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A
LBERT
H
EIM
(1849–1937): T
HE
M
ULTIFACETED
G
EOLOGIST
W
HO
I
NFLUENCED
R
ESEARCH
I
NTO
N
EAR
-
DEATH
E
XPERIENCES AND
S
UGGESTION
T
HERAPY
Michael Nahm, PhD
Swiss geologist Albert Heim is well known for his pioneering
contributions to several aspects of geology, and for his role
in establishing the breeding of different kinds of Swiss
mountain dogs.
In the field of near-death research, it is also recognized
that he performed a pioneering study into near-death states
of falling mountaineers. It seems hardly known, however,
that Heim also influenced suggestion therapy significantly—in
particular, the treatment of warts by suggestion. This article
provides an overview of Heim's contribution in the latter field
of study.
Key words: Albert Heim, Geologist, Near-death experiences,
Suggestion therapy, Warts
(Explore 2016; 12:256-258 &2016 Published by Elsevier Inc.)
INTRODUCTION
Albert Heim (1849–1937) was a renowned and much
respected professor of geology at the University of Zurich.
Among many other responsibilities, he served as the president
of the Swiss Geological Commission from 1896 to 1926.
Being a prolific writer, Heim published almost 400 treatises,
1
some of which are regarded as classical works.
2–5
Still, he had
numerous other interests apart from the activities in his
geological profession. For example, he was active in cynology,
significantly advancing the establishment of the breeding of
four kinds of Swiss mountain dogs including the Bernese
mountain dog.
6,7
Moreover, he was a vigorous promoter of
cremation and advanced the establishment of the first Swiss
crematorium in Zurich (the third in Europe), and, together
with his wife, Marie, who was the first female physician of
Switzerland,
8,9
he campaigned against the abuse of alcohol
and tobacco, and promoted equal rights for women. Many of
his activities were carried by a distinctly philanthropic spirit,
and he also argued against vivisection of animals and for
nature conservation. Throughout his life, he received about
70 national and international awards, among them the degree
of a Doctor of Science h.c. from Oxford University.
7
Still, it seems little known among those who predomi-
nantly view Heim as a multifaceted geologist that he also
advanced studies into suggestion therapy and near-death
states—at least, these aspects of his activities are not men-
tioned in relevant sources on his life
10,1,11,12,7
(see also the
entry on Albert Heim on Wikipedia). Among researchers in
the field of near-death experiences (NDEs), however, Heim is
often regarded as a pioneer.
13,14
Heim, being also an
experienced mountaineer, summarized his major findings of
an inquiry regarding experiences that people made in life-
threatening situations, especially during mountaineering acci-
dents, in a publication toward the end of the 19th century
15
(for a translation, see Ref. 16). Already 20 years before, Heim
was met with a mountaineering fall himself, during which he
had impressive experiences that contributed to his collecting
of experiences of other casualties. The main finding drawn
from his case collection was that those who undergo moun-
taineering accidents do not suffer during their falls, and it was
his aim to spread this information to the bereaved who often
seemed to grieve profoundly from thinking that their
deceased loved ones must have suffered terribly during their
fatal accident. Heim related additional information on his
own in a later publication
17
(for a translation see Ref. 18). Yet,
it appears even less known that Heim also played an
important role in pioneering medical studies in suggestion
therapy—in particular, with regard to the curing of warts by
suggestion. The present article thus introduces aspects of
Heim’s experiences and methods, and the publication they
were described in.
ALBERT HEIM ON TREATING WARTS BY
SUGGESTION
In folklore, it has since long been claimed that warts can be
treated successfully by charming them in various ways.
Occasional reports were also published in the medical
literature, as well as accounts of first empirical studies.
19
However, physicians continued to largely ignore this topic
until Bruno Bloch (1878–1933), professor at the
Dermatological Clinic in Zurich, published detailed results
of an extensive experimental series on treating warts by
suggestion.
20
Only thereafter, the treatment of warts by
suggestion became more or less respectable in parts of the
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256
&2016 Published by Elsevier Inc.
EXPLORE July/August 2016, Vol. 12, No. 4
ISSN 1550-8307/$36.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.explore.2016.04.007
CASE REPORT
medical setting and stirred further interest.
21
In a deliberate
attempt to lend additional and “authorized”credibility to the
strikingly positive results Bloch obtained, and to integrate
them into the long history of laymen who were said to be able
to cure warts by charming, he prepended a lengthy report
written by Heim to his own study. In this report, Heim
described some of his experiences with suggestive treatment
of warts, and the technique he used.
