When certain people do not obtain satisfactory results with autosuggestion, it is either because they lack confidence, or because they make efforts, which is the more frequent case. To make good suggestions it is absolutely necessary to do it _without effort._ The latter implies the use of the _will,_ which must be entirely put aside. One must have recourse _exclusively_ to the imagination. *** Many people who have taken care of their health all their life in vain, imagine that they can be immediately cured by autosuggestion. It is a mistake, for it is not reasonable to think so. It is no use expecting from suggestion more than it can normally produce, that is to say, a progressive improvement which little by little transforms itself into a complete cure, when that is possible. *** The means employed by the healers all go back to autosuggestion, that is to say that these methods, whatever they are, words, incantations, gestures, staging, all produce in the patient the autosuggestion of recovery. Every illness has two aspects unless it is exclusively a mental one. Indeed, on every physical illness a mental one comes and attaches itself. If we give to the physical illness the coefficient 1, the mental illness may have the coefficient 1, 2, 10, 20, 50, 100, and more. In many cases this can disappear instantaneously, and if its coefficient is a very high one, 100 for instance, while that of the physical ailment is 1, only this latter is left, a 101st of the total illness; such a thing is called a miracle, and yet there is nothing miraculous about it. *** Contrary to common opinion, physical diseases are generally far more easily cured than mental ones. Buffon used to say: "Style is the man." We would put in that: "Man is what he thinks". The fear of failure is almost certain to cause failure, in the same way as the idea of success brings success, and enables one always to surmount the obstacles that may be met with. *** Conviction is as necessary to the suggester as to his subject. It is this conviction, this faith, which enables him to obtain results where all other means have failed. *** It is not the person who acts, it is the method. *** . . . Contrary to general opinion, suggestion, or autosuggestion can bring about the cure of organic lesions. Formerly it was believed that hypnotism could only be applied to the treatment of nervous illnesses; its domain is far greater than that. It is true that hypnotism acts through the intermediary of the nervous system; but the nervous system dominates the whole organism. The muscles are set in movement by the nerves; the nerves regulate the circulation by their direct action on the heart, and by their action on the blood vessels which they dilate or contract. The nerves act then on all the organs, and by their intermediation all the unhealthy organs may be affected. Docteur Paul Joire, _Président of the Societe universelle d'Etudes psychiques_ (Bull. No. 4 of the S. L. P.) ***