Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 137, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 June 1910 — NO LONGER UNDER A BAN. [ARTICLE]

NO LONGER UNDER A BAN.

Hypnotism Hh Become a Benign Influence on Modern American Life. Many leading physicians and scientists in the United States have abandoned drugs as the cure for those patients who, living under high pressure, have overtaxed their mental and physical resources and become nervous wrecks. Many brilliant practitioners now treat such cases, not with medicine or knife, but with thought, or the use of suggestion with the aid of hypnotism. They say to the exhausted, nervous society woman: “You do not need medicine. You must teach your brain and your nerves to rest. You must receive into your mind the compelling message' that the only thing which can help you is calm and repose. We can give it to you, but not by the use of medicine or drugs.” _ To the business man, who has gone under such pressure that he can control neither his nerves nor his brain, they give the same advice. Hypnotism, which was once regarded as witchcraft and later as an instrument only for .harm, has become a benign influence on modern American life, a practical remedy for the distinctively American ailment of “nerves.” It has saved countless men and women from insane asylums, and it has been demonstrated as a reliable cure of certain cases of drug and cigarette habits. There is a popular impression that hypnotism is harmful because it puts a person’s mind under the domination of another’s ideas; also that to submit to hypnotism is to weaken one’s will power. As a matter of fact, It has been scientifically proved that the hypnotist cannot make the patient commit any act or entertain any thought contrary to that person’s idea of morality and principle. Hypnotism can*be, and sometimes is, abused by the professional fakir and operator, but, in the hands of a physician, it is merely a cure for ailments that cannot he reached by other means. The only opportunity for it to impair the will power arises when a person makes a habit of submitting to the same operation for purposes of exhibition and freakish tricks. In this way, in the course of time, the person hypnotized ■does train his mind to a certain extent to do whatever the hypnotist suggests. The great power of hypnotism over the physical functions of the body has been demonstrated by a Pittsburg physician, who put a patient .into a hypnotic sleep and told him that he would suffer no pain when his tooth was extracted. The tooth was pulled, and the patient suffered absolutely no pain. Whether it can ever be used instead of an anesthetic in surgical operations of a grave character, is one of the problems of the art for future years.