Hypnotism has the virtue, at first at least, of requiring the consent of the hypnotic subject before the hypnotism is done. Further, hypnotism has an additional virtue over drug hypnosis and over pain-drug-hypnosis, in that an individual in a hypnotic trance will rarely perform an immoral act even though commanded to do so by the hypnotist, unless that individual would normally perform such acts.

Drug hypnotism does not have to be done with the individual’s consent. An individual who is drugged can receive and will obey hypnotic commands given to him by the doctor or operator and will continue to obey these commands after waking from the drugged sleep. By using the method of dropping a heavy sedative such as chloral hydrate into an individual’s drink, by suddenly muzzling him with a silk scarf from behind and injecting morphine into his arm, or by discovering the individual when he is drunk or shortly after he has been operated upon or during an operation, or during the administration of electric shock or sedation in an insane asylum, drug hypnosis can be induced. Thereafter, the operator works much as in ordinary hypnotism. Drug hypnosis can be administered with such wording that the patient will not only forget what he has been told and yet perform it, but will also forget that he has ever been given drug hypnosis, if that command is included, and he may even be given data to account for the time during which he was given the hypnosis. Drug hypnotism, then, can be done without the consent of the subject and is commonly so done even by doctors in the normal course of practice. There is nothing new or strange about drug hypnosis. It occasionally fails to work as the operator intends, and it does not usually strike against the individual’s normal moral tone save that, of course, it inevitably lowers him on the tone scale, thus bringing about a tendency to generally lowered morals. But pain-drug-hypnosis, due mainly to the intent of the operator, is a much more vicious procedure. It has been discovered that a drugged individual when beaten and given orders would almost invariably obey those orders regardless of the degree to which they flouted his moral tone or his position or his best interests in life.