Various popular novelists, such as George Du Maurier in _Trilby_, and
E. F. Benson in _The Image in the Sand_, have taken advantage of the
possibilities which hypnotic marvels offer to the sensational writer,
and have put into circulation a variety of exaggerated ideas. This is
regrettable. Of course the novelist can choose his subject, and can
treat it as he likes; it is the public's fault if it takes fiction for
fact, or allows its notions of fact to be coloured or in any way
influenced by what is avowedly no more than fiction.
But it is certain that it is thus influenced. It is therefore desirable
that the public should be told from time to time exactly what the
scientific position is--what the conclusions are, of those who are
studying the subject in a proper scientific spirit, with no aim save the
finding of truth. This will at least enable the public to discriminate
between fact and fiction, if it wants to.
No doubt the phenomena in question have been often discovered,
forgotten, and rediscovered; but in modern times the movement dates from
Mesmer. Friedrich Anton Mesmer was born about 1733 or 1734. In 1766 he
took his doctor's degree at Vienna, but did not come into public notice
until 1773. In that year he employed in the treatment of patients
certain magnetic plates, the invention of Father Hell, a Jesuit,
professor of astronomy at Vienna.
Further experiments led him to believe that the human body is a kind of
magnet; and that its effluent forces could be employed, like those of
the metal plates, in the cure of disease. Between 1773 and 1778 he
travelled extensively in Europe, with a view to making his discoveries
better known. Also he sent an account of his system to the principal
learned bodies of Europe, including the Royal Society of London, the
Academy of Sciences at Paris, and the Academy at Berlin.
The last alone deigned to reply; they told him his discovery was an
illusion. Apparently they knew all about it, without investigating.
There is no dogmatism so unqualified, no certainty so cocksure, as that
of complete ignorance.
The method at first was probably a system of magnetic passes or
strokings of the diseased part by the hand of the doctor. But, as the
patients increased in number, a more wholesale method had to be devised.
Consequently Mesmer invented the famous "_baquet_". This was a large
tub, filled with bottles of water previously "magnetised" by Mesmer.
The bottles were arranged to radiate from the centre, some of them with
necks pointing away from it and some pointing towards it. They rested
on powdered glass and iron filings, and the tub itself was filled with
water. In short, it was a sort of glorified travesty of a galvanic
battery. From it, long iron rods, jointed and movable, protruded through
holes in the lid. These the patients held, or applied to the region of
their disease, as they sat in a circle round the _baquet_. Mesmer and
his assistants walked about, supplementing the treatment by pointing
with the fingers, or with iron rods, at the diseased parts.
All this may seem, at first sight, very absurd. But the fact remains
that Mesmer certainly wrought cures. And apparently he frequently
succeeded in curing or greatly alleviating, where other doctors had
completely failed. It is no longer possible for any instructed person to
regard Mesmer as a charlatan who knowingly deluded the public for his
own profit. His theories may have been partly mistaken, but his
practical results were indubitable.
It is also worth noting that he treated rich and poor alike, charging
the latter no fee. He was a man of great tenderness and kindness of
heart, devoted to the cause of the sick and suffering; and the accounts
of his patients show the unbounded gratitude which they felt towards
him, and the respect in which he was held.
The orthodox doctors, of course, felt otherwise. They were envious and
jealous of the foreign innovator and his success. And his fame was too
great to allow of his being ignored. Consequently the Royal Society
of Medicine (Paris) appointed a commission to inquire into the new
treatment. The finding, of course, was adverse. The investigators could
not deny the cures, but they fell back on the recuperative force of
nature (_vis medicatrix naturae_) and denied that Mesmer's treatment
caused the cure.
Obviously, Mesmer, having treated his patients, could not prove that
they would not have recovered if he had _not_ treated them; so his
critics had a strong position. But, on the other hand, neither can an
orthodox doctor prove that _his_ cures are due to _his_ treatment. If it
is _vis medicatrix naturae_ in one case, it may be the same in the other.
Modern medicine is more and more coming to this conclusion--is
abandoning drugging as it abandoned bleeding and cautery, and is leaving
the patient to nature. This is a significant fact.
