It has become a problem of the investigations in therapeutics of the future to exclude the suggestive element carefully and with scientific certainty by means of exact, painstaking experiments with every method of treatment (medicinal, externally or otherwise applied). This task will be found to be extremely difficult and delicate in many cases. In any case I warn the reader against the empty and impudent presumptive assertion printed in advertisements; since the introduction of the doctrine of suggestion one reeds at the end of the praises of a large number of vaunted new remedies, "Suggestion is excluded."

It is just in these cases that a purely suggestive action is most probable.

A serious and careful valuation of suggestion must assist in overthrowing the exuberant and corrupt therapeutic frauds of the present day.

What right have we to object to the homoeopaths, the herbalists, the magnetizers, the persons dealing out mystic treatment or treating by prayer, or to their practice or results, which really only depend on suggestion and on remedies stolen from medicine, as long as we allow ourselves to be led astray so disaatrously by suggestion? We ought to first clear our own domains of fraud and of deception by sound investigation; we should then have an easy task with these gentlemen, for they only gnaw at the outside of science, and build up their knowledge out of the scraps which they can pull off.

1 Ford, "The Hygiene of the Nerves and of the Mind." (Stuttgart: E. H. Moritx, 1905, 2nd edition.)

There are further two points of view which are very damaging. Firstly, there is the fact that we have partly to approve of the views of those persons who do not wish to have anything more to do with the whole of medicine (surgery, perhaps, excepted"), because of the false belief in an enormous number of specific actions of drugs and costly or exhausting methods of treatment, which really act wholly or partly by suggestion, and often do more harm than good. These persons are inclined to return to a natural mode of life with outdoor exercise, hardening, avoidance of all artificial toxic foods, all alcoholic drinks, etc. It would be most disheartening if medicine were to allow priests and herbalists to claim the right of interceding for this first principle of a true and healthy hygiene, by introducing propaganda for alcohol, morphine, brothels, and also numerous dear and useless medicaments, 1 by which means it would only favor rather than hinder the development of hypochondriasis, nervousness, and degeneration of the race. Secondly, medical practitioners have to protect themselves against suggestion in themselves - i.e., against autosuggestion. As Bernheim has told us, incredible things are done in this respect in medicine. This fact is not easily differentiated from the first fact, since the practitioner is often himself suggested by means of the suggestive action in the patient. But in this case I would wish to deal with the practitioners who are intuitively influenced by their muddled, undigested, phantastic combinations of curative means in such a way that they find panacea in all of them; at times there is not much more logic in this than there is in Gustav Jager's hair pills and their accompaniments. It is only necessary for the author to have a reputable name, or to use scientific language in its strict sense, or, better still, if both of these are accomplished facts.

These very people are the ones who are afraid to have anything to do with hypnotism, and assume a scornful tone because the matter appears to them to be unusual, and because they consider that it has a mysterious and fraudulent reputation. They are afraid of compromising themselves. They are entirely influenced by the stuff and nonsense clothed in scientific expressions of the present day; it would be almost sacrilege to investigate the matter scientifically. "German science refuses to accept hypnotism " is one of these stereotype phrases, on the strength of which one considers one's self justified in backing out of a real scientific investigation of the question. As if science could be called German or French or English, and as if it could judge a priori in an adverse or favorable light I It is the same old story of the "petit hypnotisme do Provence" of the Parisian school.

With the best intentions, the Minister of the Ecclesiastical, Educational, and Medical departments of the Kingdom of Prussia issued the following order to the Berlin-Brandenburg Medical Council (Aerztekammer) on April 5, 1902:

"It is a matter of interest to me to he informed as to the curative value of hypnosis, and also to what extent and with what results the same is employed by doctors in the treatment of patients."

As soon as the author heard of this he took the liberty of calling his Excellency the Minister's attention to the fact that hypnotism is almost entirely excluded from the syllabus of the medical schools, that only a few practitioners have taken up this study of their own initiative, and have obtained extremely satisfactory results, and also that medical students are not taught psychology, and in consequence the majority of practitioners, and especially the teachers in the schools, have no knowledge of the whole question. It was therefore to be expected that his question would receive a negative reply - i.e., that the committee of the Medical Council would express itself in opposition to hypnosis as a curative method. My expectations were naturally fulfilled. However, neither official reports nor the vote of the majority can decide in scientific matters. For this reason I took upon myself to subject the Report of the Hypnosis Commission of the Berlin-Brandenburg Medical Council, issued by Messrs. Mendel, Gock, D. Munter, and Aschcnborn, to a critical survey in the Munchener Medicinische Wochenschrift (No. 32) in 1903. Mr. Mendel is well known as an aggressive opponent of treatment by suggestion, although he has obviously never inquired into the matter himself. I am unacquainted with any special technical knowledge on the part of the other three gentlemen.

To avoid having to repeat myself, I refer the reader to this article, and will be content in stating briefly that the Report of the Hypnosis Commission of the Berlin-Brandenburg Medical Council is a miserable dogmatic fabrication, which carefully and consistently ignores the proofs of the results of suggestive therapy, which have been most conscientiously reported in the medical press. It exaggerates unjustifiably the unimportant dangers of the practice of it by lay persons or by unskilled practitioners, and at the same time does not mention the fact that it has been proved to be absolutely safe when practiced by experienced men.

I feel that I have said enough about this. Liebeault's and Bernheim's doctrine of suggestion forms a deeply rooted, gradual reform of internal medical treatment, is indicative of a moral elevation of medical science and its reputation, and wins a signal victory over the mysteries of miraculous cures and secret remedies. Even external treatment will have to deduce its doctrines from it, and will have to be careful in future not to remove an ovary in cases in which the trouble can be cured by suggestion, or to interfere with the caput gallinaginis in disturbances which are psychically produced, but in which the symptoms are referred to the sexual organs. It will further have to avoid destroying the hymen in girls in order to treat the os uteri, when the disease is situated in the head, or to tan the mucous membrane of the stomach or intestine in vain by all sorts of remedies in the attempt to cure non-existent gastritis or enteritis, or even constipation, when a few suggestions can often remove the innervation dyspepsia, which is really responsible for the symptoms, One might go on giving examples of this kind almost indefinitely.