At a meeting of the Harveian Society held last October, much interesting information was produced. A paper of great and permanent value was read by Dr. Claye Shaw on the ‘Influence of Mind as a therapeutic agent.’ It is impossible in the space at my disposal to quote more than two brief extracts from his paper. He thus defines ‘suggestion’: ‘Suggestion is the insinuation of a belief or impulse into the mind of a subject by any means, or by words or questions, usually by emphatic declaration; also the impulse of trust and submission which leads to the effectiveness of such incitement.’ On the effects of treatment by suggestion, Dr. Claye Shaw writes: ‘It is with such conditions as chronic inebriety, opium, or the drug habit, that suggestion is most powerful; with acute insanity I have not seen it successful, and, though it has been fairly tested in asylum practice, it has not obtained general recognition as a therapeutic agent.’ A considerable number of medical men, alienists and others, took part in the discussion which followed the reading of the paper. Dr. Bramwell cited many well-authenticated cases where a cure or marked amelioration had followed treatment by suggestion in cases of this kind which had resisted all other treatment. Among these were instances of neurasthenia (‘la grande hystérie’), claustrophobia, morphomania, tendency to suicide, a morbid fear of cats. Dr. Seymour Tuke said that he had found ‘suggestive treatment marvellously effective in cases of inebriety in which the will was under some sort of control,’ but that he was ‘unable to make encouraging report of the use of hypnotism and suggestion amongst insane patients.’ [A useful and discriminating testimony.] Dr. Lloyd Tuckey had cured ‘many cases of genuine dipsomania, which could not be reached by drugs, by hypnotism--as well as other intractable conditions, such as three cases of Menière’s disease.’ Dr. R. H. Cole said that, twenty years ago, when he was a House Physician, he first tried to hypnotise patients. Later, he went to Paris and attended the ‘Salpétrière and Bernheim’s cliniques, but was greatly disappointed in what he saw.... In his experience of mental diseases he had only seen it do good in one insane patient. It had never had any effect in his experience upon people with fixed delusions, but it would cure dipsomania.’ Dr. T. F. Woods had treated 4000 cases, and he described a few of them in which he had obtained remarkable results. One was that of a woman, with severe asthma and delusions that she was going to be cut in pieces, who was cured by suggestion at one sitting, and had kept well ever since. Another case of severe sciatica, which had resisted every line of treatment for eight months, was also cured rapidly. He did not find it necessary to induce hypnotic sleep. Dr. E. A. Ash thought that ‘genuine hypnotism (the state of somnambulism) was unsatisfactory in practice. Only a small proportion of cases could be hypnotised, and these in his