Another circumstance which handicaps the enthusiastic votaries of each of the schools consists in the tendency of all reformers to claim too much for their systems. Forgetting that they have to deal with a generation of people with a hereditary belief in the power of medicines to cure disease, a people whose habits of life and thought are materialistic to the last degree, they expect to change that belief instantaneously, and cause the new method to take the place of the old in all cases and under all circumstances. In other words, they expect to cure all diseases by mental methods alone, and they seek to prohibit their patients from employing any other physician or using any medicines whatever. This is wrong in theory and often dangerous in practice. It may be true, and doubtless is, that one great source of the power of drugs to heal disease is attributable to the mental impression created upon the mind of the patient at the time the drug is administered. This being true, it follows that when a patient believes in drugs, drugs should be administered. If Christian science or any other mental method of healing can then be made available as an auxiliary, it should be employed. But this is just what the ultra-reformers refuse to do. They insist upon the discharge of the family physician, and the destruction of all the medicines in the house, before they will undertake to effect a cure by mental processes. It frequently happens that the patient is not sufficiently well grounded in the new faith, or is afflicted with some disease not readily reached by mental processes, and dies on their hands, when perhaps he might have been saved by the combined efforts of the family doctor and the Christian scientist. Be that as it may, when the patient dies under such circumstances, the Christian scientist must needs bear the brunt of popular condemnation. It goes without saying that one such case does more to retard the progress of mental therapeutics in popular estimation than a thousand miraculous cures can do to promote it. Again, much harm is done to the cause of mental healing by claiming for it too wide a field of usefulness. Theoretically, all the diseases which flesh is heir to are curable by mental processes. Practically, the range of its usefulness is comparatively limited. The lines of its field are not clearly defined, however, for the reason that so much depends on the idiosyncrasies of each individual patient. A disease which can be cured in one case refuses to yield in another, the mental attitudes of the patients not being the same. Besides, the mental environment of the patient has much to do with his amenability to control by mental processes. In an atmosphere of incredulity, doubt, and prejudice, a patient stands little chance of being benefited, however strong may be his own faith in mental therapeutics. Every doubt existing in the minds of those surrounding him is inevitably conveyed telepathically to his subjective mind, and operates as an adverse suggestion of irresistible potentiality. It requires a very strong will, perfect faith, and constant affirmative auto-suggestion on the part of the patient to overcome the adverse influence of an environment of incredulity and doubt, even though no word of that doubt is expressed in presence of the patient. It goes without saying that it is next to impossible for a sick person to possess the necessary mental force to overcome such adverse conditions. Obviously, the mental healer who undertakes a case under such circumstances, procures the discharge of the family physician, and prohibits the patient from using medicines, assumes a very grave responsibility, and does so at the risk of the patient's life and his own reputation.
Success in mental healing depends upon proper mental conditions, just as success in healing by physical agencies depends upon proper physical conditions. This is a self-evident proposition, which the average mental healer is slow to understand and appreciate.
The success of the physician depends as largely upon his knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of his patient, his personal habits, his mode of living, his susceptibility to the influence of medicines, etc., as upon a correct diagnosis and medicinal treatment of the disease. In like manner the success of the mental healer depends largely upon his knowledge of his patient's habits of thought, his beliefs, his prejudices, and, above all, his mental environment.
These remarks apply to all methods of mental healing; and, for the purposes of this book, Christian science may be taken as a representative of all systems of healing by mental suggestion, as distinguished from oral suggestion.
