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A Hypnotist’s Case Book – Professor Alexander Erskine

I remember some years ago a man came to me.   He had an inflammation of one eye so bad that he could not open it ; and it was causing him-great pain. He had had it for months, and the doctors he had seen could not diagnose it. It had failed to yield to such treatment as had been advised.

For some time I refused to treat him, for I did not know the cause of the swelling, and I did not want to cause a greater evil than the present one by an improper cure.

However, he refused to see a surgeon, and in the end I gave in. The question was what to do with the poison in the inflammation. It had, I felt, to go somewhere. So I decided to bring it out at the back of the neck !

He soon went to sleep, and I touched his eye, asking him  if he knew how to take down the inflammation. Sub-consciously he answered, "Yes," and then I told him that in three clays the inflammation would all have subsided, but that in- its place a big blister would come out in his neck, without, however, giving him any pain. As for the pain in his eye, that I abolished at once. I then woke him up.

His first words were, "Oh, I can open my eye" (a thing he had not been able to do before), "and the pain has gone!"

I then told him to come back in three days. He did. His eye was better, but he had an enormous bandage of cotton-wool on his neck.

"Hullo !" I greeted him. "'What's the matter with your neck?"

"The eye, it seemed, began to get better at once. By this time the swelling had all gone. "But," he went on, "yesterday a great blister began to appear on my neck.  It doesn't-hurt, but it's been getting bigger and bigger ever since it appeared."

I then told him what I had done, and that he need not worry, as it would disappear as quickly as it had come, once it had been opened. We attended to it then and there.

The next day not a sign of it was to be found.

Now, to a certain extent I took a risk in that case; I attempted to dissipate poison. It was not a thing I liked doing, but I did it only at the earnest request of the patient, and after explaining fully the difficulty with which we were faced. It may well have been that had I not drawn the poison out into the back of the neck, it might have dispersed over the body with no ill effects. I do not know.

My medical knowledge is not sufficient for me to state. But I do know that I took every precaution I could, and that the man never suffered from a recurrence of it.