Psychotherapy Part 8

Amulets.--The coin given by the kings of England when they healed the scrofulus or epileptic came to be, in one sense, an amulet. The sight and the touch of this acted as an ever recurrent suggestion tending to make these patients better, and undoubtedly the coin was of great service by its renewal of the mental influence of the touch of the king. There are traditions, also, that these coins healed others who touched them, and sometimes for generations they were kept in families as representing a fountain of healing and of preservation of health.

Any object that thus became invested with reverence produced healing effects. Virchow, in the introduction to Schliemann's "Troas," tells of going to a long distance for water, during the time when he was present at the excavations, in order to be sure that the water would be absolutely pure. The natives had heard that he was a great physician from the West. They concluded that the reason why he went to this particular distant spring for water, in spite of the trouble involved, was that it must have some wonderful healing virtues.

Accordingly a tradition of healing grew up around it, and people came from long distances, drank from it and were cured.

There are still people who carry horse chestnuts for rheumatism, and occasionally a farmer carries a potato for the same purpose. The feeling is, if they do no good, at least they can do no harm.

Doubtless in the Middle Ages the same feeling prevailed as to other favorite objects. At present, among the better informed cla.s.ses, various pendants supposed to have some connection with electricity are popular. I have seen a medal made of alternate discs of copper and zinc, and confidently believed to be strongly electrical, worn even by an otherwise sensible merchant in a country town. Electric belts still are {63} extremely common--and expensive. Supposed electric insoles, one made of copper, the other of zinc, are sold in great numbers and at good prices, though, quite needless to say, they are absolutely inert electrically. Various electric contrivances, small batteries, and the like, really are of the nature of amulets. People have a faith in them that is not justified by anything in science, but that faith helps them in their ills. Most of the supposed medicinal plasters are in the same cla.s.s. As a rule, sufficient curative material cannot be incorporated in a plaster to be of any service, and most of them, though widely advertised, are scarcely more than rubber adhesive plaster. They do good partly by their mechanical effect, because they actually support muscles, but mainly because of faith in their efficacy. Whenever a particular discomfort occurs the feeling that a plaster is covering the spot gives the patient a.s.surance that he or she must soon be better. In all of these effects there is no manifestation of any physical or marvelous supernormal power, but simply and solely of the influence of the mind on the body.

CHAPTER IX

DETERRENT THERAPEUTICS

In the history of therapy a peculiar phase was the use of all sorts of materials, intensely repugnant to human nature and deterrent to all the finer feelings, but which, nevertheless, proved curative of many ills. We know now that there was absolutely nothing remedial in these substances or methods of treatment, but only the effect produced upon the patient's mind. If the patient makes sufficient effort to overcome the intense repugnance, that enables him to release hitherto latent vital energies, or to correct hampering inhibitions which have prevented curative reactions. The more the patient had to conquer himself, or herself, the more surely did the remedy produce a good effect. It was effective, however, not only among the poor and the uneducated, but often also among the better informed, provided the patients became persuaded of its efficiency. Persuasion in these matters is usually best secured by the reports of cured cases. It is easy to obtain "cures" from almost anything. They are set up as confident proofs of the remedial virtue of methods of treatment. They have been, in the history of medicine, more often the indexes of action upon mind than upon body. Real remedies help patients to get better. Supposed remedies, that afterwards prove quite inert, _cure_.

Portions of Corpses.--One of the ingredients of the famous Unguentum Armarium (see chapter on Nostrums) was, as has been said, moss sc.r.a.ped from the skull of a man who had been hanged. It was declared to be particularly efficacious against so-called dead members, such as the blanched fingers of Raynaud's disease, or the hysterical palsies, and other functional paralytic conditions of the limbs. The real therapeutic factor was not the gruesome material itself, but the potent suggestions awakened by it. It is probable that the quacks and witch doctors who gave out the formula of their remedies as containing such material often did not take the trouble to collect them, and that their salves and ointments were really quite inoffensive preparations.

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Touch of the Hanged.--Some of the traditions which gather round the effect of contact with the body of a hanged person are curiously interesting from the standpoint of psychotherapy. This form of execution seems to have had a much more potent influence in producing therapeutic elements in the bodies of the victims than any other. We do not hear much of the touch of a beheaded person's body nor of any place in medicine for portions of the victims of execution by shooting, though Van Helmont claims curative properties for these in lesser degree. All sorts of ailments were, however, supposed to be cured by the touch of a hanged person. Thomas Hardy in his "Wess.e.x Tales" tells of a young woman in his time suffering from a paralyzed arm, apparently a form of paralysis due to a functional nervous condition, who was recommended by an old "conjure" doctor to touch her bared arm, as soon after the execution as possible, to the purple mark of the rope around the neck of a man who had been hanged. The doctor a.s.sured her this was the only means by which she could be cured. We would not be surprised to hear of her cure under such circ.u.mstances.