Hypnotism, as practised by the Nancy school, may stand as the representative of mental treatment of disease by purely oral suggestion. The following extract from Professor Bernheim's able work on "Suggestive Therapeutics" (chapter i.) embraces the essential features of the methods of inducing sleep practised by that school:
"I begin by saying to the patient that I believe benefit is to be derived from the use of suggestive therapeutics; that it is possible to cure or to relieve him by hypnotism; that there is nothing either hurtful or strange about it; that it is an ordinary sleep, or torpor, which can be induced in every one, and that this quiet, beneficial condition restores the equilibrium of the nervous system, etc. If necessary, I hypnotize one or two subjects in his presence, in order to show him that there is nothing painful in this condition, and that it is not accompanied with any unusual sensation. When I have thus banished from his mind the idea of magnetism and the somewhat mysterious fear that attaches to that unknown condition, above all when he has seen patients cured or benefited by the means in question, he is no longer suspicious, but gives himself up. Then I say, 'Look at me, and think of nothing but sleep. Your eyelids begin to feel heavy, your eyes tired. They begin to wink, they are getting moist, you cannot see distinctly. They are closed.' Some patients close their eyes and are asleep immediately. With others, I have to repeat, lay more stress on what I say, and even make gestures. It makes little difference what sort of gesture is made. I hold two fingers of my right hand before the patient's eyes and ask him to look at them, or pass both hands several times before his eyes, or persuade him to fix his eyes upon mine, endeavoring, at the same time, to concentrate his attention upon the idea of sleep. I say, 'Your lids are closing, you cannot open them again. Your arms feel heavy, so do your legs. You cannot feel anything. Your hands are motionless. You see nothing, you are going to sleep.' And I add, in a commanding tone, 'Sleep.' This word often turns the balance. The eyes close, and the patient sleeps, or is at least influenced. I use the word 'sleep,' in order to obtain as far as possible over the patients a suggestive influence which shall bring about sleep, or a state closely approaching it; for sleep, properly so called, does not always occur. If the patients have no inclination to sleep, and show no drowsiness, I take care to say that sleep is not essential; that the hypnotic influence, whence comes the benefit, may exist without sleep; that many patients are hypnotized, although they do not sleep.
"If the patient does not shut his eyes or keep them shut, I do not require them to be fixed on mine, or on my fingers, for any length of time, for it sometimes happens that they remain wide open indefinitely, and instead of the idea of sleep being conceived, only a rigid fixation of the eyes results. In this case, closure of the eyes by the operator succeeds better. After keeping them fixed one or two minutes, I push the eyelids down, or stretch them slowly over the eyes, gradually closing them more and more, and so imitating the process of natural sleep. Finally, I keep them closed, repeating the suggestion, 'Your lids are stuck together, you cannot open them. The need of sleep becomes greater and greater, you can no longer resist.' I lower my voice gradually, repeating the command, 'Sleep,' and it is very seldom that more than three minutes pass before sleep or some degree of hypnotic influence is obtained. It is sleep by suggestion,—a type of sleep which I insinuate into the brain.
"Passes or gazing at the eyes or fingers of the operator are only useful in concentrating the attention; they are not absolutely essential.
"As soon as they are able to pay attention and understand, children are, as a rule, very quickly and very easily hypnotized. It often suffices to close their eyes, to hold them shut a few moments, to tell them to sleep, and then to state that they are asleep.
"Some adults go to sleep just as readily by simple closure of the eyes. I often proceed immediately, without making use of passes or fixation, by shutting the eyelids, gently holding them closed, asking the patient to keep them together, and suggesting at the same time the phenomena of sleep. Some of them fall rapidly into a more or less deep sleep. Others offer more resistance. I sometimes succeed by keeping the eyes closed for some time, commanding silence and quiet, talking continuously, and repeating the same formulas: 'You feel a sort of drowsiness, a torpor; your arms and legs are motionless. Your eyelids are warm. Your nervous system is quiet; you have no will. Your eyes remain closed. Sleep is coming.' etc. After keeping up this auditory suggestion for several minutes, I remove my fingers. The eyes remain closed. I raise the patient's arms; they remain uplifted. We have induced cataleptic sleep."
Having succeeded in inducing sleep, or getting the patient in a passive and receptive condition, the operator then proceeds to suggest the idea of recovery from the disease with which he is afflicted. On this subject the author speaks as follows:—
"The patient is put to sleep by means of suggestion; that is, by making the idea of sleep penetrate the mind. He is treated by means of suggestion; that is, by making the idea of cure penetrate the mind. The subject being hypnotized, M. Liébault's method consists in affirming in a loud voice the disappearance of his symptoms.
"We try to make him believe that these symptoms no longer exist, or that they will disappear, the pain will vanish; that the feeling will come back to his limbs; that the muscular strength will increase; and that his appetite will come back. We profit by the special psychical receptivity created by the hypnosis, by the cerebral docility, by the exalted ideo-motor, ideo-sensitive, ideo-sensorial reflex activity, in order to provoke useful reflexes, to persuade the brain to do what it can to transform the accepted idea into reality.
"Such is the method of therapeutic-suggestion of which M. Liébault is the founder. He was the first clearly to establish that the cures obtained by the old magnetizers, and even by Braid's hypnotic operations, are not the work either of a mysterious fluid or of physiological modifications due to special manipulations, but the work of suggestion alone. The whole system of magnetic medicine is only the medicine of the imagination; the imagination is put into such a condition by the hypnosis that it cannot escape from the suggestion.
