gs again to very slight touch
stimuli. If the subject with his eyes closed is touched perhaps by two
pencils at various and unexpected points of the face and hands, a
skillful playing on his tactual senses soon produces a half-dozing state
of hypnoid character. In the same group belong those so-called passes
which evidently have a reflex influence in the blood-vessel system. It
is advisable to combine the various elements in such a way that at first
physical stimuli upon eye or skin produce an over-suggestible state and
that only as soon as this state is reached the verbal suggestion sets
in, perhaps with the words, "I shall hypnotize you now." Under such
conditions every subject may soon be brought to that degree of
hypnotization which is accessible to him. Yet more than one treatment is
usually necessary for the higher degrees. Much less importance for
therapeutic purposes belongs to that hypnoid state which is reached
without the idea of sleep where the subject comes with open eyes into a
kind of fascination, produced perhaps by a sudden flash of light or by
the firm eye of the hypnotizer. It is a state which can lead to a strong
submission of will and which has its legal importance. Therapeutically
it can hardly secure an effect which cannot better be secured through
the real sleeplike hypnotism. Under certain conditions, chemical
substances may well prepare for the hypnotic treatment, for instance
bromides or alcohol. Others rely on the suggestive effect of flavored
water. But all that is unwise. The confidence of the patient is the best
preparation for the securing of the helpful degree of hypnotism.

Of course only a small part of the therapeutic usefulness is secured
during the hypnotic state itself. A pain may be removed, sleep be
secured, an idea be inhibited, a movement be reenforced in cases where
non-hypnotic suggestions would have found insurmountable obstacles.
During the hypnosis we may also open the storehouse of memory and bring
to light the ideas which disturbed the equilibrium of the suffering
mind. Further in those most complex hysteric cases of dissociated
personality, new memory connections may be formed during the hypnosis
by which a synthesis of the double or triple personalities into the old
one may be secured. Yet the general effect which the physician has to
hope for from hypnotic treatment is the post-hypnotic one. Not what
happens during the hypnosis but what the suggestion will produce afte