Hypnosis as an Analgesia in Labor and Delivery
A bas relief taken from an ancient tomb in Thebes shows a priest obviously in the act of hypnotizing a patient. Undoubtedly, hypnosis was used by the priest in charge of the Egyptian "Sleep Temples" when they gave curative suggestions to sufferers who sought their aid. | In Asia and India, Holy men and Fakirs have used it for centuries to induce trance-like states and develop apparently super-normal powers. | As the Greeks associated medicine with magic it is no wonder that they picked up hypnosis from the Egyptians. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, Said, "The affections suffered by the body the soul sees quite well with shut eyes." Among the Romans, Aesculapius often threw his patients into "deep Sleep" and allayed pain by stroking with his hand. | A great physician in the tenth century, Avicenna, expounded his view that the imagination of man could act not only on his own body, but even on other and very distant bodies; further, that it could fascinate and modify them, either by making them ill or restoring them to health. | Paracelsus, a medical man in the sixteenth century, was persecuted and driven from city to city because he dared to state that imagination and faith could cause and remove disease .
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