Hypnotism: Its History, Practice and Theory |
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is due to sin, that God is averse to sin and will heal those who believe in
Him. The faith-healer sits on another chair, and is supposed to concentrate
her mind on similar thoughts. Faith-healing is also used in distant treatment.
There are many analogies for the latter. Well mentions the case of a doctor
who lived in a large town in Saxony, and who cured many patients by strictly
ordering them to go to bed at a certain hour, at the same time telling them
that they would perspire profusely and that this would cure them. Numerous other cases that belong here could be mentioned, and they would show that many a phenomenon observed in the domain of medicine has first had true light thrown on it by hypnotism. With every one of the workers of miracles of whom we hear from time to time—Pastor Kneipp's is a recent case—mental action plays an extraordinarily great part. Science, doctors, and the sick have long enough suffered from the mental factors in disease being underrated. 2. Psycho-therapeutics.—I have shown in the foregoing that, apart from the practical uses to which it may be put, hypnotism has become of importance to medicine, inasmuch as it has shed light on many branches of theoretical medicine. But this does not exhaust its importance in medicine. It has, on the contrary, acquired an almost fundamental significance in a certain direction by bringing into prominence a new branch of the healing art—viz., psycho-therapeutics, and although this branch has not yet attained full development its progress has been so great that its extraordinary importance is recognized. In this respect hypnosis has become of much greater importance to medical practice than its direct application would justify. We must carefully distinguish between psycho-therapeutics and hypnotic treatment, for the latter is but a small part of the former. But hypnotism has given us the key to psycho-therapeutics by showing us how powerfully mental influences may operate on human beings. Appreciable light was first shed on the importance of mental influence by hypnotic experiments; for until susceptibility to such influence had been demonstrated in the case of hypnotic suggestion, it was not understood that many forms of suggestion prove effective even without hypnosis. 358 HYPNOTISM. General suggestive therapeutics was thus evolved from the method of treatment
by means of hypnotic suggestion. But it was gradually recognized that so far
from suggestion exhausting the possibilities of psycho-therapeutic influence
there are other mental remedies to be considered. The psycho-therapeutics of
to-day is a development of suggestive therapeutics just as the latter is of
hypnotism. |
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