For instance less than a week after worldwide coverage of Alex Lenkei, the American media reported with apparent surprise how Chicago surgeon Dr. William S. Kroger hypnotised a patient undergoing breast cancer surgery at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan and she had felt no pain.
The demonstration was watched on closed-circuit TV by physicians attending an international meeting of anesthesiologists in Manhattan.
But the US media felt it necessary to quote Dr Kroger as insisting this was “no stunt but a serious demonstration of the wider use to which medicine should make of hypnotism.”
Reports of the Worthing operation described how Mr Lenkei could feel the surgeon pulling and manipulating him and how he heard the cracking of bones but was undisturbed. In the past he has taught students at the Royal College of Nursing to induce hypnoanaesthesia.
His surgeon, David Llewellyn-Clark confirmed Mr Lenkei showed no reaction during the operation and explained: "If he had been grinning and bearing it we would have known - but his heart rate and breathing remained constant throughout.
That corresponds closely to the way many other hypnotised patients have responded during surgery. It is exactly how a hypnothised patient is expected to respond – except it seems to most of the media.
Nor is it only when hypnosis is employed within surgery that it tends to be reported as something new and surprising.
Fairly regularly research teams publish reports on the successful use of hypnotherapy to help with conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome.
Each and every time it is reported as though this was brand new, extraordinary or astonishing. It's a pity but what is really astonishing is the constant surprise shown by the media at any and every successful use of clinical hypnosis. |
