The household medical adviser. A complete, popular-scientific work of reference ... compiled from the most recent recognised system of prevention and cure ... with over 320 illustrations, coloured plates and unfolding anatomical models / by H.Muller. M.D.

  • Müller, H.
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The household medical adviser. A complete, popular-scientific work of reference ... compiled from the most recent recognised system of prevention and cure ... with over 320 illustrations, coloured plates and unfolding anatomical models / by H.Muller. M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    tlie mind of the other whom we may call the patient. These ideas soon become the parents of others, and the whole result is a certain course of action on the part of the patient. It is almost always necessary that the suggester should be a person whose intellectual abilities and character give him a certain superiority over the patient. We speak of an accidental suggestion in those cases when a person conceives certain ideas from the unintentional actions or remarks of another person; or in consequence of impressions which he supposes himself to have received from any accidental circumstance or incident. (My tanner who regained his spirits in consequence of having good humoured companions near him came very near a case of the former kind). The accidental suggestion becomes an auto- suggestion when the impression which a man supposes himself to have received from some external accidental circumstance is taken up actively by the brain, and worked out further in the sense that appears most befitting to the individual himself. . In general, suggestions find their way into the brain most easily when they are least realized as suggestions; and it is consequently most easy for a man to submit himself to a deliberate suggestion, when it presents itself to him as a merely accidental one; and patients can be unconsciously won into doing things which they would never have consented to do in obedience to orders. But it is most important that the suggestion should be adapted to the humours, the intellectual capacity, and the mental abilities of the patient. Here it seems worth while to remark that, under the influence of all kinds of suggestions, we poor frail human beings frequently impose upon ourselves, and deliberately deceive ourselves in every sort of way. Thus, for example, fashion is really nothing else but a suggestion. A lady wants a new hat. She has only to be shown one with an assurance that it is of the very latest Paris fashion to be enchanted with it, and to find it absolutely sweet—no matter how strange or extravagant its form and shape may be. The mere fact that the hat is a fashionable one suffices to make her find it beautiful. Her own aesthetic and artistic senses exercise little, if any influence at all over her judgment. But this identical hat would have been declared tasteless and positively impossible if she had discovered that it was the confection of some ingenious needlewoman of a little country town, and that it had been offered in vain for sale for the last five years. Do not the costumes to be found in any old journal of fashion, no matter how aristocratic, seem more monstrous than the humble dress of the poorest peasant. Yet, once upon a time, they