HYPNOTIC INFLUENCE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 376, 8 July 1911, Page 3

HYPNOTIC INFLUENCE.

■♦ - ■ ■ The science of hypnotism seems 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 the English people are notoriously slow in accepting a new idea or adopting new methods, and it is hardly surprising, therefore, to find thatthemysteriouis"ism" is only now beginning to attract serious attention in Great Britain. To Dr Elliotson belongs the credit of first making known in Britain the extraordinary power of hypnotism as a healing influence, but predjudice based on ignorance is hard to overcome, and so great was the opposition Dr Eliotson encountered that he died literally of a broken heart. Even now many people seem to regard hypnotism as of Satanic origin, and it was in the hope of disabusing the public mind that a contributor to a Home 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 he 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 superintendent, the famous Dr Forbes Winslow, was sanguine of effecting a complete cure. On one point the visitor paricularly desired enlightenment. "Could anyone be hypnotised?" he asked. "Not against their will," was the reassuring reply of the doctor, who added, '"Neither is the power of hypnotising given to everyone." 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 born criminal might be made to commit crime, but not persons of good moral tendencies. He does not attempt to deny, however, the frightful danger of hypnotism in the hands of unscrupulous persons, although he 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.