s the man has never heard of the blind spot in the retina, he accredits
you with a special power. Many similar psychological illusions can well
be used to prepare the mind for unsuspected healing powers.

Still stronger is the effect of personal contact. The psychophysiology
of love indicates the most complex influence which contact sensations
have on the whole nervous system and especially on the vasomotor
apparatus of the body. Probably such vasomotor effect enters in,
changing the blood circulation in the brain, when a personal contact
between the transmitter and receiver of the suggestion is brought about.
If the physician's hand rests quietly on the forehead of the patient who
lies with closed eyes, or if he holds for a long while the hand of the
patient, he may secure a nervous repose and submission which gives to
the suggestions the most fertile soil. Needless to say that here again
everything depends upon the accessories. An unsympathetic doctor may be
entirely powerless where his neighbor has complete success. Neither a
lifeless hand nor an agitating one will bring the desired repose,
neither a cold nor a rough one. There must be strength and energy and
even discipline, and yet sympathy in the pressure of the fingers. Again
a psychologically different effect and yet one often to be preferred
results from mild stroking movements, the stroke always to be repeated
in the same direction, never up and down. The slow change in the
position of the tactual sensations evidently produces a rather strong
influence on the equilibrium of nervous impulses, and here again
vasomotor reflexes seem to arise easily. Another variety of such bodily
influences is given by artificial changes of the positions, for instance
by bending the head of the subject backward while the eyes are closed.
It may be that a certain lack of balance sets in in which the
self-equilibrium is disturbed and an external influence can thus more
easily get control of the psychophysical system. Again a certain
monotony of speaking may easily add to the increase of the
suggestibility.

Everyone knows that another most fruitful cause of this change is any
mystic inspiration, any emotion in which the individual feels himself in
contact with something higher or larger or stronger. Of course, the
church can secure this effect easily, and here again the maximum will be
reached if a bodily contact with the symbol of religious exaltation can
be established. The pati