And even now it may not be without surprise that the reader finds described under the heading of _inhibition of attention_ a phenomenon so considerable and so apparently independent as _hypnotic suppression of pain_. This induced _analgesia_ has from the first been one of the main triumphs of mesmerism or hypnotism. All have heard that mesmerism will stop headaches;--that you can have a tooth out "under mesmerism" without feeling it. The rivalry between mesmerism and ether, as anæsthetic agents in capital operations, was a conspicuous fact in the medical history of early Victorian times. But the ordinary talk, at any rate of that day, seemed to assume that if mesmerism produced an effect at all it was an effect _resembling_ that produced by narcotics--a modification of the intimate structure of the nerve or of the brain which rendered them for the time incapable of transmitting or of feeling painful sensations. The state of a man's nervous system, in fact, when he is poisoned by chloroform, or stunned by a blow, or almost frozen to death, or nearly drowned, etc., is such that a great part of it is no longer fit for its usual work,--is no longer capable of those prolongations of neurons, or whatever they be, which constitute its specific nervous activity. We thus get rid of pain by getting rid for the time of a great deal of other nervous action as well; and we have to take care lest by pushing the experiment too far we get rid of life into the bargain. But on the other hand, a man's nervous system, when hypnotic suggestion has rendered him incapable of pain, is quite as active and vigorous as ever,--quite as capable of transmitting and feeling pain,--although capable also of inhibiting it altogether. In a word, the hypnotic subject is _above_ instead of _below_ pain. To understand this apparent paradox we must remind ourselves that pain probably originated as a warning of danger,--a warning which, while useful to active creatures with miscellaneous risks, has become only a mixed advantage to beings of more advanced intelligence and sensitivity. There are many occasions when, knowing it to be useless, we wish to shut off pain, to rise as definitely _above_ it as our earliest ancestors were _below_ it, or as the drunken or narcotised man is below it. This is just what hypnotic suggestion enables us to do.