deluging the public. The recognition of hypnotism as an
altered physiological and psychological condition, after
repeated demonstrations, at last gained the day, securing for
the phenomena a place in the accepted body of scientific
doctrines.[153:1]

Professor Bernheim says that the hypnotic condition and the phenomena
associated therewith are purely subjective, and originate in the nervous
system of the patient.

The fixation of a brilliant object, so that the muscle which
holds up the upper eyelid becomes fatigued, and the
concentration of the attention on a single idea, bring about
the sleep. The subjects can even bring about this condition in
themselves, by their own tension of mind, without being
submitted to any influence from without. In this state the
imagination becomes so lively that every idea spontaneously
developed or suggested, by a person to whom the subject gives
this peculiar attention and confidence, has the value of an
actual representation to him.[154:1]

It has been well said that if Mesmer's methods served only to
demonstrate the curative power of the imagination, they have been of
some benefit to humanity.

The consideration of hypnotic cures does not appertain to our theme. Far
from these being primitive methods, they represent what is most modern
and advanced in psycho-therapeutics.

FOOTNOTES:

[146:1] Francis J. Shepherd, M.D., _Medical Quacks and Quackery_.

[147:1] F. A. Mesmer, _Memoire sur la Decouverte du Magnetisme Animal_;
Paris, 1779.

[151:1] _The Cosmopolitan_, vol. xx, p. 363.

[152:1] Braid, _Neurypnology_, p. 338.

[153:1] _The Cosmopolitan_, February, 1896.

[154:1] H. Bernheim, M.D., _Suggestive Therapeutics_, p. 111.

CHAPTER XIV

ANCIENT MEDICAL PRESCRIPTIONS

From early times it was a universal custom to place at the beginning of
a medical prescription certain religious verses or superstitious
characters, which formed the invocation, or prayer to a favorite
deity.[155:1] Angelic beings were frequently appealed to, and among
these the Archangel Raphael was thought to be omnipotent for the cure of
disease. John Aubrey, in his "Miscellanies," relates that a certain
physician, Dr. Richard Nepier, a person of great piety, whose knees were
horny with much praying, was wont to ask professional advice of this
archangel, and that his prescriptions began with the abbreviation "R.
R