Hypnosis in Science Fiction

This novella written in 1899 is another example of a great writer forecasting a society where hypnosis is used and accepted as a standard of the norm. The story takes place 200 years in the future. The hypnotist is having lunch discussing  what the past was like. 

  "Of course" said the hypnotist, "of course" and surveyed the table for his next choice. "You know " he said, helping himself to a dark blue confection that promised well, " in those days our business was scarcely thought of. I daresay if any one told them that in two hundred year's time a class of men would be entirely occupied in impressing things upon the memory, effacing unpleasant ideas,controlling and overcoming instinctive, but undesirable impulses, and so forth, by means of hypnotism, they would refused to believe the thing possible. Few people knew that an order made during a mesmeric trance even an order to forget or an order to desire, could be given so as to be obeyed after the trance was over. Yet there were men alive then who could have told them the thing was as absolutely certain to come about as---well, the transit of Venus 

  "They knew of hypnotism, then?"

  "They used it for painless dentistry and things like that"