HYPNOTISED STUDENTS

Evening Star, Issue 20022, 13 November 1928, Page 8

HYPNOTISED STUDENTS

EXPERIMENTS AT CAMBRIDGE How young Cambridge men had been hypnotised before examinations and had then passed them with flying colours was told in a lecture on hypnotism to theh British Association by Dr N. Buchanan, of Cambridge. “ We got people before an examination and hypnotised them as deeply as possible and told them they would bo able to do everything they wanted to do more easily and accurately and quickly than ever before. I treated people twice a week for two or three months before the examination. These people had apparently great increase of visual imagery, and with one exception, they all got through their examination. (Laughter and applause.) “ A person hypnotised to-day could ho told to send you a postcard at 3 o’clock to-morrow—when the trance would have been lifted—and he would send the card hut forget that he had done so immediately afterwards. I have made people do many strange things like that, but they would not do some tilings against their better nature, such as kill someone. Under hypnosis a person could he made to improvise much more brilliantly on musical instruments than he ever could in a normal condition. People who were blind or deaf or paralysed in sonic functional way could be. permanently cured. Scores of soldiers blinded through shell shock had been cured. In such cases they could ,not see because they made no actual effort to do so, tho thought of blindness being uppermost in their minds, and this could be eradicated by hypnosis. Any person could hypnotise himself to a certain extent by making his two eyes converge and turning them upwards. A cord was held just above the nose when this was done, and after n. short time the eyes became so tired that the eyelids sliut and for some time could not be reopened. “To hypnotise another person he should be told to relax his muscles: two fingers should then be _ moved slowly backwards and forwards in front of his eyes, and it should be continually suggested that he was going to sleep. If a person was told that he could hear only tho hpynotist talking to him ‘he would ignore him. ‘Nobody could be hypnotised against his will. In other cases needles and pins could be stuck in a patient’s skin, and blood might flow, but he would feel no pain. _ “ A man could lie made to hold his arm high above his head for half an hour in the most strained position without feeling it. Normally he could not do it. Men could be suspended by tho heels on one chair and the back of the neck on another, and they would remain rigid even with pressure on their stomachs. Stammerers were often cured, and it was probably one of the best methods of treating drug and alcoholism obsessions.