All will concede that the present popular consideration given to hypnosis renders it incumbent on the physician who would creditably fulfill his mission that he be posted with knowledge of its phenomena and nature.
In presenting my views on hypnosis, there is no pretense that I am a scientist detailing my original experimental investigations, but rather a philosopher scanning the field of psychic culture, analyzing the products of the labors of experimentalists in mental science, and deducing conclusions by associating and comparing such products with the results of progress in the broader field of physics.
My contention is that the somatic mind is the product of the functioning of the encephalon, the motor of which is vital energy, an isomeric phase of and directly descended from, the oscillatory motion of atomic matter through molecules, protoplasm and tissue metabolism, and I hold that hypnosis, spiritism, Christian science, hysteria, etc., are cognate forms