ned? In the simplest way.
Under the influence of the idea: "The haemorrhage is to stop", the
unconscious had sent to the small arteries and veins the order to stop
the flow of blood, and, obediently, they contracted _naturally_, as
they would have done artificially at the contact of a haemostatic like
adrenalin, for example.

The same reasoning explains how a fibrous tumour can be made to
disappear. The unconscious having accepted the idea "It is to go" the
brain orders the arteries which nourish it, to contract. They do so,
refusing their services, and ceasing to nourish the tumour which,
deprived of nourishment, dies, dries up, is reabsorbed and
disappears.

THE USE OF SUGGESTION FOR THE CURE OF MORAL
AILMENTS AND TAINTS EITHER CONGENITAL OR
ACQUIRED

Neurasthenia, so common nowadays, generally yields to suggestion
constantly practised in the way I have indicated. I have had the
happiness of contributing to the cure of a large number of
neurasthenics with whom every other treatment had failed. One of
them had even spent a month in a special establishment at
Luxemburg without obtaining any improvement. In six weeks he
was completely cured, and he is now the happiest man one would
wish to find, after having thought himself the most miserable.
Neither is he ever likely to fall ill again in the same way, for I
showed him how to make use of conscious autosuggestion and he
does it marvelously well.

But if suggestion is useful in treating moral complaints and physical
ailments, may it not render still greater services to society, in
turning into honest folks the wretched children who people our
reformatories and who only leave them to enter the army of crime.
Let no one tell me it is impossible. The remedy exists and I can
prove it.

I will quote the two following cases which are very characteristic,
but here I must insert a few remarks in parenthesis. To make you
understand the way in which suggestion acts in the treatment of
moral taints I will use the following comparison. Suppose our brain
is a plank in which are driven nails which represent the ideas, habits,
and instincts, which determine our actions. If we find that there
exists in a subject a bad idea, a bad habit, a bad instinct,--as it were,
a bad nail, we take another which is the good idea, habit, or instinct,
place it on top of the bad one and give a tap with a hammer--in other
words we make a suggestion. The new nail will be driven in perhaps
a fra