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HYPNOTISM, MESMERISMAND THE

NEW WITCHCRAFT

BY

ERNEST HART

FORMERLY St. BEBON TO THR WEST LONDON HOSPITALAND OPHTHALMIC SURGEON TO ST MART'S HOSPITAL LONDON

A NEW EDITION, ENLARGED

WITH CHAPTERS ON THE ETERNAL (FULLIBLEAND NOTE ON THE HYPNOTISM OF TRILBY)

PDF EDITION by Christina Debes,Magic Books Community,

http://darkbooks.org

WITH 24 ILLUSTRATIONS

NEW YORK

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1896
http://www.archive.org/details/hypnotismmesmer00hartgooghttp://www.archive.org/details/hypnotismmesmer00hartgoog


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MESMERISM AND THE NEW WITCHCRAFT

In the present edition a chapter has been addedembodying the confessions of a professional medium.Some new matter has also been placed in the Appendix.Otherwise the little book is unchanged.

January 1896.

PEEFACE TO THE FIEST EDITION

The papers here brought together have recently ap-peared in the 'Nineteenth Century' and the 'BritishMedical Journal' and are reprinted by permission.They are published to meet the wishes of some whohave suggested to me that it might prove useful andacceptable that they should be collected into a small

volume, and thus become more available for currentreference than they would otherwise have been. Theywere so favourably received at the time of publica-tion, that I may venture to hope it is not presump-tuous to give them this more permanent shape.Nothing has been written in the way of criticismwhich seemed to me at all substantial, or to call forany modification of the text; so that while I canhardly hope that their somewhat aggressive tone willpass altogether without disapproval from a certainschool of psychical researchers, yet I may venture tothink that they will now, as they did when first pub-lished, meet with general acceptance from the medicaland scientific world, and that they will serve a useful

purpose in dissipating some popular errors and agood deal of pseudo-scientific superstition, superimposedon a slender basis of physiological and pathologicalphenomena. They may be of some service, also, inunmasking a prevalent system of imposture whichhad imposed upon a good many journalists and men ofliterary culture.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. Hypnotism and Humbug 1

II. Hypnotism, Animal Magnetism, and Hystebia. . 29

III. Mesmebism and the New Witchcbaft ... 70

IV. Gbopings afteb the Supebnatubal . . . 162

V. Thb Etebnal Gullible 166


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VI. APPENDIX. Reply to M. Encausse. Lettebs tothe * Times' fbom the Authob and Db. Luys.EusAPiA Paladino. The Hypnotism op. *Tbilby.'

Automatic Writing 191

HYPNOTISM AND HUMBUG

Tlie Attraction of the Unkfionm TJie Early History of Mesmerism Some Control-experiments Natural Sleep and Hypnotic Sleep Hypnotism of Animals The Follies of Telepathy and of' Animal MagtietismJ

The unknown has always had a great attraction forevery class of mind, and whoever promises to lift forus the veil of the mysterious and to afford us a glimpseinto the unknown world may always count upon a largefollowing. It is the infirmity of great minds as of

small. The poet, the mystic, the imaginative philo-sopher, share its higher privileges ; the charlatan, thequack, and the stage performer, its greater profits /There is one phase of the pursuit of the unknown, and /one method of manipulating it, which has had the privi- jlege of exciting the interest and inflaming the imagina- jtion of mankind in all periods of history, in every phase iof civilisation, and in every part of the world ; probably \even amongst prehistoric peoples, and certainly amongst aboriginal savages. It is the endeavour to search outhidden forces and mysterious qualities of the mind todiscover other methods of transmitting mental irapres-sions than those of sight, speech, and touch; otheravenues than those of the five senses ; and other means

of mental influence than those everywhere known andvisible. It is with this quest, and with some of itsancient vestiges and strange modern developments,that I purpose to deal. Hypnotism, which is now

the subject of much intelligent and well-directedmodem research, and is also, unfortunately, the play-thing of a class of wandering stage performers, is theA lineal descendant of many ancient beliefs. It wasknown to the earliest races of Asia and amongst thePersian Magi ; and to this day the Yogis and Fakirs ofIndia throw themselves into a state of hypnotic ecstasyand reverie by fixation of gaze. In many convents

of the Greek Church it has been practised since theeleventh century, as it is still by the Omphalopsychics,by whom hypnotic reverie is obtained by steadilygazing at the umbilicus. Modern hypnotism, mesmer-ism, telepathy, animal magnetism, thought-reading, andthought-transference are of the family which in earliertimes, and when men were less wont to analyse naturalphenomena by rational methods, brought forth the prac-tices of the Magians, the antics of the demoniacs andthe possessed, the expulsion of evil spirits by exorcism,the healing of the king's-evil by laying on of hands, the