But there is good reason to believe that Mesmer's treatment was a real
factor in his cures, for in many cases the patient had been treated by
orthodox methods for years without effect. Perhaps, as the doctors said,
it was "only the recuperative force of Nature", but if the doctors could
not set that force to work, and Mesmer somehow could, he is just as much
entitled to the credit of the cure as if he had done it by bleeding or
drugging. However, by one sort of persecution or another, he was driven
out of Paris, and more or less discredited. After a visit to England, he
retired to Switzerland, where he lived in obscurity until his death in
1815.
The method was kept alive by various disciples, such as the Marquis de
Puysegur, Dupotet, Deleuze, and many more, but in an amateurish sort of
way. The first-named found that in one of his patients he could induce
a trance state which showed peculiar features. In trance, the man knew
all that he knew when awake, but when awake he knew nothing of what had
happened in trance. This second condition thus seemed to be equivalent
to an enlargement of personality.
Both in England and France the medical side came to the front again,
in the hands of Braid (a Manchester surgeon who first used the term
"hypnotism", from Greek _hypnos_, sleep, and whose book _Neurypnology,
or the Rationale of Nervous Sleep_ was published in 1843), Liebeault,
Bernheim, Elliotson, and Esdaile.
Elliotson and Esdaile still believed in a magnetic effluence, but the
idea was given up by Braid and the "Nancy school" (the investigators
who followed the lines of Liebeault of Nancy), for it was found that
patients could be hypnotised without passes or strokings or any
manipulation. Braid told his patients to gaze fixedly at a bright
object, _e.g._, his lancet. Liebeault produced sleep by talking
soothingly or commandingly filling the patient's mind with the idea
of sleep. In some cases it was found that patients could hypnotise
themselves by an effort of will (this was confirmed more recently by Dr
Wingfield's experiments with athletic undergraduates at Cambridge), and
this disposed of the hitherto supposedly necessary "magnetic effluence"
from the operator.
The most modern opinion is pretty much the same. Dr Tuckey, who learnt
his method from Liebeault himself, and who practised for twenty years in
the West End of London, is convinced that the whole thing is suggestion.
So is Dr Bramwell, who shares with Dr Tuckey the leading position among
hypnotic practitioners in England. The latter, it may be remarked, was
the first qualified medical man to write an important book on the
subject in English, after Braid.
The tendency now is to give suggestions without attempting to induce
actual trance. It is found with many patients that if they will make
their minds passive and receptive, listening to the doctor's suggestions
in an absent-minded sort of way, those suggestions--that the health
shall improve and the specified symptoms disappear--are carried out. The
explanation of this is "wrapped in mystery". No one knows exactly how it
comes about. But it seems to be somewhat thus:
The complicated happenings within our bodies, such as the chemical
phenomena known as digestion and the physical phenomena such as blood
circulation and contraction of involuntary muscles, seem to imply
intelligence, though that intelligence is not part of the conscious
mind, for we do not consciously direct the processes. They go on all
the same--for example--when we are asleep. Presumably, then, there is a
mental Something in us, which never sleeps, and which runs the organic
machinery. If we could get at this Something, and give it instructions,
a part of the machinery which is working wrongly might get attended to
and put right. Unfortunately, the ordinary consciousness is in the way.
We cannot get at the mechanic in the mill, because we have to go through
the office, and the managing director keeps us talking.
Well, in hypnotic trance, or even in the preoccupied "absent-minded"
state, we get past the managing director--who is asleep or attending to
something else--into the mill. We get at the man who really attends to
the machinery. We get past the normal consciousness, and can give our
orders to the "subconscious" or "subliminal"--which means "below the
threshold". In Myers' phrase, suggestion is a "successful appeal to the
subliminal self", but exactly how it comes about, and why the patient
usually cannot do it for himself but has to have the suggestion
administered by a doctor, we do not know.
Of course the word "suggestion" does not really explain anything. It
is a word employed to cover our ignorance. Suggestive methods are as
empirical as Mesmer's. In each case a successful appeal is made to the
recuperative forces of nature, _vis medicatrix naturae_; but exactly how
or why suggestion does it, we know no more--or hardly any more--than we
know how and why Mesmer's _baquet_ did it. The fact remains, however,
that the thing is done. What we lack is only a satisfactory theory.
