Mlle. J., teacher, thirty-two years old, came to the clinique, Feb. 17, 1887, for chorea, or St. Vitus’s dance. Nearly two weeks previous she had been roughly reprimanded by her superior which had greatly affected her. She could scarcely sleep or eat; she had nausea, pricking sensations in both arms, delirium at times, and now incessant movements, sometimes as frequent as two every second, in both the right arm and leg.
She can neither write nor attend to her school duties. Bernheim hypnotizes her by his method. She goes easily into the somnambulic condition. In three or four minutes, under the influence of suggestion, the movements of the hand and foot cease; upon waking up, they reappear, but less frequently. A second hypnotization, with suggestion, checks them completely.
Feb. 19th.—Says she has been very comfortable; the pricking sensations have ceased. No nervous movements until nine o’clock this morning, when they returned, about ten or eleven every minute. New hypnotization and suggestion, during which the motions cease, and they remain absent when she wakes.
21st.—Has had slight pains and a few choraic movements.
25th.—Is doing well; has no movements; says she is cured.
She returned a few times during the next four months with slight nervous movements, which were promptly relieved by hypnotizing and suggestion.
Bernheim, in his book, “Suggestive Therapeutics,” gives details of over one hundred cases, mostly neuralgic and rheumatic, most of which are described as cured, either quickly or by repeated hypnotization and suggestion.
The Zoist, a journal devoted to psychology and mesmerism nearly fifty years ago, gives several hundred cases of treatment and cure by the early mesmerists, some of them very remarkable, and also many cases of surgical operations of the most severe or dangerous character painlessly done under the anæsthetic influence of mesmerism before the benign effects of ether or chloroform were known. These cases are not often referred to by the modern student of hypnotism. Nevertheless, they constitute a storehouse of well-observed facts which have an immense interest and value.
It will thus be seen that throughout the whole history of hypnotism, under whatever name it has been studied, one of its chief features has been its power to relieve suffering and cure disease; and at the present day, while many physicians who are quite ignorant of its uses, in general terms deny its practicability, few who have any real knowledge of it are so unjust or regardless of facts as to deny its therapeutic effects.