Hypnotism : its history, practice and theory / by J. Milne Bramwell.

  • John Milne Bramwell
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Hypnotism : its history, practice and theory / by J. Milne Bramwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    388/502 page 368
    her ordinary domestic occupations. The wound healed rapidly and she shortly afterwards took another situation. There was no relapse. Delbceuf’s most striking case, that of the two symmetrical burns, has already been described (p. 84). In Delbceuf’s opinion, the persistent belief that one was suffering from disease might sometimes ultimately cause disease; and, in the same way, the conviction that a morbid condition did not exist might contribute to its disappearance. He considered that the organic changes that followed such an injury as we have described in the case of J. (p. 84) were not alone due to the injury itself, but were also partly caused by the subject’s consciousness of pain. The absence or presence of pain might, to a greater or lesser extent, influence vaso-motor conditions. On the one hand, organic injury, unassociated with pain, might not be followed by congestion, inflammation, or suppuration ; while in an identical injury, accompanied by pain, these conditions might be present. The consciousness of pain, in addition to being some- times responsible for morbid changes at the site of injury, might also help to spread them to other parts more or less remote; and thus, when pain was removed or relieved, this really meant the disappearance or decrease of one of the factors in the organic malady. According to Delboeuf, experiments like these led us to sup- pose that the action of the moral on the physical might be almost, if not quite, equal to that of the physical on the moral. Hence it followed that the idea of absence of mischief might bring about, or at least favour, a cure. How, asked Delboeuf, are we to explain the mechanism of this inverse action of the moral on the physical ? The action of organs which are dependent upon the sympathetic system cannot be modified voluntarily by the will; the unstriped muscles, the vaso-motors, the glands, act without the intervention of the cerebral hemispheres. The following was his explanation: In the lower forms of life the animal was just as conscious of what was taking place in its interior as it was of what was happening at its periphery. With the progress of development, however, its attention would be directed more or less exclusively, on the one hand, to the organs which placed it in direct relationship with the external world, and warned it of the passing of outside events of importance to
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