Sydney's awful The World's News (the Daily Telegraph of its time) loved stories of miracles and the supernatural and 100 years ago this week gasped "MAGIC CURES BY HYPNOTISM. WIZARD DOCTOR."
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"HYPNOTISM is playing its part in healing the damage of war. The nerves of many men who have been at the front have been badly jarred and jangled by the fury and noise of modern warfare, but the healing of those men has in some cases been successfully achieved by what one may call the intervention of the stronger, calmer nerves of the hypnotist.
A young doctor in the Royal Army Medical Corps, wounded in the retreat from Mons, was taken prisoner by the Germans. Even there [in Crefeld prison] he was instrumental in alleviating the pain of men of many nationalities, and his influence was exerted in such curious ways as inclining a man to learn Russian, stopping another's cigarette craving, and curing Arab chieftains of insomnia.
"[He testifies] that 'I treated a number of men for various troubles while I was a prisoner in Crefeld. In one case, a British officer who had been wounded by a bayonet thrust above the knee ... was able to walk immediately after a surgery, a rare thing.
" 'And I cured a man of his deadly fear of thunderstorms. I treated him once or twice, and by a coincidence it happened immediately afterwards that we had two bad thunderstorms on successive days. He didn't mind them in the least.' "
