Observations placeholder
Hack Tuke, Daniel – Healing - Inducing sleep as a consequence of suggestion only
Identifier
026049
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
As described in Illustrations Of The Influence Of The Mind Upon The Body In Health And Disease, Designed To Elucidate The Action Of The Imagination - Daniel Hack Tuke, M.D., M.R.C.P.,
PART I. THE INTELLECT.
CHAPTER IV. INFLUENCE OF THE INTELLECT UPON THE INVOLUNTARY MUSCLES.
Reference may here be made to the influence of Expectation or a dominant idea upon the vessels of the brain in causing sleep, and in inducing waking from sleep at a certain time. In many persons, as is well known, and as Sir John Forbes demonstrated, it is only necessary to expect sleep and it supervenes, while a person impressed with the idea that it will not come may be rendered restless for hours. Dr. Elliotson, in describing a mesmeric case, says,
" Mere imagination was at length sufficient, for I one day told her and two others that I would retire into the next room and mesmerize them through the door. I retired, shut the door, performed no mesmeric passes, but tried to forget her, walked away from the door, and busied myself with something else — even walked through into a third room ; and on returning in less than ten minutes from the first, found her soundly asleep, and she answered me just as was usual in her sleep-waking condition" (The Zoist. Edited by Dr. Elliotson, 1846, p. 47).
The expectation that a hypnotic effect will be produced by a pill often succeeds when it is perfectly inert ; but still more remarkable, the effect of a purgative pill has been rendered nil, and comfortable sleep induced in the place of insomnia, by the belief that an opiate has been administered. Such a case is related by Dr. Noble, the pills consisting of Ext. Col. co., gr. viii, and Calomel, gr. ij !
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The late Sir James Simpson, at a meeting of the Edinburgh Medico-Chirurgical Society, referred to a striking case witnessed by three physicians, in which a person " biologized " was commanded to sleep thirty-five hours, and did so, " with two short intervals of permitted awakening"
(The Monthly Journal of Medical Science. Edinburgh, 1847, p. 486).