Heim’s interest in this unusual method to cure warts
commenced when he was a child of about 11 years. He
witnessed how his father cured warts on the hands of his
siblings simply by touching the warts, while staring at the
children in a peculiar manner, and saying “This one goes away
now, and this one goes away now, etc.”Yet, when Heim asked
his father to explain how he worked, his father refused
because he feared that it would not work anymore if he
would explain it. Nevertheless, when Heim’s own four-year-
old son Anton (later to become a renowned geologist himself)
developed a considerable number of warts on his hands and
on his face about 25 years later, and after the standard
medication applied did not show positive effects, he tried
to re-enact his father’s procedure. In his own words:
To render the experiment instructive, I first treated only
one hand. I touched the warts one after the other,
rubbing them gently, and repeated over and over again
with a quiet voice: “This one goes away,”while I sharply
looked in the eyes of my little boy, who soon seemed to
become embarrassed. When his glance evaded, I told
him again: “Look at me.”This I did for two to three
minutes; then I said: ‛Now, you don’t need to look after
your warts again, they will go away.’After four days, it
was hard to tell where they had been. Then, I treated the
other hand in the same way, with the same success.
Another four days later I treated his little face. Then, all
warts had vanished, and my son has never had warts
again.
20p.2272, author’s translation
From then on, Heim treated the warts of many people who
heard of his ability, among them the children of a nursery
school and of acquaintances, but also numerous adults. He
stated, however, that his treatment worked only in about
three quarters of the cases. It was an exhausting activity, and it
seemed to be a necessary prerequisite to evoke a state of
embarrassment in the persons to be cured. If Heim was not
able to connect with the patients in such a way that they felt
uneasy, he suspected that his treatment would most likely be
not successful. Heim gave an illustrative example of his
approach: Once, he met Mr. G., an architect who had 12–
15 huge and very unsightly warts with a diameter of more
than 1 cm on each hand, in G.’s bureau. Heim asked if these
warts would not trouble him, what G. confirmed with utter
emphasis, stressing that he tried everything he could to get rid
of them, but that nothing helped, and that he would be ready
to try just anything to make them disappear. Heim, however,
felt that he would not be able to treat the warts successfully in
the private bureau of G., so he postponed the attempt to treat
them—and asked for G.’s permission to treat his warts
spontaneously whenever he felt the situation was right. He
then recounted:
Already a few days later, I met G. in the tram. I was able
to sit just opposite of him. …Well then, courage! “Oh,
Mr. G., your hands are all full of warts! Look into my
eyes, and give me this hand first! They must go away!
They go away now!,”etc. “In eight days, they will all be
gone, etc., etc.”Of course, all passengers were puzzled
and looked at us. G. was cooperating well, he only
looked embarrassedly at me. All passengers seemed
embarrassed. After four to five days, the warts fell off
unnoticeably, and after 14 days, the scars were hardly
visible anymore.
20p.2272, author’s translation
Heim gave several other examples of his warts treatment
method, and it is interesting that he also learned to practice
hypnosis after he visited a lecture on this subject held by
Auguste Forel. Among the indications Heim had allegedly
treated successfully with hypnosis were whooping cough,
neuralgia, bedwetting, gastric spasm, seasickness, acrophobia,
and exam nerves. Heim felt that charming warts and practic-
ing hypnosis always exhausted him considerably, and he only
applied himself to these issues because he felt obligated to
help others. With increasing age, Heim noted that his success
rate became lower, and he seemed to lose the necessary
capability to concentrate and thus, the necessary trust in his
healing ability. Consequently, he stopped treating warts and
practicing hypnosis in his mid-60s.
According to Heim, it would be difficult to observe the
disappearance of warts. Typically, they would simply fall off
the skin without being noticed. Apparently, they would be
expelled somehow, leaving a clean shallow dent on the skin
which would also vanish within a few days. He thus reasoned
that the suggestive treatment would cause an increased growth
of skin cells at the root of the warts, in contrast to medical
treatments that would aim at destroying the warts and their
roots, often leaving permanent scars. Bloch agreed that
Heim’s hypothesis seemed likely, although there were also
other ways in which warts could fall off, some of which might
even involve a slight bleeding at the spot where the warts
had been.
DISCUSSION
Although the cure of warts be suggestion must now be
regarded as established,
22,23
it still remains unclear how
exactly the suggestion to heal warts is transformed into a
physiological reaction, and ultimately, into an anatomical
alteration that leads to the uprooting of warts. In fact, this
problem is mirrored by numerous other examples of psycho-
physiological influence such as voodoo death, false preg-
nancy, somatic changes between the different personalities
surfacing in dissociative identity disorders, placebo effects,
23
and even the unusually rapid whitening of developed hair
shafts without physiological activity.
24
The situation is
complicated by the observation that belief into the success
of suggestion appears to be helpful, but not necessarily
needed.
