How to hypnotize

PRICE 5 CENTS.
The Science of Controlling the Minds of Others.
MULTUM IN PARVO LIBRARY.
Entered at Boston Post Office as second class matter. Published by A. B. Courtney, Room 74, 45 Milk Street, Boston.
Vol. 3.
April, 1896. Published Monthly.
No. 28
Subscription Price, 50 Cents Per Year.
This little work has been written in a hurry amid the worry and pressure of professional duties. It has also been ruthlessly cut down to compress it within the space allotted by the publisher. Neither profundity of matter, nor perfection of style is aimed at. It is written in every-day language, and may limp a little here and there. For none of these faults do I offer an apology to my readers. I ask them to take it as it is—as something more than a mere introduction to a most interesting and important subject.
It is generally believed that only weak-minded, soft , and hysterical persons can be successfully mesmerized—that persons of robust health, will, and character cannot be so affected. There never was a greater mistake. Reichenbach for many years selected his sensitives from delicate and hysterical persons while pursuing investigations into odylic force. He, however, soon discovered his error, and found that healthy men and women made the best sensitives for his investigation. Dr. Braid fell into the same error.
Charcot and others, including the whole range of recent hypnotists, have revived this error. The experience of all mesmerists—past and present—worthy of the name is this: the healthier and finer the organization, the more perfect and exalted the manifestations.
There are relative conditions of superiority and inferiority in mesmerists and sensitives only. I have mesmerized men who were my superiors in every way—health, strength of body and mind—the only conditions of difference consisting of this important fact, that for the time being they approached the subject of Mesmerism with open minds—a desire to get at truth—and sat down with a non-resistant attitude of mind, perfectly willing to be mesmerized, and to record their own symptoms in connection therewith, if possible. In the majority of cases the seventh or eighth sitting suffices to overcome all difficulties, and induce sleep in the most healthy and vigorous. There have, however, been exceptions to this. Don’t waste time with a man who makes a bet through pride, vanity, or ignorance, that he can’t be mesmerized. Don’t waste health and energy trying to influence him just then. His manner and words indicate that he will arouse all his faculties to resist you, presenting thereby positive and antagonistic mental conditions for you to overcome. Men have done this. If you really want to mesmerize them the best plan is to throw them off their guard as to your intentions. But as soon as their opposition is cooled down a little, proceed gently and steadily to impress them with what Mesmerism has done and can do. Thus gradually and surely psychologize them, leading up to and preparing them for the final coup . In the end it may not be so difficult to mesmerize them as they at first imagined. The persistent man of business, the advocate of certain views—temperance, anti-slavery, or what not—the man with “a mission,” the doctor of medicine, preacher, and lover, all adopt this method more or less unconsciously, because naturally; the mesmerist, detecting the law, applies it consciously—that is all.