"In the summer of 1884 there was at the Salpêtrière a young woman of a deplorable type. Jeanne Sch---- was a criminal lunatic, filthy in habits, violent in demeanour, and with a lifelong history of impurity and theft. M. Voisin, who was one of the physicians on the staff, undertook to hypnotise her on 31st May, at a time when she could only be kept quiet by the strait jacket and _bonnet d'irrigation_, or perpetual cold douche to the head. She would not--indeed, she could not--look steadily at her operator, but raved and spat at him. M. Voisin kept his face close to hers and followed her eyes wherever she moved them. In about ten minutes a stertorous sleep ensued, and in five minutes more she passed into a sleep-waking state, and began to talk incoherently. The process was repeated on many days, and gradually she became sane when in the trance, though she still raved when awake. Gradually, too, she became able to obey in waking hours commands impressed on her in the trance--first trivial orders (to sweep the room and so forth), then orders involving a marked change of behaviour. Nay, more; in the hypnotic state she voluntarily expressed repentance for her past life, made a confession which involved more evil than the police were cognisant of (though it agreed with facts otherwise known), and finally of her own impulse made good resolves for the future. Two years later (31st July 1886) M. Voisin wrote that she was then a nurse in a Paris hospital, and that her conduct was irreproachable. It appeared then that this poor woman, whose history since the age of thirteen had been one of reckless folly and vice, had become capable of the steady, self-controlled work of a nurse at a hospital, the reformed character having first manifested itself in the hypnotic state, partly in obedience to suggestion, and partly as the natural result of the tranquilisation of morbid passions." There is a mass of evidence to testify to the marvellous cures that have been effected in this way. Kleptomania, dipsomania, nicotinism, morphinomania, and several varieties of phobies have all been known to yield to hypnotic suggestion. Nor is it always necessary that the mind of the patient should be influenced by another person; self-suggestion is at times equally efficacious. Here is a case in point, taken from "Proceedings," vol. xi. p. 427. The narrator is Dr D. J. Parsons.