22
Already early “mesmerists”such as du Potet,
Puysegur and Deleuze stated that the belief of the patients
who sought remedy was not required for the success of their
treatments, but that the strength of the mesmerist’sown belief
in their healing abilities was decisive
25
(this opinion was also
Geologist Albert Heim’s Contribution to Suggestion Therapy EXPLORE July/August 2016, Vol. 12, No. 4
257
held by Heim and Bloch). Indeed, regarding the charming of
warts, there are even reports in which animals were cured.
26
Consequently, one might wonder whether (auto-) suggestion
alone offers a sufficient explanation, or if such unpopular
effects such as psychokinesis or a healing “fluid”need to be
entailed, or if perhaps nonlocal entanglement processes as
proposed by Walach et al.,
27
would offer a novel and
promising explanatory pathway for elucidating such peculiar
anatomical alterations. The question is intriguing and still
unsolved. With regard to Heim’s methods of treatment, it is
of interest that the suggestions did not work when the people
treated remained in their normal waking state. Apparently, a
successful suggestion must have passed this “barrier”—either
by putting the patients in an embarrassed, confused, or even
slightly fearful state of mind, or by using hypnosis. As the
interest in treating warts by suggestion still alive,
22,23
it seems
recommendable to study the underpinnings of this peculiar
phenomenon in more detail. Because of the peculiar “lability”
of the warts’existence,
20
they seem especially suited for
successfully inducing macroscopic organic changes, and
their study might well advance our understanding of
psychophysiological influences in general. Returning to
Albert Heim, it seems notable that a professor for geology
contributed significantly to advancing two important fields of
research for forming a better understanding of human nature,
namely near-death experiences and psychophysiological influ-
ences. It is possible that he was not even aware of this.
REFERENCES
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of Fellows of the Royal Society. 1939;2(7):471–474.
2. Heim A. Untersuchungen über den Mechanismus der Gebirgs-
bildung im Anschluss an die geologische Monographie der Tödi-
Windgällen-Gruppe (2 vols). Basel: Schwabe; 1878.
3. Heim A. Handbuch der Gletscherkunde. Stuttgart: Engelhorn;
1885.
4. Heim A. Geologie der Schweiz (3 vols). Leipzig: Tauchnitz;
1919-1922.
5. Heim A. Bergsturz und Menschenleben. Zürich: Fretz und
Wasmuth; 1932.
6. Heim A. Der Neufundländerhund. Mannheim: Büchner; 1927.
7. Brockmann-Jerosch M, Heim A, Heim H. Albert Heim—Leben
und Forschung. Basel: Wepf; 1952.
8. Buchheim L. Marie Heim-Vögtlin. In: Neue Deutsche
Biographie, Vol. 8. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot; 1969;265–266.
9. Siebel J. Das Leben von Frau Dr. Marie Heim-Vögtlin. Zürich:
Rascher; 1925.
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1937;118:330–353.
11. Trümpy R. Heim, Albert Jacob. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie,
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experiences: features, circumstances, and incidence. In: Holden
JM, Greyson B, James D, eds. The Handbook of Near-death
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14. Parnia S, Spearpoint K, Fenwick PB. Near death experiences,
cognitive function and psychological outcomes of surviving
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15. Heim A. Notizen über den Tod durch Absturz. Jahrbuch Schweiz
Alpenclub. 1892;27:327–337.
16. Noyes R, Kletti R. The experience of dying from falls. Omega.
1972;3(1):45–52.
17. Pfister O. Schockdenken und Schockphantasien bei höchster
Todesgefahr. Z Psychoanal. 1930;16(3/4):430–455.
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(1):5–20.
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20. Bloch B. Über die Heilung von Warzen durch Suggestion. Klin
Wochenschr. 1927;6(48):2271–2275; 6(49):2320–2325.
21. Dunbar HF. Emotions and Bodily Changes. 4th ed. New York, NY:
Columbia University Press; 1954.
22. Goldstein RH. Successful repeated hypnotic treatment of warts in
the same individual: a case report. Am J Clin Hypn. 2005;47(4):
259–264.
23. Kelly EW. Psychophysiological influence. In: Kelly EF, Kelly
EW, Crabtree A, Gauld A, Grosso M, Greyson B, eds. Irreducible
Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century. Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield; 2007;117–239.
24. Nahm M, Navarini AA, Kelly EW. Canities subita: a reappraisal
of evidence based on 196 case reports published in the medical
literature. Int J Trichol. 2013;5(2):63–68.
25. Tenhaeff WHC. Aussergewöhnliche Heilkräfte. Olten and Freiburg:
Walter; 1957.
26. Coghill CP, Fagan T, Parr BW, McKenna J, Carberry H. The
cure of warts by suggestion. J Soc Psychical Res. 1899–1900;9
(7):100–104.
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