At one time it was thought that only functional disorders could be
relieved. But it is now recognised that the line between functional
and organic is an arbitrary one. If we cannot find definite organic
change in tissue, we call the ailment functional; but nevertheless
some change there must be, though microscopic or unreachable.
Consequently even functional disorders are at bottom organic; and,
though of course grave lesions produce the gravest disorders, there is
no _a priori_ impossibility in a hypnotic cure of even the most radical
tissue-degeneration.
However, as a matter of practical fact, the "mechanic" has his
limitations, like the normal consciousness. He is not omnipotent.
Consequently we cannot be sure of being able to stimulate him to the
extent of a cure. It depends on his knowledge and power. But he can
always do something, if we can get at him. The chief difficulty is that
in many people he is inaccessible.
For instance, I have many times submitted myself to the treatment of
Dr Tuckey and another medical friend, without effect. I have each time
tried my best to help, making my mind as passive as I could; for I was
sure that if a suggestible stage could be reached, some troublesome
heart symptoms and insomnia could be alleviated. But I was never
able to reach a state even approaching hypnosis. I suppose my normal
consciousness could not put itself sufficiently to sleep. Being
interested in the scientific aspect of the subject, my consciousness
watched the process and analysed its own sensations, instead of
"letting go" and subsiding out of the way.
As to the proportion of susceptible persons, observers differ.
Wetterstrand and Vogt hold that all sane and healthy people are
hypnotisable, and Dr Bramwell's results among strong farm labourers at
Goole support that view. Patients with nervous ailments are difficult
to hypnotise; out of one hundred such cases in his London practice, Dr
Bramwell only influenced eighty. This is the percentage of susceptibles
found by Drs Tuckey and Bernheim also.
The insane are usually unhypnotisable, probably because of their
inability to concentrate their attention. Out of the 80 per cent. of
sane susceptibles, only a small proportion go off into hypnotic sleep;
ten according to Tuckey, rather more according to the experience of
Bramwell, Forel, and Vogt. Most of the susceptible, however, though
retaining consciousness, may be deprived of muscular control. For
example, if told that they cannot open their eyes, they find that
it is so.
The various "stages" of hypnosis shade gradually into each other, and
classifications are not much good. Charcot's three stages of lethargy,
catalepsy, and somnambulism are now discredited as true stages. In good
subjects they are producible at will, and as observed at the Salpetriere
they were almost certainly due to training.
I have no space for the quoting of detailed medical cases, but it is
desirable to emphasise the practical facts and to make the subject
as concrete as possible to the reader, so I will quote just one, as
illustration, from Dr Bramwell's contribution to _Proceedings of the
Society for Psychical Research_, vol. xiv, page 99.
"Neurasthenia; suicidal tendencies. Mr D----, aged 34, 1890; barrister.
Formerly strong and athletic. Health began to fail in 1877, after
typhoid fever. Abandoned work in 1882, and for eight years was a chronic
invalid. Anaemic, dyspeptic, sleepless, depressed. Unable to walk a
hundred yards without severe suffering. Constant medical treatment,
including six months' rest in bed, without benefit. He was hypnotised
from June 2 to September 20, 1890. By the end of July all morbid
symptoms disappeared, and he amused himself by working on a farm. He can
now walk forty miles a day without undue fatigue." Similar cases are
now being recorded in the military hospitals. Soldiers make excellent
"subjects".
It has been much debated whether a hypnotised person could be made to
commit a crime. Probably not; it is difficult to be quite sure, but the
evidence is on the negative side. True, a hypnotised subject will put
sugar which he has been told is arsenic into his mother's tea, but his
inner self probably knows well enough that it is only sugar. On the
other hand, it is certain that a hypnotiser may obtain a remarkable
amount of control over specially sensitive subjects, particularly by
repeated hypnotisations.
I have seen hypnotised subjects who seemed almost perfect automata,
obeying orders as mechanically as if they had no will of their own left.
Certainly no one, either man or woman, but particularly the latter,
should submit himself or herself to hypnotic treatment except by a
qualified person in whom full trust can be reposed. And, even then, in
the case of a woman patient, it is well for a third person to be
present.
