A searchable database of
medically documented cases

About the Project

On The Psyche And Warts I; Suggestion And Warts: A Review And Comment

Ullman, M. 1959Other/Unknown

Psychosomatic Medicine 21(6): 1959; 437-488

View Original Source →

Abstract

The present case report describes a nine-year-old girl with multiple common warts. The lesions were refractory to routine dermatologic treatment but appeared to respond dramatically to hypnotherapy. The patient’s schoolwork concomitantly improved. The authors present a brief discussion of the literature and indicate some problems for future study.

Case Details

Remission Characteristics

The cure of warts can be brought about by psychological means generally associated with the term suggestion

Treatment & Mechanisms

Proposed Remission Mechanisms

An affective response must be set up in the patient. The ritual involved in the various lay approaches and the procedures employed in the medical techniques to effect a cure by suggestion both result in the temporary suspension of the discriminative, critical, and evaluative faculties of the patient in favor of certain emotional reactions engendered by the situation.

Clinical Treatment

X-ray, drugs, and even surgery

Non-Clinical Treatment

Suggestion therapy, hypnosis

Additional Notes

The considerations here presented warrant the further exploratory use of hypnosis as a procedure incorporating many of the elements that appear to be involved in the various accounts of the cure of warts by suggestion.