In the summer of 1890, news that two students at Lasell Seminary for Young Women in Auburndale, MA had suffered a complete nervous collapse as a result of being hypnotized by an instructor in a nerve training class caused a brief but sharp national sensation regarding hypnotism and nerve training in girls' education. The instructor, Annie Payson Call, denied practicing hypnotism, and the seminary's principal defended both Call and the "mind concentration" course she taught at Lasell. Call's approach to nerve training blended Delsartean relaxation exercises, New Thought psychology, and self-hypnotic techniques into a therapeutic regimen which can be termed "Delsartean hypnosis." Developed further in her 1891 popular self-help handbook, Power Through Repose, Call's variety of Delsartean hypnosis was incorporated into the procedures of proponents of suggestive therapeutics, and it served as a model for subsequent relaxation training programs in the early- and mid-20th century.

Discussions regarding the use of hypnotism in dentistry featured prominently in dental journals and society proceedings during the decades around the turn of the twentieth century. Many dentists used hypnotic suggestion either as the sole anesthetic for extractions or in conjunction with local and general anesthetics for excavation and cavity filling. With the heralding of humanitarian dentistry and improved local anesthesia around 1905, a number of dentists advocated using suggestion psychology to calm nervous patients and increase their comfort and satisfaction levels while undergoing dental procedures. The practice of hypnotic suggestion with local and general anesthesia in providing patients with increasingly painless procedures constituted the earliest variety of behavioral dentistry, a discipline not fully developed until the closing decades of the twentieth century. Hypnosis and suggestion became driving forces for psychological applications in the formative years of behavioral dentistry.

In the years from 1895 to 1910, suggestive therapeutics, in its various guises and applications, was the prevailing popular psychotherapeutic treatment featured in print culture and to which large numbers of Americans turned, seeking relief for both physical and psychological disorders. The "Chicago School of Psychology"-a health institution founded by Herbert A. Parkyn offering free treatment and clinical instruction in suggestive therapeutics-along with Hypnotic Magazine, the unofficial organ of the school edited by Sydney B. Flower, reigned supreme in Midwestern psychotherapeutics and "magazine medicine." With his patients reclined on an Allison surgical table, Parkyn's suggestive treatments sought to increase blood flow to afflicted painful areas, while urging upon patients a proper diet, fresh air, and exercise-what he termed "life essentials." Both Parkyn and Flower purposely allied suggestive therapeutics to a host of related reform movements, such as physical culture, psychical research, practical psychology, and the acquisition of heightened occult mental powers often associated with the New Thought. Often mistaken as a form of Christian Science, the Chicago School of Psychology found it difficult to maintain its image as a distinct type of psychotherapy. Its identification with irregular psychological healing sects and its multitude of social and scientific interests placed it at the crossroads of medical and religious pluralism. The closure of the Chicago School of Psychology in 1906 coincided with the spread of the Emmanuel Movement to Chicago, where it became known as "Christian Psychology," marking the final popular years of suggestive therapeutics in Chicago.

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