Medicine: Entranced Skin

When he was born, in London, even his mother thought that he seemed to have a thick skin. As the baby grew, his skin darkened and hardened to a black, rough casing over his whole body except the chest, neck and face. It was covered with close-set black bumps; between them the skin was as hard as a fingernail, and if it was bent it cracked and oozed bloodstained serum. Someone cruelly dubbed him "the elephant boy." Doctors said he had been born with ichthyosis (fish-scale disease). Nobody knew its cause or cure.

Treatment at some of London's best hospitals did no good. A trial operation to graft normal skin from his chest to his horny palms proved worse than useless: the grafted skin blackened like the rest, then shrank and stiffened his fingers. The boy went to school, but his teachers and the other pupils objected to him. Though he was quick to respond to affection, he got so little that he became shy and lonely.

Then Dr. Albert Abraham Mason heard of the case. In his studies of psychosomatic conditions, he had taken an interest in hypnosis. Eighteen months ago, in a white-painted hospital room in East Grinstead, Sussex, a dozen skeptical doctors watched as Dr. Mason talked the boy into a hypnotic trance. It took ten minutes. Then Hypnotherapist Mason said again & again: "Your left arm will clear." (He had begun with a particular part of the body to make the test more precise.)

About five days later, the coarse outer layer on the boy's left arm became soft and crumbly, and fell off. The skin underneath was reddened, but soon became pink and soft. In ten days the arm was clear from shoulder to wrist.

Dr. Mason tried again & again, cutting his hypnosis time to three seconds. After he said the right arm would clear, it did. The boy's thighs and legs, which had been most heavily covered, cleared partially. His back was 90% cleared. The boy, now 18 and happier than he had ever expected to be, has learned to hypnotize himself to maintain the improvement. He is working as an electrician's helper.

Skin specialists who read of the case last week in the staid British Medical Journal snorted, did not see how hypnosis could ease a condition which began in the womb. Neither could young (26) Dr. Mason, but he had witnesses to his treatment and the boy's improvement.