drugs are indicated in certain 
 conditions or diseases, and by what rule this shall 
 be determined, instead of depending on the empir- 
 icism which has led so many into sloughs of despair 
 in the past. 
 
 Of the various sects, homeopathy has grown to 
 be a respectable minority of the body medical. Here 
 too, as with the other school, is a recognition of this 
 misleading principle. Dr. William C. Goodno, pro- 
 fessor of medicine in Hahnemann Medical College, 
 Philadelphia, is quoted as saying : " There is a serious 
 weakness of many of our workers in materia medica 
 in the way of creduHty. The greed for provings 
 leads many able men to accept too readily symptoms 
 having a most doubtful relationship to the drug 
 supposed to cause them."' 
 
 This does not mean that drugs are not curative, 
 but it does imply that, in this department, medicine 
 is still more of an art than a science. 
 
 We have a few specifics, and a growing Ust of 
 drugs scientifically adapted to cure certain morbid 
 conditions. A very commendable effort has been 
 made to put the homeopathic materia medica on 
 the same basis. 
 
 Under the auspices of the American Homeopathic 
 Ophthalmological, Otological, and Laryngological 
 Society, with the cooperation of the national and 
 several State societies, the effect of belladonna on 
 
 ' Medical Visitor. 
 
130 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 the human system and on animals has been exhaust- 
 ively studied by a method originated by Prof. H. P. 
 Bellows of Boston.^ 
 
 In order that the suggestive element might be 
 entirely ehminated, only one person in each of the 
 eleven cities where the experiments were made knew 
 what drug was being administered. The subjects 
 experimented upon were examined by speciaHsts 
 in each department before, during, and after the 
 tests. The most approved scientific methods were 
 used to determine the objective symptoms, and only 
 such subjective symptoms were accepted as trust- 
 worthy as were experienced by a majority of the 
 provers. 
 
 The chapter on " The Effects of Belladonna upon 
 Animal Tissues " is contributed by Dr. Solomon C. 
 Fuller, pathologist of the Westboro (Mass.) Insane 
 Hospital. 
 
 The experiments were carried out in a thoroly 
 scientific manner, and the work is a valuable contri- 
 bution to toxicology. In this department suggestion 
 was certainly eliminated. 
 
 THE HIDDEN SUGGESTION 
 
 Since the days of Galen the race has been more 
 and more imbued with the idea of the efficacy of 
 drugs, till to-day a little sugar pill is loaded with the 
 suggested efficacy of generations. This it is which 
 gives the successes of the quack " cure-alls." Given 
 
 ' Test Proving of the O. O. and L, Society. 
 
HIDDEN SUGGESTION 131 
 
 sufficient advertisement, and a pungent taste or 
 smell, and the testimonials are soon forthcoming. 
 
 To cure " speedily, gently, and permanently," 
 is the desideratum of the medicine. Having obtained 
 this result, we are all of us prone to rest content, 
 and have little interest in studying our cases critically 
 to determine if the particular means employed were 
 the effective agent. Most diseases are self-limited, 
 and we all admit in the vis medicatrix naturce a 
 powerful ally. We are also thankful for any psychic 
 element which may have contributed to the happy 
 result. 
 
 So long as the average physician exhibits this 
 frame of mind, can we wonder that Christian Science 
 and mental heahng are gathering adherents from 
 the most intelligent class of the laity? 
 
 It is this principle of post hoc ergo propter hoc 
 which has established (?) so many misconceptions 
 and false theories as truths. Most Christian Scien- 
 tists whom I have met are sure of their science 
 because they have been cured. The theory has been 
 accepted because " it cured me." 
 
 Some one has facetiously remarked that there 
 are " three kinds of lies : white lies, black lies, and 
 statistics," and to a certain extent this is undoubt- 
 edly true. Statistics often fail to tell the " whole 
 truth," altho they may tell " nothing but the 
 truth." 
 