Hardy has carefully collected his material regarding the traditions of the southern part of England, and he makes the hangman say, when the woman applies to him for permission to touch the body of the victim, that such a request had not been made for some years, but that there used to be many applicants when he was a younger man. He adds, moreover, that it was the custom to apply to the governor of the prison and that usually this application was made by the physician of the patient who accompanied him or her on the visit to the corpse.

There is no doubt that physicians did, in many cases, have recourse to such methods, and that the reasons for their belief in the efficacy of the touch of the dead was that they had seen the cure in this way of many puzzling diseased conditions, which their skill in wortcraft and herbal medicines had not enabled them to relieve. The touch of the corpse was supposed to bring about a "turning of the blood," and this produced the good effects. Occasionally the patients fainted from terror, yet afterwards were found to be able to use limbs that had been quite beyond their control before. The story is typical of what happened in country districts all over Europe for centuries.

Mummies.--How little distant we are from the use of such material for therapeutic purposes will be appreciated from the fact that mummy was used in medicine down nearly to the end of the eighteenth century. The first edition of the "Encyclopedia Brittanica" (1768) said:

We have two different substances preserved for medicinal use under the name of mummy, though both in some degree of the same origin.

The one is the dried and preserved flesh of human bodies, embalmed with myrrh and spices; the other is the liquor running from such mummies, when newly prepared, or when affected by great heat or damps. The latter is sometimes in a liquid, sometimes of a solid form, as it is preserved in vials well stopped, or suffered to dry and harden in the air. The first kind of mummy is brought to us in large pieces, of a lax and friable texture, light and spongy, of a blackish brown color, and often damp and clammy on the surface: it is of a strong but disagreeable smell. The second kind of mummy, in its liquid state, is a thick, opaque, and viscous fluid, of a blackish color, but not disagreeable smell. In its indurated state, it is a dry solid substance, of a fine s.h.i.+ning black color, and close texture, easily broken, and of a good smell; very inflammable, and yielding a scent of myrrh and aromatic ingredients while burning. This, if we cannot be content without medicines from our own bodies, ought {65} to be the mummy used in the shops; but it is very scarce and dear; while the other is so cheap, that it will always be most in use.

All these kinds of mummy are brought from Egypt. But we are not to imagine, that anybody breaks up the real Egyptian mummies, to sell them in pieces to the druggists, as they may make a much better market of them in Europe whole, when they can contrive to get them.

What our druggists are supplied with, is the flesh of executed criminals, or of any other bodies the Jews can get, who fill them with the common bitumen so plentiful in that part of the world; and adding a little aloes, and two or three other cheap ingredients, send them to be baked in an oven, till the juices are exhaled, and the embalming matter has penetrated so thoroughly that the flesh will keep and bear transportation into Europe. Mummy has been esteemed resolvent and balsamic: but whatever virtues have been attributed to it, seem to be such as depend more upon the ingredients used in preparing the flesh, than in the flesh itself; and it would surely be better to give those ingredients without so shocking an addition.

Serpents in Therapeutics.--Snakes and portions of snakes have been prominent features of deterrent therapeutics at all times. Headaches were cured by wrapping a dead snake around the head, or by the touch of a snake's skin, and sore throat by wearing a snake's skin around the throat at night. This seems one degree better than the custom, still common, of wrapping the stocking, that has been worn during the day, around the neck. In the chapter on Graves Disease, the use of the touch of a snake, or of a snake's skin worn around the neck, is mentioned. Girdles made of snake's skin or snakes themselves, were supposed to be good for colic and for various internal troubles, and were sometimes, among barbarous peoples, a sovereign remedy for the ills of pregnancy and a.s.sured the woman a safe delivery and an easy labor. Undoubtedly they lessened dreads by suggestion and the effort necessary to overcome repugnance. Some of the symptoms of the menopause have been cured in the same way. Rattlesnake oil has had a special reputation among mountainous people, where the snakes abounded, for the pains and aches of the old, and the vague joint discomfort, sometimes spoken of as rheumatic, but really due to various individual conditions. It is probable that in most cases the oil thus employed was not extracted from the rattlesnake, but was some ordinary oil palmed off under that name, and having its special effectiveness because of the thought a.s.sociated with it.

