Hypnosis Daily Info Updates

In some cases requiring medical treatment, drugs may be of valuable assistance, as facilitating the process of hypnotizing. Alcohol and also chloroform, chloral hydrate (5 grains), paraldehyde (20 mms.), veronal (2 grain), and cannabis indica (12 grain) have been used with considerable success (Esdaile, Schrenck-Notzing, Herrero, Bernheim, Jastrow, and others). All systematic use of chemicals should be discouraged, however, and the hypnotist should resort to their application only in exceptional cases. In experiments, too, the practician should avoid drugs, unless the procedure be specially devised, following a careful estimate of the narcotic effect. Drugs will raise the percentage of successful hypnotization, to be sure; but, on the other hand, the significance of the results may be thereby greatly obscured. It then becomes somewhat difficult to determine precisely what role was played by the drug and what by the suggestion, and also to what extent did the narcotics interfere with the hypnotic regulation of bodily processes.