Another patient appeared at my door one day saying, "Look here!"
Examination showed that her abdomen was swollen to the size of more
than a six-months pregnancy. As it happened, this woman had a friend
who a short time before had developed a pseudo, or hysterical
pregnancy which continued for several months. My patient, accepting
the suggestion, was prepared to imitate her. I gave her a punch or
two and told her to go and dress for luncheon. In the afternoon she
had returned to her normal size.

Another woman, suffering from chronic constipation, was firmly
convinced that her bowels could not move without a cathartic, which I
refused to give. However, I did give her some strychnine pills,
carefully explaining that they were not for her intestines and that
they would have no effect there. She did not believe me, and promptly
began to have an evacuation every day. It seems that sometimes two
wrong ideas are equal to a right one.

If doctors fully realized the power of suggestion, they would be more
careful than they sometimes are about suggesting symptoms by the
questions they ask their patients.

A patient of mine with locomotor-ataxia suffered from the usual train
of symptoms incident to that disease. It turned out, however, that
many of the symptoms had been suggested by the questions of former
physicians who had asked him whether he had certain symptoms and
certain disabilities. The patient had answered in the negative and
then promptly developed the suggested symptoms. When I told him what
had happened, these false symptoms disappeared leaving only those
which had a real physical foundation.