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serious acceptance and judicial punishment of the hal-lucinations of the witches, and the fantastic cruelty ofthe witch-finders. The proceedings by which Sarchas,the faithful companion of Apollonius, gave sight to theof their bodies, their eyes being previously carefullybandaged. Although the trick was thoroughly exposedby the late Mr. Wakley, coroner for Middlesex, andDr. Elliotson had to retire from University College

Hospital, he had seen enough of the actual and in-dubitable phenomena of induced sleep which he wasable to produce, to lead him to devote the rest of hislife to the endeavour to employ this means of inducingsleep, as a curative agent. He attended a very nearand dear relative of mine who was suffering from achronic and painful affection of the joints, whichmurdered rest. He was successful in giving her sleepat nights ; and this striking demonstration of an actualpower, which, if not resident in, was at least con-nected with his method of practice, not only made megrateful to him, but suflSced to impel me, when later Ientered into the medical profession, to test his methods.

I very soon found that in a large number of cases thereis no difficulty whatever in producing what we maycall, though not very accurately, artificial sleep. Ifound that I could produce it easily and frequently bymeans of what were then called mesmeric passes, withthe hands or by desiring the patient to look fixedly atmy eyes ; and, at first, following the directions of Elliot-son and of his master Mesmer, I at the same timeexercised my will, and ' willed ' the patients whom Imesmerised, to sleep. Just at this time there werespringing up two other methods of exciting this arti-ficial condition, one being widely known as Braidism,because it was practised by Dr. Braid, and the otheras electro-biology a name which had, I believe, been

first given to it in America, about 1848, by a NewEnglander named Grimes. The latter method had beenlectured on, under the title of Electrical Psychology, in1850, by Dr. Dodds, before the Congress of the UnitedStates, in reply to a semi-oflBcial invitation from somemembers of the Senate. These lectures had been pub-lished, under the title of the * Philosophy of ElectricalPsychology,' in New York, and been disseminated inEngland in 1850, when I first took to studying thesubject, by Dr. Darling and others, amongst whomDr. B. W. Carpenter, Sir James Simpson, Sir HenryHolland, and Sir David Brewster were perhaps thebest-known personages.

At this stage of my career I was house surgeon to ametropolitan hospital, and I had rather a sharp reminderof the danger of meddling with a subject of this nature.Two friends one of whom, I may say parenthetically,was a member of the last Government were spendingthe evening in my rooms at the hospital, and with themwas a lady who professed the customary incredulity asto my powers of inducing sleep. She submitted herselfas subject, and was very soon mesmerised ; and so pro-longed and complete was her slumber, that she was with


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difficulty aroused ; and when she left, her gait wastottering and she had to be supported on either side byher friends. This occurrence was reported to thehospital authorities by an unfriendly ofiicial, with veryhostile suggestions. I was summoned before the board,I gave my explanation, and the matter was referred tothe Medical Committee. I escaped with a solemn andincredulous admonition chiefly, I think, because I was

rather a favourite pupil, with a good record in theschool the sort of verdict being ' not guilty, but don'tdo it again/ pronounced with a dubious smile and asevere shake of the head, which clearly conveyed thatmy censors were very far from accepting the scientificexplanation of the facts. I could recount a long seriesof what might sound like strange stories of my variousexperiences. (They were enough to show that the con-dition induced partook of the character, sometimes ofordinary sleep, sometimes of cataleptic trance, some-times of waking somnambulism.^ The persons actedon were very much under the influence of suggestion,and could be made to say and do all sorts of strange

and ridiculous things ^to reply to questions in whichthey revealed various secrets, to obey commands whichat any other time and under any other circumstancesthey would be very unwilling to fulfil, to perform actswhich were senseless, and even dangerous, unless I hadexercised special precautions ; as to jump from heights,to dive off a table on to the floor as if swimming, toattack with a dagger an imaginary enemy, to flee fromsupposititious serpents or stinging insects in an agonyof fear, to listen to imaginary nightingales in an ecstasy' of pleasure, and all these performances took place with-I out consciousness at the time or memory afterwards.of the operator or some fluid, magnetic, electrical,psychical, or other, emanating from the operator, or

from some object which he had touched, or other-wise impregnated or invested with an influence, a fluid,or a power proceeding from himself, yhp m^smpinVulstate was supposed by Meamer himself to be- due to 'something which he called a magnetic fluid. At the .time when all Paris rang with the wonders of hispower, and when his antechambers were filled withprinces of the blood royal, with the halt, the lame andthe blind, with mystics, monks, and religieuses, withladies of fashion and the heterogeneous multitude wholove the marvellous ; he had constructed huge and com-plex tubs filled with bottles of fluid erroneously calledelectrical fluid, such as Count Mattei now dispenses,

