On exophthalmic goitre / by A. Maude.

  • Maude, Arthur.
Date:
[1894]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On exophthalmic goitre / by A. Maude. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    that to be effectual its influence must last into the post-hypnotic state, into the time after hypnosis, and this demands a high degree of susceptibility to suggestion. The author’s experience leads him to refer the unfavourable effects of hypnotism largely to want of adaptive skill on the part of the hypnotiser. In the neurotic who are prejudicially affected by procedures quite harmless in the healthy, this is a fact of especial importance, and the use of hypnosis demands prudence and careful adaptation to the patient’s individuality. In persons subject to hysterical attacks these maybe brought on by hypnotic procedures. Just as other therapeutic measures, cold baths, massage, &c., may have bad effects on some individuals, so may hypnotism, but this mode of treatment prudently carried out by an expert, does not certainly entail more risk in itself than most of the Other means of cure daily employed in nervous diseases. Hypnotic treatment should not however be undertaken too lightly. The possession of a battery does not ipso facto constitute a skilled electrician, and the mere knowledge of certain methods of inducing hypnotism does not entitle anybody to put them into practice. The full description by Charcot of the “ greater hypnotism ” with its distinct phases of cataleptic, lethargic and somnambulistic conditions, has not been confirmed nor observed outside the Sal- petriere by the many investigators of hypnotic phenomena. That the observers at the Salpetriere saw what they described Dr. Lowenfeld does not doubt, but he thinks that the phenomena were excited in persons prepared for them, and easily influenced. He considers that further experience has shown that the hypnotic- state is not confined to persons of hysterical dispositions. Dr. E. Mesnet43 reports the case of a girl aged 17 who had suffered from hip disease, and had always been delicate and anaemic, but was never troubled with nervous disorders until March, 1872, when she had rachialgia with loss of power and sensation in the legs. From being morose and uncommunica- tive she abruptly underwent a change in character, becoming talkative and gay. In April, after breakfast one day, she suddenly lost consciousness and fell into a state of sleep, which lasted for an hour and from which she could not be roused by any means. When she awoke she expressed great surprise and had no memory of what had passed. The attack returned regularly for four days at the same hour, and on the fifth a second one of the same kind came on after dinner. There was complete relaxation of the limbs, loss of all the senses for communication with the