Various portions of serpents are still in use, sometimes in the hands of physicians, though usually in popular medicine. I knew a physician in a small inland city who had a great local reputation for curing external eye troubles, and who owed not a little of it to the fact that the people in his neighborhood thought that he used rattlesnake oil as one of the ingredients for his strongest prescriptions. He was supposed to be able to dissolve even cataract by his remedies, and there is no doubt that in many cases of chronic indolent ulcer of the eye he was able to bring about a cure sooner, and have it last longer, than those of the regular profession who had not the advantage of this popular faith. He was careful to buy rattlesnakes from certain of the mountain people, who killed and brought them to him and who advertised the fact that they had such commissions from him. The stories were made all the more interesting by the fact that the doctor would not purchase dead rattlesnakes. They must be brought to him alive, since the therapeutic virtues can only be extracted immediately after death.

A mountaineer with a couple of live rattlesnakes with him is always an interesting object and a fine {66} advertis.e.m.e.nt. One would like to know what the doctor did with the snakes--that is, how he disposed of them without suspicion. Homeopathic physicians still have lachesis-viper venom in their pharmacopeia. Their remedies, however, if they really follow the dilution principle of their founder, can have an effect only on the mind, so that the use of lachesis is not surprising.

Repugnant Remedial Measures.--Quite in keeping with the use of deterrent remedies of various kinds are the recommendations to do certain things that involve great self-control, and the overcoming of repugnance, or fright, or the like. A favorite mode of preparing remedies in the Middle Ages was to gather the particular herbs for the prescription in a graveyard in the dark of the moon. The patient himself was supposed to gather them and to be alone when doing so, if they were to be effective. How much occupation of mind and diversion of thought would be afforded for timid people by the effort to overcome themselves to this extent! The occupation of mind alone and the concentration of thought necessary for the ordeal would be quite sufficient to divert many people from the centralization of attention on themselves, which is responsible for so many of their symptoms, or for that exaggeration of symptoms that aggravates the ailment.

_Ordures as Remedies_.--Among all primitive peoples we have the story of the use, as remedies, of ordures of various kinds, of repugnant portions of animals, of ground insects, of animal excrement and urine, and even of human excretions, of the blood of serpents, or eels, or carrion feeding birds, and the like. Ground lice and insects of various kinds are very common as prescriptions in the history of primitive medicine. They turn up here and there through the Middle Ages, and they are said to be still used in China. The more one knows about side-tracks in medicine, the more does one find of far-fetched repugnant materials vaunted as wonderful cures. Some of the substances employed are so disgusting that one does not care to mention, much less discuss, them. I have had a man tell me that, in a severe epidemic of diphtheria, he saved his children's lives when they were attacked by the disease, and the children of others were dying all around him, by blowing the dried excrement of dog down their throats.

There are certain popular medical practices that are related to these old traditions of deterrent therapeutics. In many manufacturing establishments, in spite of progress with regard to sepsis and antisepsis and the diffusion of information as to first aid to the injured, it is still the custom to put spittle on wounds. I am sure that every doctor has seen quids of tobacco used in this way. Even native-born Americans, who are not illiterate, are sometimes found using some deterrent material. I have known such a man use his own urine as an eye-wash for sore eyes, and the use of children's urine for such purposes is much commoner than might be thought. After all, it is only a generation since physicians used to taste urine in order to determine whether it contained sugar or not, and I have seen a country doctor even take between his finger and his thumb a little of the excrement of a child and apply his tongue to it, pretending of course that he obtained very valuable information this way.

_Excretions and Secretions_.--All the human excretions have formed the basis of vaunted remedies. Tears, on the principle that like cures like, were used for melancholia; nasal secretion to lessen respiratory difficulty through {67} the nose; sputum for various mouth affections, but also as an application to external abrasions, and to the eyes, the ears, and the like. Undoubtedly patients were helped by many of these, not because of any physical effect, but because they felt easier as a consequence of the satisfaction of having something done for them, and the consequent freedom from solicitude which allowed nature to produce her curative reaction without interference. The greater the effort he has to make, apparently the more efficiently does he control this disturbing state of mind. This is the secret of many cures now as well as in the olden time.

