CURE BY SUGGESTION.
[To THE EDITOR 07 THE "SPECTATOR."] Eire,—I am glad to see your article in the Spectator of July 25th on "Cure by Suggestion," for I know by experience that it is a real curative force, and can be used apart from hypnotism or any of the theories preached by the advocates of "Mind Cure" or "Christian Science." My knowledge of it comes from having tried it myself upon my daughter, a neurotic girl in her teens, so extremely intolerant of rebuke, control, or medicine, that I was simply driven to try some silent treatment which did not arouse her antagonism. I can only say that I have again and again found it succeed, where
nothing else has had any effect, in subduing nervous irrita- tion almost amounting to mania. My plan has usually been to wait till she is asleep—often in the small hours of the morning—and then fix my mind upon her and make sugges- tions persistently for from twenty minutes to an hour. Some- times she has been sleeping in my room, sometimes next door, sometimes at some distance. I do not think there is much difference in the effect of the suggestion except that it is perhaps easier to make the suggestion when she is actually in the room. On one occasion, when she was half delirious after a nervous shock, I suggested sleep (she had gone to bed for the night), and though I did not even whisper my sugges- tion, she said, "Why are you making me feel so sleepy F" She is now in normal health, and I think less susceptible to suggestion than when her nerves were more irritable, but I frequently give her a suggestion still when she is out of sorts. I should say that it acted more readily on the moral than physical plane. My experiences in this line have led me to believe that with a susceptible subject all anger and irritation in those around constitutes an unfavourable suggestion, and that "keeping one's temper" is of little use if one is inwardly
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