The Dangers of Modern Witchcraft.
WITH the above for a heading, a recent issue of the New York World gives the following statement from Dr. Charles L. Dana: "Except when hypnotism is used by a responsible physician, there is extreme danger. Even the most innocent forms are perilous, and its general use by traveling Svengalis and by amateurs as a parlor entertainment should be prohibited by law. "Of course such a law could not always be enforced against hypnotism in private, but as it would tend to abolish charlatans, the spread of the habit would not be so rapid as at present, and it would become known among people who think hypnotism so harmless, that it is the cause of many a shattered mind. "The more often a person is placed under hypnotic influence, the weaker his will becomes and the less his power of resistance. This would suggest a terrible opportunity to one who might be criminally inclined." People who will think seriously and keenly in regard to the foregoing statements by Dr. Dana ought to be convinced that hypnotism is not only a dangerous thing for the traveling "Svengalis," but it is just as dangerous for the regular medical practitioner. The medical profession, as well as all of the other useful professions, is, and always has been, handicapped by a great army of "quacks" who have but very little knowledge of the5healing art, and no true principles to govern what little knowledge they do have. And in the hands of such quackish impostors there is no telling the evil that may be accomplished through hypnotism. But even if all of the doctors of the land were perfectly capable and thoroughly honest and reliable, still hypnotism should never be brought into the medical practise, nor used in any other way. The statement that Dr. Dana makes that "the more often a person is placed under hypnotic influence, the weaker his will becomes and the less his power of resistance," is enough to forever show the character of hypnotism. Even doctors themselves claim that they do not understand it; but they do know that it breaks down the will and weakens the individual upon whom it is practised. There are no exceptions to this rule. An individual must submit his will to another before he can be hypnotized. God Himself with all of His righteous power does not ask an individual to throw away his will. He strengthens the will rather than breaks it down. Hypnotism is nothing more nor less than one of the parts of the many-sided Spiritualism, and we may seek to dignify it by placing it in the catalog of the sciences and by using it in the medical profession, but its character remains just the same, and there is not anything practised in all the world today that tends more strongly to break down the will. No person should ever submit to it, much less think of practising it.