"M. Liébault's method was ignored a long time, even by the physicians at Nancy. In 1884 Charles Richet was satisfied to say that magnetism often has advantages, that it calms nervous agitation, and that it may cure or benefit certain insomnias.
"Since 1882 I have experimented with the suggestive method which I have seen used by M. Liébault, though timidly at first, and without any confidence. To-day it is daily used in my clinic; I practise it before my students; perhaps no day passes in which I do not show them some functional trouble, pain, paresis, uneasiness, insomnia, either moderated or instantly suppressed by suggestion.
"For example: a child is brought to me with a pain like muscular rheumatism in its arm, dating back four or five days. The arm is painful to pressure; the child cannot lift it to its head. I say to him, 'Shut your eyes, my child, and go to sleep.' I hold his eyelids closed, and go on talking to him. 'You are asleep, and you will keep on sleeping until I tell you to wake up. You are sleeping very well, as if you were in your bed. You are perfectly well and comfortable; your arms and legs and your whole body are asleep, and you cannot move.' I take my fingers off his eyelids, and they remain closed; I put his arms up, and they remain so. Then, touching the painful arm, I say, 'The pain has gone away. You have no more pain anywhere; you can move your arm without any pain; and when you wake up you will not feel any more pain. It will not come back any more.' In order to increase the force of the suggestion by embodying it, so to speak, in a material sensation, following M. Liébault's example I suggest a feeling of warmth loco dolente. The heat takes the place of the pain. I say to the child, 'You feel that your arm is warm; the warmth increases, and you have no more pain.'
"I wake the child in a few minutes; he remembers nothing; the sleep has been profound. The pain has almost completely disappeared; the child lifts the arm easily to his head. I see the father on the days following: he is the postman who brings my letters. He tells me that the pain has disappeared completely, and there has been no return of it.
"Here, again, is a man twenty-six years old, a workman in the foundries. For a year he has experienced a painful feeling of constriction over the epigastrium, also a pain in the corresponding region of the back, which was the result of an effort made in bending an iron bar. The sensation is continuous, and increases when he has worked for some hours. For six months he has been able to sleep only by pressing his epigastrium with his hand. I hypnotize him. In the first séance I can induce only simple drowsiness; he wakes spontaneously; the pain continues. I hypnotize him a second time, telling him that he will sleep more deeply, and that he will remember nothing when he wakes. Catalepsy is not present. I wake him in a few minutes; he does not remember that I spoke to him, that I assured him that the pain had disappeared. It has completely disappeared; he no longer feels any constriction. I do not know whether it has reappeared."[29]
The foregoing extracts present the gist of the methods employed by the Nancy school of hypnotism. The hypnotic condition is induced solely by oral suggestion, and the disease is removed by the same means. There can be no doubt of the efficacy of the method, thousands of successful experiments having been made by the author and his colleagues. These experiments have demonstrated the existence of a power in man to control by purely mental processes,—the functions and conditions of the human body. They have thus laid the foundation of a system of mental therapeutics which must eventually prove of great value to mankind. But they have done more. They have demonstrated a principle which reaches out far beyond the realm of therapeutics, and covers all the vast field of psychological research. They have demonstrated the constant amenability of the subjective mind to control by the power of suggestion. It is not surprising that those who have discovered this great principle should insist upon its applicability to every phenomenon within the range of their investigations; but it is strange that they should fail to recognize a co-ordinate power governed by the same law, within the same field of operations. Yet this is true of the modern scientific school of hypnotism to-day. The Nancy school believes in the power of suggestion, but confines its faith to oral suggestion. Having demonstrated that oral suggestion is efficacious in the production of psychic phenomena, they hold that mental suggestion has no power in the same direction. Having demonstrated that certain phenomena can be induced independently of any so-called fluidic emanation or effluence from the hypnotist, they hold that no fluidic emanation is possible. These conclusions are not only illogical, they are demonstrably incorrect. The Christian scientists are constantly demonstrating the potency of purely telepathic suggestion by what they denominate "absent treatment;" i.e., treatment of sick persons without the knowledge of the patients. That there is a power emanating from the operator who hypnotizes by means of mesmeric passes, seems to be very well authenticated by the experiments recorded by the old mesmerists. It must be admitted, however, that many of their experiments do not conclusively prove anything, for the reason that they were made before suggestion as a constant factor in hypnotism had been demonstrated. Recent experiments by members of the London Society for Psychical Research have, however, now placed that question beyond a doubt. Their methods of investigation are purely scientific, and were made with a full knowledge and appreciation of the principle of suggestion, and of the distinction between mesmerism and hypnotism.