Nurses Should be Hypnotists.

Professor John D. Quackenbos, the New York physician who has made some special investigations in hypnotism – and likewise some startling statements concerning it – now suggest that trained nurses should study to become adepts in the science so as to exert as powerful an influence as possible on their patients. The Schulenburg Sticker (Schulenburg, Tex.), Vol. 8, No. 33, Ed. 1 Thursday, March 20, 1902
One can hardly overestimate the significance of suggestion in the hands of the trained nurse — the disciplined woman, acquainted with the natural history of diseases, qualified by education to care scientifically for the sick, and singularly blessed with opportunities that are at once life-serving and life-saving through the evocation of a psycho-physical control adequate to the arrest of exaggerated destructive metamorphosis, the re-establishment of the processes of repair, and thus the carriage of the patient through the crises of disease.

. . .

In her psychic treatment, the trained nurse is never to lose sight of the nervous control automatically operated by the superior spiritual self, which is the power behind the throne of the physical. In less serious cases, she will have abundant opportunity to test the truth of Churchill's philosophy:

"The surest road to health, say what they will,
Is never to suppose we shall be ill.
Most of those evils we poor mortals know,
From doctors and imagination grow.''

That is, no doctors, no imagining that we have any of the diseases they are qualified to treat. But the trained nurse is to be the doctor's coadjutor. She is never to interfere with the physician's treatment, but, assuming it to be correct, render it effective by assurances given through suggestion. This is intelligent supplementary treatment. She is to remember that suggestion implies enlightened anticipation of grave changes. It may not be safe to await the arrival of the physician. She is supposed to know what to do until the doctor comes. She will not take the chance of waiting; too much of life is spent in waiting. For her, now is the appointed time, and the appointed way of escape is in many cases through the channel of suggestion only.

HYPNOTIC THERAPEUTICS
IN
THEORY AND PRACTICE
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS OF TREATMENT BY SUGGESTION

BY John Duncan Quackenbos, A.M., M.D.

1908