 In order to add to the sum of human knowledge, 
 the statistician must possess a judicial mind, and 
 
132 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 must never allow his preconceptions or his inclina- 
 tions to influence him " to make up a case." 
 
 Dr. Austin Flint was one of the first to enunciate 
 a principle which is truly scientific. He advocated 
 a more careful study of the natural history of disease, 
 the average duration of a large number of cases of a 
 given malady when no medicine was given. Then 
 he compared vdth this the average of an equal num- 
 ber of cases of the same disease, where medical 
 treatment was had, contending that unless the dura- 
 tion or severity or mortality was less under treat- 
 ment than without, one was not warranted in con- 
 cluding that his interference had been beneficial. 
 
 Happily this inference is generally justifiable. 
 Granting this to be true, a second question is pre- 
 sented to the candid truth-seeker, viz.: What was 
 the curative agent? 
 
 ■ — ^Dr. F. B. Percy, professor of materia medica, 
 Boston University School of Medicine, says : " Let 
 us admit from the beginning that in the cure of the 
 sick many influences must be considered. 
 
 ** (a) Natural history of morbid processes. 
 
 " (&) The recuperative energies of the organism. 
 
 " (c) The favorable agencies of hygiene. 
 
 " {d) The power of personal magnetism in the 
 practitioner. 
 ^^'^(e) Suggestion and auto-suggestion. 
 
 "(/) Faith. 
 
 " {g) Courage. 
 
 "(/i) Drugs. 
 
HIDDEN SUGGESTION 133 
 
 '' Here then is the problem which faces every 
 fair-minded man, to apportion to each of these 
 influences its due weight." ^ 
 
 Four of the above list, namely : {d) The power 
 of personal magnetism in the practitioner, {e) Sugges- 
 tion and auto-suggestion, (/) Faith, {g) Courage, are 
 e\ddently psychic influences. 
 
 While it is difficult to eHminate suggestion from 
 practical therapeutics, and indeed undesirable so to 
 do after ha\ang established therapeutic facts, it is 
 easy by the placebo to eliminate the drug. The 
 practical man takes things as he finds them and 
 makes the best of them. The majority of one's 
 patients believe in the unlimited efficacy of drugs, 
 so the practical disciple of suggestion will recognize 
 in the placebo a pre existent vehicle for sug- 
 gestion. 
 
 There should be as much care, and precise instruc- 
 tions given, as tho one were administering toxic 
 medicine. The patient catches from one's manner 
 a suggestion as to the powerfulness of the drug. 
 
 The late Prof. J. Heber Smith was accustomed to 
 advise : " Until you have studied your case care- 
 fully, use a placebo." 
 
 The late Prof. Conrad Wesselhoeft once remarked 
 of a certain high dilutionist, who always said 
 " There " as he flicked the powder on the patient's 
 tongue, " There was more medicine in the ' There ' 
 than there was in the powder." — 
 
 ' Boston Med. and Surg. Journal, March 20, 1906. 
 
134 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 Dr. Frederick C. Shattuck, professor of clinical 
 medicine, Harvard Medical School, says : " Let us 
 use suggestion as far as is necessary to subserve the 
 best interest of our patients ; but let us strive vdthout 
 ceasing to separate in our own minds mere sugges- 
 tion from actual drug action. Few are capable of 
 either imparting or receiving a suggestion strong 
 enough to prevent a hypodermic of apomorphia from 
 producing active emesis, or zinc sulphate given by 
 the mouth for that matter. But we have all seen 
 cases in which the patient was relieved by a hypo- 
 dermic of plain water, which he or she believed to 
 contain morphia."' 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 The psychic element is present in all therapeutics, 
 even in surgery, refraction, electrotherapy, and 
 massage. 
 
 It is the therapeutic element in Christian Science, 
 mental healing, etc. 
 
 It and not the drug is probably the active agent 
 in most cures by quack medicines. 
 
 // and not the drug is probably the active agent 
 in many medicines prescribed by qualified physi- 
 cians. 
 