Whatever good effect is produced in such cases comes, of course, from the persuasion that these substances will do good, and there must be a strong suggestion to that effect before the repugnance can be overcome. While we are p.r.o.ne to think the older peoples who used such materials commonly are to be condemned for ignorance and superst.i.tion, it is well to recall that human nature has not changed, and is still ready to be influenced in the same way. Brown Sequard's extract of testicular substance came in this category. We had a wave of organotherapy a few years ago, and we know now that whatever benefits patients derived from taking heart substance for heart troubles, and brain substance for brain troubles, and kidney for renal diseases, was entirely due to mental influence. The cannibal who eats the heart of his enemy, thinking that the vigor and courage of the other will pa.s.s into him, undoubtedly has for a time a power of accomplishment greater than before. Nothing acts so powerfully as suggestion of this kind to give renewed vigor and to enable us to tap sources of energy that we were not aware of in ourselves, and that enable us to accomplish what before seemed quite impossible, and even to bring about curative reactions.

Diseases Benefited.--Observe the cla.s.ses of disease that were particularly relieved by deterrent therapeutics. Headache was one of these. All sorts of things were cures for headaches--the touch of the hangman's rope, or of an executed criminal, or some herb gathered in the graveyard in the dark of the moon, or pills made of the excrement of various animals. The forms of headache thus relieved would be those in which over-attention to self, rather than real headache, produced queer feelings in the head, though concentration of attention might exaggerate this into an ache. Foot troubles were cured by deterrent therapeutics. To wear the shoes of a dead person, especially of a murderer who had been hanged, would cure them. Colic was cured by pills of excrement.i.tious materials, and by all sorts of other deterrent remedies. For instance, one well-known remedy was to wash the feet and drink the wash-water. The wash-water of little babies was a favorite remedy for the vague abdominal pains of old maids, and for the symptoms due to the menopause.

Deterrent Pain.--A striking ill.u.s.tration of a strong mental influence helping out a slight amount of therapeutic efficiency is found in the use of the actual cautery for medical affections. At a number of times in history most of the chronic pains and aches, the arthritises, the so-called gouty tendencies when localized, the rheumatic affections and especially the chronic rheumatisms, have been treated by means of the cautery. All of the neuralgias, many of the neuroses, all of the neuritises and a certain number of so-called palsies and paralyses, were treated successfully by this means. It is a very suggestive remedy producing a deep impression that now relief must be in sight.

It {68} became popular over and over again, though after a time it always lost its influence, and ceased to have the beneficial effects that it had at the beginning of its reintroduction.

During the second half of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century the cautery became very popular. It was applied particularly in the form of the moxa. A cylinder of cotton was employed for this purpose, being set on fire and allowed to burn on the skin of the patient, producing a deep wound. The mental effect of this can be readily understood. Baron Larrey, one of the most eminent surgeons of the time, thought the moxa one of the best aids that he had in the treatment of many affections where the knife was not indicated. There were large groups of diseases in which it was almost a specific. Larrey employed it in affections of vision, of smell, of taste, of hearing and of speech. In many paralytic affections of the muscular system, in all chronic affections of the head, among which he enumerates non-traumatic affections, hydrocephalus, chronic headaches and many other affections supposed to be seated in the cranium. In asthma he was particularly successful with the moxa. Old catarrhal affections yielded to it. Consumption was frequently benefited by it.

Most of the chronic affections of the uterus were benefited, as were also similar affections of the stomach. He considered that the moxa must be admitted, without contradiction, to be the remedy _par excellence_ against rachitis. In Pott's disease, which he called dorsal consumption, it worked wonders. In sacroc.o.xalgia, in cocyG.o.dynia and femero-c.o.xalgia he had excellent results with the moxa.

A glance at this list shows exactly the cla.s.s of cases in which suggestion has always played a large role, and for which there has been, at various times, a series of specific remedies, medicinal, manipulative and surgical. Others extended the value of the moxa beyond these affections. Ponto found it valuable in gout, and in the various chronic affections which are sometimes grouped under the name chronic rheumatism. He insisted that the moxa could be placed on almost any part of the body, though the contra indications he suggests show how far the men of his time went with its use. Only these portions named might not have a moxa applied to them. It must not be used on the skull, on the eyelids, on the ears, on the mamme, on the larynx and on the genitals, though it might be applied to the perineum or the perineal body.

