Medicine: Asthma & Hypnosis

Gasping for breath, unable to eat or sleep, the 60-year-old man lay in a Scottish hospital moaning: "The end is near. The end is near." Doctors agreed; the patient was suffering from an intense, intractable form of bronchial asthma in which the contractions of the bronchial tubes become almost continuous and the lungs are starved for air. Antibiotics, Adrenalin, steroid hormones and oxygen had been given without effect. Finally, the University of Aberdeen's Dr. A. H. C. Sinclair-Gieben took over. His specialty: hypnosis.

Within ten minutes, the patient was in a deep trance. Carefully...

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