ish
or vitiate the secretions, favour the causes which induce disease, and
impede the action of the mechanism by which the body may get rid of its
maladies. An army when flushed with victory and elated with hope
maintains a comparative immunity from disease under physical privations
and sufferings which, under the opposite circumstances of defeat and
despair, produce the most frightful ravages."

The classic description of the woeful effects of imagination is in Jerome's
"Three Men in a Boat". Harris, having a little time on his hands, strolls
into a public library, picks up a medical work, and discovers he has every
affliction therein mentioned, save housemaid's knee. He consults a doctor
friend and is given a prescription. After an argument with an irate
chemist, he finds he has been ordered to take beefsteak and porter, and not
meddle with matters he does not understand. A sounder prescription never
was penned.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XVIII

SUGGESTION TREATMENT

"To purge the veins
Of melancholy, and clear the heart
Of those black fumes that make it smart;
And clear the brain of misty fogs
Which dull our senses, our souls clog."
--Burton.

Hypnosis and suggestion have suffered from those people who put back every
reform many years--quacks and cranks--for while science, with open mind,
was testing this new treatment, the quacks exploited it up hill and down
dale.

Yet there is nothing supernatural in suggestion, for we employ it on
ourselves and others every hour we live. Conscience consists only of the
countless stored-up suggestions of our education, which by opposing any
contrary suggestions, cause uneasiness.

Many of us conform through life to the suggestions of others, affection,
awe, hero-worship and fear taking the place of reason.

The most resolute of men are influenced by tactful suggestions, which
quietly "tip-toe" on to the margin of consciousness, awaken ideas which
link up more and more associations, until an avalanche is started which
forces itself on to the field of consciousness, the subject thinking the
idea is his own.

Author and actor try by suggestion to make us think, laugh, or weep at
their will, books are sold by suggestive titles, and many clothes are worn
only to suggest wealth or respectability.

The best salesman is he who by artful suggestion sells us what we do not
want; the best buyer he wh