like the visit of a good angel from heaven.

2. It is used as an anaesthetic in place of chloroform, which in many
cases cannot be applied without great danger to health, or even life.
Thus perfect insensibility may be procured and long continued, allowing
sometimes of the performance of protracted surgical operations that
would otherwise be almost impossible.

3. At other times it is employed as a mere pain-killer without depriving
the patient of consciousness, so that the hurt is felt indeed, but not
attended with keen suffering.

4. It is claimed that the skilful application of hypnotism can at times
not only alleviate the pain of an injury, but even cure nervous
affections more or less permanently, removing, for instance, the defect
of stammering.

5. There are not wanting cases in which even moral improvements are
claimed to be produced, at least in the removing of bad habits, such as
drunkenness. If hypnotism can cure intoxication permanently, or even for
a season, it deserves to be encouraged. Yet even then it must be used
with great caution, for there may be very evil consequences resulting
from its use. To realize fully the dangers and the evils attendant upon
hypnotism you must understand the three stages through which the patient
is made to pass--those of lethargy, catalepsy, and somnambulism.

IV. DANGEROUS TREATMENT.

Each of these is a disease in itself, and thus it is seen at once that a
treatment which employs diseases as its means of cure must be of a
dangerous kind. After the patient has been hypnotized by any of the
various processes--the chief are mesmeric passes of the hypnotizer's
hands, his eyes fixed into the eyes of his subject, or the latter's on
an object so held as to strain his eyes--the first stage of hypnotism is
obtained, that of lethargy. In the lethargic state, the subject appears
to be sunk in a deep sleep; his body is perfectly helpless; the limbs
hang down slackly, and when raised fall heavily into the same position.
In this condition all the striated or voluntary muscles react on
mechanical excitement. Without an accurate knowledge of anatomy, much
harm may be done by the experiment.

The second stage is that of catalepsy, certainly not a healthy condition
to be in. Its grand feature is a plastic immobility by which the subject
maintains all the attitudes given to his body and limbs, but with this
peculiarity, that the limbs and features act in unison. Join the hands
of th