Medicine: Hypnosis for Cough

To the San Bernardino (Calif.) County Hospital early this year came a 14-year-old girl with a deep, body-shaking cough that had lasted continuously for 72 hours. The diagnosis: cough due to pressure on the laryngeal nerve.

The standard cough suppressants—syrup, steam inhalations, potassium iodide, codeine and various barbiturates—had no effect. After eight days of steady coughing at 15-to-30-second intervals, the girl was close to death from exhaustion. As a last resort, Dr. Richard Gwartney, a specialist in psychosomatic medicine, attempted a much-debated remedy: medical hypnosis. With several attendant physicians, Gwartney sat by the girl’s bed and explained what he intended to do, without mentioning the term hypnotism. Said he, in a report on the case last week: “It was all verbal suggestion. I told her she wanted to get over her cough, and that if she cooperated we could help her.” Finally, he told the girl that by the time he had counted ten, her eyes would close. On the signal, she closed her eyes but remained conscious.

Gwartney then went on planting his suggestions: that the urge to cough could be resisted, that she would feel much better if it was. In the course of three hypnotic treatments, he suggested that she could suppress the cough for longer and longer intervals, starting with one minute and building up to a full hour. On the second day, the girl was instructed to cough only when absolutely necessary; on the third day she was discharged.

Dr. Gwartney is quick to point out that hypnotic treatment did not “cure” the cough, but merely planted in the patient’s mind the idea that she could suppress it herself. The girl still coughs occasionally, since there is a physical cause for the symptom, but her own knowledge that she can stop if she wishes has prevented long paroxysms.