This is clear evidence of the fact that his trauma was psychical. His previous history perhaps contains the clue explaining why, in his case, it was his voice which was affected. The application of the faradic current was suggestion pure and simple. In emphasising the limited usefulness and possible danger of suggestive therapeutics in many cases that are not quite recent, we have not been referring to that method of suggestion which is involved to a greater or less degree in all successful treatment of disease—the process of gaining the patient’s confidence and impressing him with the idea that he is going to recover. “The conversational attitude, the familiar manner of talking things over, the heart-to-heart discussion, where the physician must exert his good sense and feeling, and the patient be willing to be confidential” is the method which Déjerine calls ‘psychotherapy by _persuasion_.’ “It consists in explaining to the patient the true reasons for his condition, and [for] the different functional manifestations which he presents, and above all, in establishing the patient’s confidence in himself and awakening the different elements of his personality, so as to make them capable of becoming the starting-point of the effort which will enable him to regain his self-control. The exact comprehension of the phenomena which he presents must be gained by the patient by means of his own reasoning.... The part that the physician plays is simply to recall, awaken, and direct....”[35] No one who has not had the experience of guiding mental patients in the way so lucidly expounded by the French physicians can form any adequate conception of the remarkable efficacy of these common-sense methods in restoring to those who are afflicted a normal attitude of mind. It is certainly saving considerable numbers of soldiers from the fate of insanity. These methods are not novel, even if the fuller comprehension of their mode of operation is only dawning upon us now. This point has been admirably expounded by Déjerine and Gauckler, from whose book we must quote once more:— “May we be permitted to quote a few lines in which Bernardin de St. Pierre has defined, more exactly and better perhaps than we could do, and with a sort of prescience of what is needed, the very rôle that we would like to [see our physicians adopt towards their patients].