Hypnotism : including a study of the chief points of psycho-therapeutics and occultism / Albert Moll.

  • Moll, Albert, 1862-
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hypnotism : including a study of the chief points of psycho-therapeutics and occultism / Albert Moll. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    in popular opinion, that it is possible to induce sleep by look- ing fixedly at the tipot^ nie_nose. Apart from the yogis and fakirs, hypnotic conditions are found among various peoples in the present day. In a recent report from Abyssinia we are told that the Lebascha1 children are trained to detect crime. These children, when hypnotized, are said to be able to detect a criminal even at a very great distance. One of them is stated to have run for sixteen miles without stopping, and then to have unearthed the criminal directly it arrived at his hiding- place. Michaud informs us that the Annamites employ hyp- notism for religious purposes; in these cases hypnosis is attained by the subject fixing his gaze on two burning sticks attached behind one ear of the magician, who turns his head. Hypnotic conditions appear often to occur among uncivilized peoples, as is clearly to be gathered from the information of many travellers. That eminent ethnologist the late Professor Bastian, of Berlin, pointed out long ago the near relationship of many phenomena among uncivilized populations to hypnotism. Bastian believed that a more exact study of hypnotism by individual travellers would be of great service to ethnological psychology; the phenomena which occur spontaneously among uncivilized peoples could then be more carefully examined and brought in closer relation to artificial hypnosis. The ethnologist Stoll also, in his comprehensive work, Suggestion utid Hyp?iosis in der Volkerpsychologie, a second edition of which appeared in 1904, gives many details concern- ing hypnotic conditions among various peoples and in various ages. Certainly the book does not treat specially of hypnosis, but deals more with suggestion in general, to which Stoll gives a very wide range. Still, numerous instances are given of states which we cannot but consider hypnotic, or auto-hypnotic. For example, he mentions hypnosis among the Mongols and Chinese. According to him, the auto-hypnotic state is brought into play by the Chinese soothsayers of West Borneo for clairvoyance, and in the treatment of disease. The auto- hypnotized soothsayers give verbal or written answers to any questions which may be propounded to them. Stoll also tells of the hypnotic manipulations of the Tagals. A lady of his acquaintance, long resident in Manila, allowed herself to be hypnotized for insomnia by a Tagal woman, who had acquired 1 Stoll writes Lebascha; in many newspapers it is spelled Labascha.