One of the cases recorded by Welterstrand[196] was a child of ten years who had stammered ever since he could speak at all, and who in addition had for some time suffered from facial contortions--elevation of the eyelids and eyebrows, and twitching of the lips. Six séances sufficed to banish the symptoms, which at the end of several months had not recurred. Another of his patients was a young woman, twenty years old, with incessant spasmodic movements of mouth and eyebrows. The disfiguring grimaces of years disappeared completely by the tenth sitting. Van Renterghem[197] has recorded a case of rotatory tic also cured by hypnotism. Feron[198] and Vlavianos[199] report similar successes, but one may legitimately ask whether the phenomena were not really hysterical manifestations, and if the results attained any degree of permanence. Treatment by suggestion is, as a general rule, ineffectual. In Maréchal's[200] case of mental torticollis with symptoms of two years' duration, recourse was made to this measure but without avail, and our experience has been identical. Raymond and Janet[201] have noted favourable results by the adoption of suggestion during waking hours, without going the length of hypnotic sleep; in one case of tic simulating chorea, a cure followed the threat of surgical intervention. The same objection may be raised to ordinary as to hypnotic suggestion, that it is not of universal applicability. Besides, it is very difficult to know exactly what meaning the term is intended to convey. To encourage the patient and assure him of progress, to reproach or reprimand him on occasion, is to employ an integral and invaluable factor in all re-educational treatment of tics; but is this truly suggestion? SURGICAL TREATMENT Surgical procedures are and can be applicable only to a small minority of tics, principally those of the neck, and in particular mental torticollis. Now, while we question the necessity of emphasising afresh the uselessness of surgical interference, we believe it incumbent on us to indicate more precisely the extreme, inefficacious, and sometimes perilous nature of the measures to which patients are exposed in the vain hope of putting an end to their _mal obsédant_. In the vast majority of cases the upshot of operative intervention is the creation of transient or permanent muscular paralyses and pareses. Of two infirmities patients voluntarily choose the one whose evils have not yet been brought home to them. To enlighten them, to warn them against their own rashness, to impress on them repeatedly the truth of the fact that so-called radical operations do not exclude the possibility of recurrence--this we conceive to be our bounden duty.