Deterrent Taste and Smell.--The disturbing effects produced by other senses besides those of sight have been used in the same way for the production of definite therapeutic suggestive effects. A number of the ill-tasting, almost nauseating drugs of the olden time prove to have very little real therapeutic efficiency in the light of modern clinical careful observation. This is particularly true of the herbs and simples. Many a disgusting preparation apparently owed all of its'

good effects on the patient to the effort that was required to swallow it, producing such a favorable influence upon the mind, by _contrecoup_ as it were, that the patient got better. A little girl said that cough medicines were nasty things they gave you in order to keep you from catching cold again. The sense of smell has been used in the same way. Valerian is probably an efficient drug in certain respects, but undoubtedly its efficiency is materially increased by its intensely repulsive odor. For many of the psycho-neuroses and neurotic conditions generally the ammonium valerianate is likely to be much more efficient than the strychnin valerianate, though probably the {69} latter should be considered as more physically efficacious in its tonic properties. Asafetida, musk and some preparations of the genital organs of animals that used to be in the pharmacopeia, owed most, if not all, of their power, whatever it was, to the mental effect of their odor and the feeling of deterrence that had to be overcome before they were taken.

There is a precious therapeutic secret in this use of deterrent, repugnant, frightful materials which patients use to advantage under certain circ.u.mstances. It ill.u.s.trates the influence of the mind over the body, and emphasizes the fact that such influence can be exerted in the full only when a deep impression is produced upon the patient.

Whether this can be imitated without deceit, and without the use of undignified methods, must depend on the physician himself and his personality. There can be no doubt that there is a wonderful power here to be employed. It must be the physician's business to find out in each individual case, according to his own personal equation, just how he may be able to use at least some of it. It is well worth studying and striving for, because nothing is more potent for psychoneurotic conditions, and for neuroses on the borderland of the physical, than which no ailments are more obstinate to treatment.

CHAPTER X

INFLUENCE OF THE PERSONALITY IN THERAPEUTICS

Though it has seldom been fully realized and has probably never been appreciated as in our time, one of the most important factors in therapeutics, in every period of the history of medicine, has been the personal influence of the physician. Therapeutic fas.h.i.+ons have come and gone, new drugs have been introduced, have had their day and then been relegated to the limbo of worn-out ideas. At all times, however, physicians have succeeded in doing good, or at least using, with apparent success, the therapeutic means of their own time, however crude and inadequate these afterwards proved to be. They have succeeded in shortening the progress of disease as well as increasing the patient's resistive vitality and thus enabled him not infrequently to survive where otherwise a fatal termination might have occurred.

All unsuspected during most of the time, it was the personal influence of the physician that counted for most in all of the historical vicissitudes of therapeusis. It mattered not that the means he employed might seem absurd to the second succeeding generation, as was so often, indeed almost invariably, the case, his personal influence has at all times overshadowed his available therapeutic auxiliaries.

In spite of all our advance in scientific medicine, to a considerable degree this remains true even at the present time, and to fail properly to use this important auxiliary is to cripple medical practice.

Place of Personal Influence.--When the ant.i.toxins and directly curative serums seemed about to make for themselves a place in therapeusis, it looked for a time as though this personal element might be entirely superseded. It seemed that all other therapeutic factors must give way to definitely accurate doses of ant.i.toxic principles, directly opposed to the toxins of disease and {70} capable of conquering it. With the success of diphtheria serum, the prospects for scientific therapeutics from the biological standpoint became very promising. Unfortunately, our further experience with ant.i.toxins and therapeutic sera of various kinds has not been satisfactory, and now the medical world is looking elsewhere for progress in therapeutics.

This throws us back once more on the old-time therapeutics, and we have to learn to use all their elements. One of the most important of these, if not, as we have suggested, absolutely the most important, the one that in all the many variations of therapeusis has maintained itself, is the personal influence of the physician by which he is able to soothe the patient's fears, allay his anxieties, make him face the situation calmly so that he may not use up any of his vital force in useless worry, but on the contrary employ all his available psychic energy in helping nature to overcome whatever disturbance there is within the organism. This personal influence was for several centuries spoken of as personal magnetism, not merely in the figurative sense in which we now employ that term, but in a literal sense. The implication was that some men possessed within themselves a reservoir of superfluous energy, vital in character, but thought to be related to the force exhibited by the magnet, when it attracted bodies to itself, and made metals for a time magnetic like itself, and which actually pa.s.sed over from the physician to his patient. We have gotten away from the idea of any physical force flowing from physician to patient, but we know very well that certain physicians are much more capable than others of arousing the vital energies of the patient, sometimes to the extent of making him feel, after treatment, that he has more force than before. The patient feels that something must have been added to his natural powers, though he has only been brought into a state of mind where he can better use his own powers.