But the stories of the novelists, about subjugated wills, hypnotising
from a distance, and all the rest of it, are quite without adequate
foundation in fact. There is very little evidence in support of hypnosis
produced at a distance, and in the one case where it did seem to occur
there had been repeated hypnotisations of the ordinary kind, by which a
sort of telepathic rapport was perhaps established (Myers' _Human
Personality_, vol. i, page 524).
Hypnotism against the will is a myth; except perhaps in here and there a
backboneless person who could be influenced any way, without hypnosis or
anything of the kind. The Chicago pamphleteer who wants to teach us how
to get on in business by developing a "hypnotic eye" is merely after
dollars. It is all bunkum.
There is a sense, however, in which hypnotic treatment can be a help in
education and in strengthening the character. Backward and lazy children
could probably be improved, and I know cases in which sleep-walking and
other bad habits have been cured by suggestion. From this it is but a
step to dipsomania, which can often be cured. Dr Tuckey reports seventy
cures out of two hundred cases.
F. W. H. Myers, to whose genius doctors as well as psychologists owe
their first scientific conceptions in this domain, was extremely
optimistic here. He held that though we cannot expect to manufacture
saints, any more than we can manufacture geniuses, there is nevertheless
enough evidence to show that great things could be done.
"If the subject is hypnotisable, and if hypnotic suggestion be applied
with sufficient persistency and skill, no depth of previous baseness
and foulness need prevent the man or woman whom we charge with 'moral
insanity', or stamp as a 'criminal-born', from rising into a state where
he or she can work steadily and render services useful to the community"
(_Human Personality_, vol. i, page 199). Experiments on hypnotic lines
ought certainly to be carried out in our prisons and reformatories. As
to the formerly alleged dangers of such experimentation--dangers of
hysteria, etc., alleged by the Charcot school which is now seen to have
been quite on a wrong tack--they do not exist, if the operator knows his
business.
Says Professor Forel: "Liebeault, Bernheim, Wetterstrand, Van Eeden,
De Jong, Moll, I myself, and the other followers of the Nancy school,
declare categorically that, although we have seen many thousands of
hypnotised persons, we have never observed a single case of mental or
bodily harm caused by hypnosis, but, on the contrary, have seen many
cases of illness relieved or cured by it". Dr Bramwell fully endorses
this, saying emphatically that he has "never seen an unpleasant symptom,
even of the most trivial nature, follow the skilled induction of
hypnosis" (_Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol.
xii, page 209).
A proof that _intellectual_ powers outside the normal consciousness
may be tapped by appropriate methods is afforded by the remarkable
experiments of Dr Bramwell, on the appreciation of time by somnambules.
He ordered a hypnotised subject to carry out, after arousal, some
trivial action, such as making a cross on a piece of paper, at the end
of a specified period of time, reckoning from the moment of waking.
In the waking state, the patient knew nothing of the order; but a
subliminal mental stratum knew, and watched the time, making the subject
carry out the order when it fell due.
The period varied from a few minutes to several months, and it was
stated in various ways, _e.g._ on one occasion Dr Bramwell ordered the
action to be carried out in "24 hours and 2880 minutes". The order was
given at 3.45 P.M. on December 18, and it was carried out correctly at
3.45 P.M. on December 21. In other experiments, the periods given were
4,417, 8,650, 8,680, 8,700, 10,070, 11,470 minutes.
All were correctly timed by the subliminal stratum, the action being
promptly carried out at the due moment. In the waking state the patient
was quite incapable--as most of us would be--of calculating mentally
when the periods would elapse. But the hypnotic stratum could do it,
and this shows that there are intellectual powers which lie outside
the field of the normal consciousness. The argument could be further
supported by the feats of "calculating boys", who can sometimes solve
the most complicated arithmetical problems, without knowing how they do
it. They let the problem sink in, and the answer is shot up presently,
like the cooked pudding in the geyser.
But these things are still in their infancy. Psychology is working at
the subject, but we do not yet know enough to enable us to venture
far in the direction of practical application of hypnotic methods in
education. It seems likely, however, that further investigation will
yield knowledge which may be of inestimable practical value in the
training of minds, as well as in the curing of mental and bodily
disease.