 It is impossible to ehminate it from any form of 
 therapeutics. 
 ""The majority of humanity is so constituted that 
 
 ^Boston Med. and Surg. Journal, March 20, 1906. The 
 Value of Drugs in Therapeutics. 
 
PATENT MEDICINES 135 
 
 the " placebo " is the most feasible form of admin- 
 istering suggestion. 
 
 There is another side, however, to the placebo 
 question. Dr. Richard C. Cabot, instructor in 
 medicine, Harvard Medical School, has stated the 
 case very forcibly. 
 
 " Drug therapeutics in cases in which drugs do 
 no good represent either mental fatigue or mental 
 myopia on the part of the physician: sometimes 
 mental fatigue, because the easiest thing one can 
 do for a patient when tired is to write a prescrip- 
 tion; sometimes mental myopia, which prevents 
 the physician from seeing that the habit of gi\ang 
 placebos and of prescribing a medicine for every 
 symptom leads straight to the ' patent medicine ' 
 habit. - 
 
 " Why do people take ' patent medicines ' and 
 expect us to give them a drug for every symptom? 
 They were not bom with a desire for nauseous mix- 
 tures. They acquired it under instruction, ulti- 
 mately our instruction. From the patient's point 
 of view the net result of the doctor's expensive 
 visits is too often a row of medicine bottles on the 
 shelf. The thrifty patient thinks he sees a way to 
 get the net result of the doctor's efforts without so 
 much expense. Why not save the middleman, he 
 says to himself, and get the goods direct ? So arises 
 the habit of going to the apothecaries or to the ' pat- 
 ent medicine ' vendors for a cure. When we stop 
 giving placebos, cease acting as middlemen for drug- 
 
136 PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MEDICINE 
 
 makers, and admit to their rightful place the non- 
 medicinal branches of therapeutics, we shall deal 
 a powerful blow at the * patent medicine ' evil." ' 
 
 Plato says : " Beauty we love best because we see 
 her clearest. Wisdom with bodily eyes we cannot see 
 or terrible had been the loves she had inspired." 
 
 ^Journal of the American Medical Association, June 2, 1906. 
 
 THE END. 
 
Bibliography 
 
 Bellows, Prof. Howard P. : The Test Drug Proving 
 of the O. O. and L. Society. 
 
 Bernheim, H„ M. D. : Suggestive Therapeutics, G. P. 
 Putnam's Sons, New York. 
 
 Bramwell, J. Milne: Hypnotism, Its History, Practice, 
 and Theory, J. B. Lippincott Co., PfTnadelphia. 
 
 DoLBEAR, A;' E., Ph. D. : Matter, Ether, and Motion, 
 Lee & Shepard, Boston. 
 
 Donaldson, Henrv Herbert : The Growth of the 
 Brain, Walter Scott, London, 
 
 Dubois, Prof. Paul: The Psychic Treatment of 
 Nervous Disorders, Funk & Wagnalls Co., New York and 
 London. 
 
 Fiske, John : Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, Houghton, 
 Mifflin Co. 
 
 Foster, M., M. A., M. D., LL. D., F. R. S. E. : A Text 
 Book of Physiology, Lea Bros. & Co., Philadelphia. 
 
 Gregory, William, M. D., F. R. S. E. : Animal Mag- 
 netism, William H. Harrison, London, 1887. 
 
 Hudson, Thomas J., LL.D. : The Law of Mental Med- 
 icine, A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago. 
 
 James, Prof. William, LL.D.: Psychology, Henry 
 Holt & Co., New York. 
 
 Le Conte,« Joseph, LL.D.: Sight, D. Appleton & Co., 
 New York. 
 
 Martin, H. Newell, D. Sc, M. D., M. A., F. R.S.: 
 The Human Body, Henry Holt & Co., New York. 
 137 
 
138 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Mason, R. Osgood, A. M., M. D. : Telepathy and the 
 Subliminal Self, Henry Holt & Co., New York. 
 
