The other question concerns the value of hypnosis for medical or therapeutic purposes; _can hypnosis effect cures? can it replace the anæsthetics of ordinary medical practice?_ It has, as a matter of fact, received fairly extended trial as an anæsthetic; and while it has allowed many operations, minor and major, to be carried out successfully, it is far less reliable than the an æsthetic drugs; mainly, no doubt, because it cannot be administered by the physician, as drugs can, but depends upon the attitude of the patient himself. There is no future for hypnosis in this connection. As to its therapeutic value, we can only say that whatever can be accomplished by suggestion, in the normal life, can be accomplished by the very strong suggestion of hypnosis in the disordered life. A suggestion can initiate, modify, and arrest movement; a sharp rebuke will start a child into activity, or change his occupation, or stop a present misdeed and prevent like misdeeds in the immediate future. A suggestion, again, can make us blush; and a suggestion can make us cry. Here, then, is the therapeutic value of hypnosis; it may arrest or remedy habits like alcoholism, and it may act upon derangements of circulation and secretion. Farther than this it cannot go; and even within these limits its utility is variable. Some children obey the first word of command, and others must be bidden over and over again before they do as they are told; some of us blush easily, and some hardly ever; some are readily stirred to tears, and some with great difficulty. So it is with the liability to hypnotic suggestion; everyone is liable, but not everyone to the same degree. Besides, as we saw just now, the habit of hypnosis grows, like all habits, upon him who has formed it; the patient may develop a craving for the hypnotic treatment, and in this way may take on a habit of dependence, of constant reliance upon others, which is as afflicting and demoralising as the disorder which the treatment was meant to cure. So that, on the whole, _hypnosis should not be lightly appealed to; the decision should in every case remain in the hands of the experienced physician_.