HYPNOTISM.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 114, 6 July 1911, Page 7

HYPNOTISM.

The science of hypnotism scorns to be making wonderful progress in its application to the treatment of mental and physical ailments. On the Continent of Europe its efficiency as a curative agent has long been acknowledged. But British people are uortoriously slow in accepting new ideas or adopting new methods, and it is hardly sin prising, therefore, to find that the mysterious “ism” is only now beginning to attract serious attention in Great Britain. To Dr. I*d- ! i .'it con belongs the credit of first mailing known in Britain the extraordinary power of hypnotism as a healing* influence, but prejudice based on ignorance is hard to overcome, and so great was the opposition Dr. 131iiotson encountered that lie died literally of a broken heart. Even now many people so.c.i to regard hypnotism as of Satanic origin, and it was in the hope of disabusing the public mind that ii contributor to a xipme magazine recently visited the British Hospital for Mental Diseases in London. He was told that hypnotism, through a medium, is probably powerless to cure organic disease, but bo saw several patients under treatment, including a woman suffering from deafness and distressing head-noises. The case was a bad one, but had been far worse before hypnotism was tried. The medical super in,ton dent, the famous Dr. Forbes Winslow, was sanguine or effecting a complete cure. On one point the visitor particularly desired enlightenment, “Could anyone lio hypnotised?” he asked. “Not against their will,” was the reassuring reply of the doctor, who added, “Neither is the power of hypnotising given to evervone.” A common belief, and one largely responsible for the bitter hostility .extended.,to; hypnotism, is that the power can be misused to make people commit terrible crimes. Touching this point, the doctor thinks that a horn criminal might ho made to commit crime, hut not persons of good moral tendencies. He does not attempt to deny, however, tho frightful danger of hypnotism in the hands of unscrupulous persons, although lie does not believe it is possible to hypnotise persons at a distance. Thus does a, favourite .device of the novelist tumble to pieces at the touch of science.