 Newcomb, Charles B. : Discovery of a Lost Trail, Lee 
 & Shepard, Boston. 
 
 Preyer, W. : The Senses and the Will ; D. Appleton 
 & Co., New York; The Development of the Intellect, 
 D. Appleton & Co., New York. 
 
 Prince, Morton, M. D. : The Dissociation of a Person- 
 ality, Longmans, Green & Co., New York. 
 
 QuACKENBOSS, JOHN DuNCAN, M. D. : Hypnotism in 
 Mental and Moral Culture, Harper & Bros., New York. 
 
 Sandford, Edmund C: A Course in Experimental 
 Psychology, D. C. Heath & Co., Boston. 
 
 SiDis, Boris, M. A., Ph. D. : The Psychology of Sugges- 
 tion, D. Appleton & Co., New York ; Multiple Personality, 
 D. Appleton & Co., New York ; Psychopathological Re- 
 searches in Mental Dissociation, G. E. Stechert, New York. 
 
 Wetterstrand, Otto Georg: Hypnotism and Its 
 Application to Practical Medicine, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 
 New York. 
 
 Waldstein, Louis, M. D. : The Subconscious Self, 
 Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. 
 
 Whipple, Leander Edmund : The Philosophy of 
 Mental Healing, Metaphysical Publishing Co., New York. 
 
 White, Andrew D., LL. D., L. H, D., Ph. D. : History 
 of the Conflict of Theology and Science in Christendom, 
 D. Appleton & Co., New York. 
 
Index 
 
 Ameba, Sensation of, 3. 
 
 Anesthesia, Hypnotic, 71 ; Esdaile, 72; Author, 83; Earl, 84. 
 Animal sagacity, Burroughs, 6-8 ; James, 9-1 1. 
 Animal magnetism, 96-98. 
 Bellows, Prof. H. P., Drug proving, 130. 
 Bernheim, 74, 117. 
 Bramwell, 75, 84, 92. 
 Blind spots, 55-56. 
 Braid, James, 66, 72, 99, 100, 102. 
 Burroughs, John, Do animals reason ? 6-10. 
 Cabot, Dr. Richard C, Medicine habit, 135. 
 Cerebration accompanied by association of nerve cells, 2. 
 Charcot, Hysteria, 78, loo, loi. 
 Christian Science, 112. 
 Concept, Etymology and definition of, 12. 
 
 Consciousness, Facts of, 3 ; Of environment, 3 ; The moment, 24. 
 Controlled reading device, Author's, 64. 
 Decentration, 31. 
 
 Distance, Estimation of. Monocular, 57 ; Binocular, 62. 
 Dreams, Dissociation, 25 ; Causes of, 25, 26 ; Duration of, 27-28. 
 Dubois, Psychic treatment, 1 21-122. 
 Eddy, Mrs. Mary Baker, 112. 
 Farlow, Christian Science, 112. 
 Fiske, John, Cosmic philosophy, 39. 
 Flint, Natural history of disease, 132. 
 Fuller, Dr. S. C, Toxicology, 130. 
 Genius, The unaccountable, 32-33. 
 Goodno, Prof. William C, Credulity, 129. 
 Gregory, Prof. William, Animal magnetism, 96-98. 
 139 
 
I40 INDEX 
 
 Habit, Founded on instinct, 17; Age of forming, 17; Economic 
 value of, 19; Of reading, 20. 
 
 Hudson, Law of mental medicine, 127. 
 
 Hypnotism — Historical, 66-76; Mesmer, 67-69; Eliotson, 71; Es- 
 daile, 72; Braid, 72, 73; Liebeault, 74 ; Bernheim, 74; Bram- 
 well, 75; Quackenboss, 75; Sidis, 75; Charcot, 100, 102; 
 Wetterstrand, 120, 121. 
 
