The Superiority Of This Method

This method gives absolutely marvelous results, and it is easy to

understand why. Indeed, by following out my advice, it is

impossible to fail, except with the two classes of persons mentioned

above, who fortunately represent barely 3 per cent of the whole. If,

however, you try to put your subjects to sleep right away, without

the explanations and preliminary experiments necessary to bring

them to accept the suggestion and to transform them into

autosuggestions you cannot and will not succeed except with

peculiarly sensitive subjects, and these are rare. Everybody may

become so by training, but very few are so sufficiently without the

preliminary instruction that I recommend, which can be done in a

few minutes.



Formerly, imagining that suggestions could only be given during

sleep, I always tried to put my patient to sleep; but on discovering

that it was not indispensable, I left off doing it in order to spare him

the dread and uneasiness he almost always experiences when he is

told that he is going to be sent to sleep, and which often makes him

offer, in spite of himself, an involuntary resistance. If, on the

contrary, you tell him that you are not going to put him to sleep as

there is no need to do so, you gain his confidence. He listens to you

without fear or any ulterior thought, and it often happens--if not the

first time, anyhow very soon--that, soothed by the monotonous

sound of your voice, he falls into a deep sleep from which he

awakes astonished at having slept at all.



If there are sceptics among you--as I am quite sure there are--all I

have to say to them is: "Come to my house and see what is being

done, and you will be convinced by fact."



You must not however run away with the idea that autosuggestion

can only be brought about in the way I have described. It is possible

to make suggestions to people without their knowledge and without

any preparation. For instance, if a doctor who by his title alone has a

suggestive influence on his patient, tells him that he can do nothing

for him, and that his illness is incurable, he provokes in the mind of

the latter an autosuggestion which may have the most disastrous

consequences; if however he tells him that his illness is a serious

one, it is true, but that with care, time, and patience, he can be cured,

he sometimes and even often obtains results which will surprise him.



Here is another example: if a doctor after examining his patient,

writes a prescription and gives it to him without any comment, the

remedies prescribed will not have much chance of succeeding; if, on

the other hand, he explains to his patient that such and such

medicines must be taken in such and such conditions and that they

will produce certain results, those results are practically certain to be

brought about.



If in this hall there are medical men or brother chemists, I hope they

will not think me their enemy. I am on the contrary their best friend.

On the one hand I should like to see the theoretical and practical

study of suggestion on the syllabus of the medical schools for the

great benefit of the sick and of the doctors themselves; and on the

other hand, in my opinion, every time that a patient goes to see his

doctor, the latter should order him one or even several medicines,

even if they are not necessary. As a matter of fact, when a patient

visits his doctor, it is in order to be told what medicine will cure him.

He does not realize that it is the hygiene and regimen which do this,

and he attaches little importance to them. It is a medicine that he

wants.



In my opinion, if the doctor only prescribes a regimen without any

medicine, his patient will be dissatisfied; he will say that he took the

trouble to consult him for nothing, and often goes to another doctor.

It seems to me then that the doctor should always prescribe

medicines to his patient, and, as much as possible, medicines made

up by himself rather than the standard remedies so much advertised

and which owe their only value to the advertisement. The doctor's

own prescriptions will inspire infinitely more confidence than So

and So's pills which anyone can procure easily at the nearest drug

store without any need of a prescription.