p. 9 | MEDICAL HYPNOTISM

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 3, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 31.

MEDICAL HYPNOTISM.

While the country is being flooded with the advertisements of the teachers of hypnotism, and thousands are taking up the study, we would call attention to the dangerous nature of the thing itself. It is true that hypnotism is being practised by a portion of the medical profession at the present time, and it is of that phase alone we wish to speak.

Dr. L. Menard, of Paris, who employs hypnosis in the treatment of certain diseases, and advocates its employment, makes the following admission in regard to its dangerous power:—

By cultivating the tendency to passivity and credulity, which is at the bottom of the hypnotic state, we cause in the subject a sort of habitual automatism, a need for direction, which is injurious. Neuropaths are not apt to be self-controlled; we should strengthen in them the will power, the power of control, and diminish the tendency to impulsive acts. Just the opposite is done in hypnotizing them. This makes them still less reasonable. The morbid symptom is sometimes cured, but the psychic state is not bettered.

Yet knowing this, the same physician employs hypnosis in what he designates as an indirect method on the very patients who are detrimentally influenced by the dangerous hypnotic power. The attempt to arrest or cure a malady by a method which would drag the mind and inclination at the chariot wheels of the hypnotizer is but the displacing of a physical ill by a mental one of much graver nature. Who surrenders his mind and will to another has opened the citadel of his soul to the soul’s most malignant adversary.

One physician who has been practising hypnotism for years, and has been delivering lectures upon the subject in different parts of the country walked into Bellevue Hospital, New York, recently and became a voluntary patient in the psychopathic ward. He was in good health in every way except that he had become a victim of the dangerous practise in which he had indulged. He had come to be possessed with the fear that he would hypnotize himself, and being unable to arouse himself, an autopsy would be performed upon him, or he would be buried alive. The thing was possible, and he had practised hypnotism so long that he felt it extremely probable with him. He was neither despondent nor insane; but admitted that he was on the verge of total collapse through fear of his own hypnotic powers.

There is no denying the fact that this occult power is from the prince of darkness, and they who yield to it are putting themselves within his clutches.