 Hypnotism — Anesthesia, 71,72, 83, 84 ; Methods, 76-78 ; Suscep- 
 tibility, 78-80; Phenomena, 81-84 ; Theories, 96-107. 
 
 Instinct, Animal, 5 ; Common to man and beast, 6 ; The basis 
 of habit, 14. 
 
 Inverted image and erect vision, 43-54 ; Foster's explanation, 
 43 ; Martin's explanation, 44 ; PouUaine's explanation, 52- 
 53; Souter's explanation, 53-54; Author's explanation, 
 46-50. 
 
 James, Prof. William, 2; Animal sagacity, 9-1 1. 
 
 Ladd, Professor, Definition of psychology, i. 
 
 Memory, Method of cultivating, 21. 
 
 Mesmer, 67-70. 
 
 Metaphysical healing, Newcomb, 113-114; Whipple, 114-116. 
 
 Moment consciousness, Sidis, 24. 
 
 Myers, W. H. H., The subconscious, 103. 
 
 Newcomb, Charles, Metaphysical healer, 113-114. 
 
 Nancy school, 102. 
 
 Patent medicine habit, 135. 
 
 Percy, Prof. F. B., Curative influences, 132. 
 
 Perspective, Stereoscopic, 63. 
 
 Petersen, Dr. Henrik G., A-hypnotic suggestion, 117. 
 
 Prince, Dr. Morton, Dissociation of a personality, 105. 
 
 Preyer, Infantile instincts, 16. 
 
 Protoplasm, Sensation of, 3. 
 
 Psychic element in medicine, 125-135. 
 
 Psychic Research Society, 106. 
 
 Psychotherapeutics, 108-124; Scope of, 120-123. 
 
 Pulse, Hypnotic control of, 85. 
 
 Putnam, Prof. James J., 120. 
 
 Quackenboss, Dr. John D., Intemperance, 121. 
 
 Reading habits, 20. 
 
 Reason in animals, Burroughs, 6-10. 
 
INDEX 141 
 
 Reason, An attribute of man alone, 5. 
 Reason and instinct, 4. 
 
 Reasoning, Deductive, of hypnotic state, 87 ; Inductive, of nor- 
 mal state, 87. 
 Recepts, Definition and examples, 12; Acquired instincts, 13. 
 Reflexes, Congenital and acquired, 15. 
 Relativity, Doctrine of, 36-39. 
 Retinal shadows inverted, 56. 
 Royal Touch, Historical, no, iii. 
 Salpetriere school, 100, 102. 
 Sensation of protoplasm, 3. 
 Shattuck, Prof. F. C, Suggestion, 134. 
 
 Sidis.The moment consciousness, 24 ; Dreams, 25; Decentration, 
 32; Epilepsy, 120; Suggestion, 75, 103. 
 
 Special senses. Evolution of, 35. 
 
 Spencer on heredity, 14. 
 
 Sight, refinement of touch, 42 ; Experimental psychology, 55-63. 
 
 Stereoscope, Phoro-optometer, 64. 
 
 Subconscious cerebration. Examples of, 30. 
 
 Subconscious mind, Habits of, 22 ; Education of, 29-30 ; Myers, 
 103. 
 
 SubUminal cerebration, 23, 32-33, 103. 
 
 Suggestion, Post-hypnotic, 88-90 ; Improper, not accepted, 91- 
 92 ; Criminal, 93. 
 
 Sutherland, Professor, Definition nervous system, 3. 
 
 Tactile sense, precedes others, 41. 
 
 Telepathy, 34. 
 
 Test proving, belladonna, 129-130. 
 
 Thought, not molecular motion, 2. 
 
 Tyndall, Brain and consciousness, 3. 
 
 Vision, Erect with inverted image, 43-54' 
 
 Weismann, Heredity, 14. 
 
 Wetterstrand, Hypnotic practise, 120. 
 
 Whipple, Leander Edmund, Metaphysical healer, 114-116. 
 White, Andrew D., 1 10. 
 
G/ 
 
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