"Unlock It"

Two British doctors described last week an extraordinary case of the medical use of hypnosis, in which the patient held himself in unnatural and seemingly most uncomfortable positions for a total of seven weeks, with nary a complaint. The case history, as reported by Psychiatrist Denys Kelsey and Surgeon John N. Barron in the British Medical Journal: a man of 24 had lost part of his right foot in an accident; to help repair the damage, skin was to be grafted in two stages--first from his abdomen to his left forearm, then to the foot. The surgeons feared that the usual plaster casts might create sores and painful stiffness in the joints and make them useless for weeks.

Under hypnosis, the patient was told by Psychiatrist Kelsey to put his left arm across his abdomen and lock it. He did--so successfully that attendants could not move it. Kelsey added: Keep the arm there until the command "unlock it" is given. Surgeon Barron attached the abdominal flesh to the wrist, and the patient kept his arm in place for three weeks while the graft took. The next stage was tougher: the graft was cut loose from the abdomen, and the arm was laid across the drawn-up right foot. Again, the same commands. After plastic surgery under a light analgesic, the patient held this grotesque position for four weeks without complaint. He could even feed and bathe himself, walk with one crutch. The four weeks over, the graft had taken on the foot. Barron cut it loose, and Kelsey gave the order: "Unlock it." The patient did. His arm, despite its month's fixation, was fully flexible and painless: he could immediately work a cigarette lighter with the fingers of his left hand.

Reporting the case, Kelsey and Barron made an acknowledgment unique in medical journals: "We should like to record our appreciation to our patient for his readiness to cooperate in the experiment, which might, almost too literally, have come unstuck."

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