and connected by a complicated system of wires withhandles, to be held by his subjects. Mesmer received16,000Z. for telling his secrets, which, of course, turnedout to be no secrets at all, and it was found there wasno electricity in the bottles or the tubs. Presently heretired across the Rhine enriched by his dupes, whoceased to be cured as the fashion died away and astheir faith waned. In all these so-called magneticcures, faith-cures, and Mattei specifics, Perkins tractorsand electric belts, you must make haste to be curedwhile the faith or the fashion lasts ; as it fades, they


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cease to cure. But Mesmer left a doctrine, a principle,and a nomenclature which has served the purpose of suc-ceeding generations of quacks and rjohemouches. Thefirst thing I did, then, was to ascertain whether therewas anything electrical or magnetic in the phenomena.This was very soon answered in the negative. Themost delicate electrical instruments failed to detect anydifierence what^ever either in ray own electrical state or

in that of the persons operated on, at any stage of theproceedings. The ordinary methods of conducting orof cutting off- magnetic or electric currents neither .fevoured nor interfered with the results. The inter- -position of silk or of glass, the insulation of the subjector of myself, did not in any way modify the phenomena,which were evidently entirely independent of themagnetic or electric fluid. And here I may remarkthat this has always been found to be the casewhenever tests have been applied to the so-calledanimal magnetisers or electro-biologists and their sub-jects. The fact is, that the word ' animal magnetism 'applied to any of these phenomena of induced sleep,

human automatism, hypnotic suggestion, or faith-cure,is a pure misnomer. It is an example of that tendencysatirised by Voltaire when he speaks of the tendencyof mystics and charlatans to consecrate their ignoranceand to impose its conclusions upon others ly giving aname which has no meaning to phenomena ivhich theydo not understand. There is, of course, electrical re-action in the living tissues of the body, and all mus-cular contractions are associated with simultaneouselectric changes ; but electric fluid has no special rela-tions to nerve rather than to muscle tissue ; it has norelation whatever to mental influence. Animal mag-netism, in the sense in which it is commonly appliedas related to faith-cures, hypnotic performances, and

the like, is a term without meaning ; while the wholetribe of self-styled animal magnetisers may be dis-missed as conscious or unconscious impostors.

After this parenthesis I return to a second kind ofcontrol-experiment. Apart from the magnetic fluidwhich was supposed to emanate from the magnetiser,there was then, had lived for many years, and stillexists, a theory that the will of the operator had muchto do with bringing the subjects into a state of fascina-tion or sleep. I therefore eliminated my will in oneset of experiments, and in another I set it in directopposition to the result to be obtained. Thus I dis-

pensed with all passes or gestures, and simply sat infront of my subjects in a mental attitude of indifferenceand curiosity. I did not will them to sleep, but Iallowed them to look at me, or at a coin, or at a silverspoon suspended six inches in front of the eye, or at thetip of their own nose. The same results were attained.I went further. Mesmer, who had mesmerised as manyas eight thousand people in one year in Paris, and hisdisciple Puysegur, had on various occasions mesmerised,as it was termed, the trunk of a tree, and, in virtue ofthe influences with which the tree was supposed to be


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thus impregnated, people joining hands and surround-ing it, and gazing at it fixedly, had fallen into themesmeric sleep, or had received the same kind ofwent on to the platform, and avoided any leave-taking ;but unfortunately in walking up and down it seemsthat I twice passed the window of the young lady's car-riage. She was again self-mesmerised, and fell into asleep which lasted throughout the journey, and recurred

at intervals for some days afterwards. Such was the his-tory of a candle supposed to be invested with mesmericinfluence, and therefore acting as though it were. It isan instructive and a suggestive incident, which I couldparallel with many others, and I dare say it will easilybe seen in what direction it is leading. (^I may addthat when I proceeded to a more active and directintervention of the will, opposing sleep, the resultswere not affected negatively. So long as the personoperated on believed that my will was that she shouldsleep, sleep followed. The most energetic willing inmy internal consciousness that there should be no sleepfailed to prevent it, where the usual physical methods

of hypnotisation, stillness, repose, a fixed gaze, or theverbal expression of an order to sleep, were employed.)

