especially if the
dose of morphine is not too strong, autosuggestion can bring about a
similar effect. A reduction of ten per cent every week can be carried
through, if a pledge is given to one's self in a drowsy state. The great
value of autosuggestion showed itself not seldom in the fact that
morphinists who had applied to me by mail for a cure in the mistaken
belief that I do work in a professional way for payment and who got from
me a written reply that I could not receive them, but that they can help
themselves, wrote to me that my letter gave them strength to reduce
their dose considerably.

Quite similar is the situation with cocainism or with the combination of
morphine and cocaine which is so frequent nowadays with young
physicians. I have repeatedly seen cures where the case already gave the
impression of insanity. Again I give a rather extreme case.

A physician had acquired the habit of using and misusing cocaine
for the treatment of a disease of his nose. The habit grew to a
craving for cocaine while the cocaine itself poisoned the brain.
Acoustical hallucinations began; he heard voices from every corner
of the room, and on the street the voices took persecutory
character. He connected them with his brother living in Europe,
heard his voice in the denunciations, and developed a pathological
system of ideas around the central thought that his brother had a
telepathic influence on him. His reason succumbed, he lost all
consciousness of delusion, and believed himself really to be under
the control of the absent brother. When he came to me he had been
without sleep and without food for several days, and he was not
seeking my help to get rid of the mental disturbance but to
overcome the power of his older brother. He did not connect the
fear at all with his misuse of cocaine. When I discovered the role
which the cocaine played, I determined to try the suggestive
influence, the more as I found that he was in a half-hypnotic state
as soon as he had entered my room. I suggested to him to sleep and
to take food and to reduce the cocaine dose by a fourth. The next
day he was an entirely different man by the effect of ten hours'
sleep and a large breakfast. Now I concentrated my efforts on the
reduction of the cocaine. After ten days of hypnotic treatment he
gave up cocaine entirely, after three weeks th