Among the medical men who have come to watch some of my cases was a gentleman who seemed much struck at seeing the method I adopted with a rather refractory subject. I held his hand and stroked his forehead while at the same time suggesting the symptoms of sleep. The gentleman told me afterward the reason why he was so interested. It appears that he had a few months previously been in attendance on a very severe and protracted case of delirium tremens. The patient could get no sleep, and the doctor was afraid of death from exhaustion. On the third evening he resolved to make a strong effort to produce sleep, and, if necessary, to sit up all night with the patient. He told the man that he would not leave him until he slept, and sitting down by the bedside, he took his hand in one of his own, and with the other gently stroked the forehead. At the same time he talked quietly and reassuringly to him. In less than half an hour he was rewarded by seeing the restlessness entirely cease and the man drop off into a quiet sleep. That sleep, the doctor told me, lasted fourteen hours, and the patient awoke out of it weak, but cured. Manipulation about the head has in many persons a most soporific effect, and several persons have told me that they always become drowsy under their barber's hands. {157} Drugs.--A number of drugs and related substances have been used as aids to hypnosis, but in nearly all of these cases it is doubtful whether it is true hypnotism that results and whether the suggestions in these states have much therapeutic value. One of the drugs most frequently administered by hypnotists is _cannabis indica_, which has long been used in the East for a similar purpose. After this, chloroform is most popular. Schrenck-Notzing even ventured to employ alcohol as an aid in hypnosis, and claims that he has succeeded at times in making intoxication pass into the true hypnotic condition. Bernheim and many others of the French school have used chloral and morphine. These substances are, however, liable to great abuse. Whenever they have to be employed it means that the patient is but little susceptible to hypnotic influence. These aids are employed only because hypnotists do not want to confess that a very considerable portion of humanity is not directly susceptible to the hypnotic influence.