It is the men whose presence created this impression in patients, an impression that is justified by the fact that somehow he enabled them to vitalize themselves better than before, who have been most successful in the treatment of patients. In all ages the men of reputation for healing have had this. A careful study of their lives shows that this counted for more in many of the experiences of their healing than the drugs and remedies which they employed. The men who have been the most sought by patients have not as a rule left us great therapeutic secrets; on the contrary, they have only employed the conventional remedies of their times with reasonable common-sense and have added to them their own personal influences. On the other hand, the men who have made discoveries in therapeutics, and in medicine, have not always been popular as physicians. They have known too much of their own lack of knowledge to be quite confident in their use of remedies, and this has hurt something of their personal influence over patients.

IMPRESSIVE PERSONALITY

As a matter of fact, it is easy to comprehend, even from the comparatively scanty details that we have of habits and methods of the great physicians, that their effect upon their patients was always largely a matter of impressive personality. Any one who, from a pharmaceutical standpoint, knows how {71} inefficient were many of the remedies that great physicians depended on, yet how effective they seemed to be to their patients, and even to themselves, will appreciate the factor of personal magnetism that entered into their employment. It is not alone in the olden time that great physicians have been almost wors.h.i.+ped. For their patients they have at all times been men of exalted knowledge, masters of secrets and comforters of the afflicted, just as was the first great physician of whom we have any account, I-em-Hetep, in Egypt nearly six thousand years ago. Such men as Hippocrates, as Galen, as Sydenham and Boerhaave, and Van Swieten, accomplished curative results far beyond the therapeutics of their time. The loving admiration of patients and of their disciples shows how strong were their personalities and gives us, almost better than the writings they have left to us, the secret of their successes as pract.i.tioners of medicine.

A Great Modern Physician's Influence.--It is interesting to study in the lives of great physicians the details which ill.u.s.trate their personal influence, their consciousness of it and how deliberately they used it. A typical example very close to us, whose reputation was still fresh while I was at the University of Paris, was Professor Charcot. He had made great discoveries in nervous pathology. To a great extent he had revolutionized our knowledge of nervous diseases and added many new chapters to this rather obscure department of medicine. Far from making the treatment of nervous diseases easier than before, or giving more a.s.surance to the physician who dealt with them, his discoveries, however, had just the opposite effect. His work emphasized that practically all of the so-called nervous diseases were due to degenerations in the central nervous system, which no medicine could be expected to relieve in any way, and which nothing short of the impossible re-creation of damaged parts could ever cure. His studies included organic degenerations of other organs, and in his treatise on "Diseases of the Old" it is made clear that many of the symptoms of old age are due to organic lesions for which no cure can ever be expected. This would seem to discourage treatment, yet somehow Charcot became a great practicing physician as well as a medical scientist and pathologist.

His success was due to his personal influence over his patients. In spite of the unfavorable prognosis that he had to give in so many cases, he was able by suggestion to help many patients with regard to their course of life, and to rea.s.sure them, so that many advent.i.tious neurotic symptoms not due to their underlying nervous disease, but to their solicitude about themselves, disappeared. Very few people who came to him went away without feeling that his advice had been very valuable to them and without experiencing, as a rule, after they had followed his advice, that they were much better than they had been before. It was for the neurotic conditions a.s.sociated with nervous affections that Charcot's personal influence over patients was of the greatest therapeutic significance.

He himself recognized this and did not hesitate to use it to its fullest extent. Towards the end of his life, the method by which his patients were presented to him was calculated to make their relation to him, above all, a very personal one, and to give his influence the fullest weight. Nervous patients who came to see him, were each in his turn invited from the general waiting-room into a small ante-room just outside of Charcot's office and {72} there, in silence and dim light, asked to await the summons of the physician himself. When the time came for him to call them in, the folding doors between the rooms opened and he stood in a blaze of light inviting them to enter. Many a neurotic patient despairing of relief for symptoms that had lasted long in spite of the treatment of many other physicians, felt at once that here, in this kindly, gentle-voiced man standing so prominently in the light, was surely the long looked-for physician who would heal whatever ills there were. They came fully impressed with his power to heal, and all the valuable influence of auto-suggestion was enlisted on the side of their physician.