B576 <=> B578 [BTG XXXII Hypnotism, p. 577]

“You will understand this well, if I tell you that during that curing practice of mine there, when I later again became a physician-hypnotist there and existed mostly on the continent called Europe and on other countries situated near to it, almost half of my patients consisted of those who were ill only because of this said maleficent science of theirs which had become widely spread there.

“And this was obtained because when these ‘learned-beings-of-new-formation’ began writing various books about these questions, with every kind of fantastic theory, many ordinary beings there began to read them and became crazy with their fantasies and themselves began trying to evoke this hypnotic state in each other and as a result they brought themselves to the point of becoming my patients.

“Among such patients of mine were the wives of husbands who, having chanced to read these works, wished to suggest to their wives their egoistic wishes; for similar reasons children of unreasonable parents became my patients; various men who were found to be under the orders, or as it is said there, ‘under the thumb’ of their mistresses, and so on and so forth.

“And all this only thanks to the fact that these ‘sorry-learned-beings-of-new-formation’ cooked up their Hasnamussian theories concerning this distressing state of theirs.

“None of the theories now current among them concerning this question of hypnotism even approximate in the least to reality.

“Most recently, by the way, when I was on this ill-fated planet a new maleficent means began to flourish there for doing the same with the psyche of the beings there, as there did and still does this branch of their science hypnotism.