At the University of Minnesota, bloodpressure control through hypnosis is being used in the treatment of hemophiliacs, who might otherwise bleed to death from a small cut or bruise. As an anesthetic and pain reliever for patients who for some reason can’t have chemical anesthetics, it is being used more and more. Today, however, it is used in childbirth by hundreds of hospitals all over the world. Hypnosis has been used as a muscle-relaxer in childbirth for 150 years, though it was not totally accepted by the medical establishment for much of that time. Many more, it is to be hoped, will do the same. Understandably, more than a dozen large hospitals throughout the country already have established a policy of ‘operating room silence’ during surgery, owing to the findings of Cheek and others. What the surgeon found looked like cancer, and he said “Poor old John” clearly as he sewed up the opening without having removed anything. It might explain, for instance, the case of a famous professor who died recently after an abdominal operation. These findings, Cheek believes, indicate the strong possibility that distressing talk in surgery may sometimes account for postoperative depression in a patient. Many of them, he reports, were able to recall specific events and conversation by the people in the operating room. Since then, Cheek has studied more than 800 patients to test his theory. Cheek of Children’s Hospital in San Francisco surprised medical circles with a theory that patients under anesthesia for surgery could remember later – under hypnosis – much of what happened and was said during their operations. Research into the subject of hypnosis has revealed a great deal of interesting, sometimes exciting, and often startling information about the uses and value of hypnotism.Ĭlinical hypnotists (qualified doctors who have been specially trained in the techniques of hypnosis – it is important to note that hypnotism is so powerful that t can be very dangerous when used by unqualified people) are using this method to treat a variety of medical problems, both physical and mental, and are discovering some fascinating things along the way. It looks as though hypnosis, once thought of as something to be done on stage by a magician – and even considered until fairly recently by many doctors as medically useless – has finally come into its own. Read the passage below and answer questions 1– 15.