ating charlatans who advertise themselves by a
free treatment of the sick and invalids on the theater stage of small
towns, produce momentary effects which are sufficient to deceive. The
quack handles the diseased organ, perhaps a goiter or a leg crippled by
rheumatism, with a cruel rudeness and overwhelms the suggestible mind so
completely that the first autosuggestion is that of a complete change,
and that means cure. The disastrous results follow later. But from such
barbarisms we come by gradual steps to the suggestion of improvement
where the feeling of betterment can be in itself an important factor for
the cure. Yet even there we must not mistake the possible secondary
effect of a mental change from a psychotherapeutic cure of the bodily
disease.

Not seldom the removal of physical disability seems secured as soon as
certain mental disturbances are removed. There is no reason to believe
for instance that suggestion can have an important influence on a
diseased sense organ, and yet hypnotic influence and even autosuggestive
influence can under certain circumstances greatly improve seeing and
hearing. Especially in the field of hearing the central factor is of
enormous importance. Hyperaemic and anaemic conditions in the brain
centers of hearing control the vividness of the received sound. The
patient who cannot hear a certain watch more than one foot distant may
be able to hear it after some glasses of wine at a distance of three or
four feet. Thus it is only natural that a hypnotic influence can produce
similar changes on the psychophysical centers in such cases in which the
source of the trouble is a psychophysical laziness in the acoustical
center. Sometimes even this laziness itself is the result of psychical
autosuggestion which can be fought by counter-suggestion. I saw, for
instance, a distinct improvement in hearing in the case of a young woman
who had increasing deafness while the aurists declared that the ears
were in proper condition. I found that she lived with a father who
suffered from a severe middle-ear catarrh and that she was simply
controlled by a hidden fear that she might have inherited the ear
disease of her father. I removed this fear, partly by reasoning, partly
by suggestion, and partly by tricks which surprised her, for instance,
making her hear her watch with unaccustomed strength when she took it
between her teeth and closed both ears. The autosuggestive fear was
uprooted by these and t