Thus, then, we have arrived at the point at whichit will be plain that the condition produced in thesecases, and known under a varied jargon inventedeither to conceal ignorance, to express false hypo-theses, or to mask the design of impressing theimagination and possibly prey upon the pockets of acredulous and wonder-loving public such names asthe mesmeric condition, magnetic sleep, clairvoyance,electro-biology, animal magnetism, faith-trance, andluauy other aliases such a condition, I say, is alwayssubjective. It is independent of passes or gestures;

it has no relation to any fluid emanating from theoperator ; it has no relation to his will, or to any in-fluence which he exercises upon inanimate objects ; dis-tance does not afiect it, nor proximity, nor the interven-tion of any conductors or non-conductors, whether silkor glass or stone, or even a brick wall. We can trans-mit the order to sleep by telephone or by telegraph.We can practically get the same results while elimi-nating even the operator, if we can contrive to influencethe imagination or to affect the physical condition ofthe subject by any one of a great number of con-trivances.

What does all this mean ? I will refer to one or twofacts in relation to the structure and function of thebrain, and show one or two simple experiments ofvery ancient parentage and date, which will, I think,help to an explanation. First, let us recall somethingof what we know of the anatomy and localisation offunction in the brain, and of the nature of ordinarysleep. The brain, as you know, is a complicated organ,made up internally of neiTe masses, or ganglia, ofwhich the central and underlying masses are connectedwith the automatic functions and involuntary actions of


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the body, while the investing surface shows a system ofcomplicated convolutions rich in grey matter, thicklysown with microscopic cells in which the nerve endsterminate. At the base of the brain is a completecircle of arteries, from which spring great numbers ofsmall arterial vessels carrying a profuse blood supply-throughout the whole mass, and capable of contractionin small tracts, so that small areas of the brain may,

at any given moment, become bloodless, while otherparts of the brain may simultaneously become highlycongested. Now, if the brain, or any part of it, bedeprived of the circulation of blood through it, or berendered partially bloodless, or if it be excessivelycongested and overloaded with blood, or if it be sub-jected to local pressure, the part of the brain so actedupon ceases to be capable of exercising its functions.* The regularity of the action of the brain and the sanityand completeness of the thought which is one of thefunctions of its activity depend upon the healthyregularity of the quantity of blood passing throughall its parts, and upon the healthy quality of the blood

so circulating. If we press upon the carotid arterieswhich pass up through the neck to form the arterialcircle of Willis, at the base of the brain, within theskull of which I have already spoken, and whichsupplies the brain with blood we quickly, as everyoneknows, produce insensibility. Thought* is abolished,consciousness is lost. And if we continue the pressure,all those automatic actions of the body such as thebeating of the heart, the breathing motionsi of the lung,which maintain life and are controlled by me lowerbrain centres of ganglia are quickly stopped, anddeath ensues.senses, we free ourselves from the influence of noises,of strong light, of powerful odours, or of tactile im-

pressions. We lie down and endeavour to soothebrain-activity by driving away disturbing thoughts, or,as people sometimes say, * try to think of nothing.'And, happily, we generally succeed more or less well.Some people possess an even more marked control overthis mechanism of sleep. I can generally succeed inputting myself to sleep at any hour of the day, eitherin the library chair or in the brougham. This is, so tospeak, a process of self-hypnotisation, and I have oftenpractised it when going from house to house, when inthe midst of a busy practice ; and sometimes I haveamused my friends and family by exercising thisfaculty, which I do not think it very difficult to acquire.

Now there is something here which deserves a littlefurther examination, but which it would take too muchtime to fully develop at present. Most people knowsomething of what is meant by reflex action. Thenerves which pass from the various organs to the brainconvey with great rapidity messages to its variousparts, which are answered by reflected waves of im-pulse. If the soles of the feet be tickled, contractionof the toes, or involuntary laughter, will be excited,or perhaps only a shuddering and skin-contractionknown as goose-skin. The irritation of the nerve end in


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the skin has carried a message to the involuntary or thevoluntary ganglia of the brain, which has responded byreflecting back again nerve-impulses which have con-means that the mental impression made upon him bythe welcome and appetising spectacle has caused asecretion of saliva and of gastric juice ; that is to say,the brain has, through the ideo-motor set of nerves,sent a message which has dilated the vessels around

the salivary and gastric glands, increased the flow ofblood through them, and quickened their secretion.Here we have, then, a purely subjective mental activityacting through a mechanism of which the boy is quiteignorant, and which he is unable to control, and pro-ducing that action on the vessels of dilatation or con-traction which, as we have seen, is the essentialcondition of brain activity and the evolution of thought,and is related to the quickening or the abolition ofconsciousness, and to the activity or abeyance offunction in the will-centres and upper convolutions ofthe brain, as in its other centres of. localisation. Here,then, we have something like a clue to the phenomena

phenomena which, as 1 have pointed out, are similarand have much in common of mesmeric sleep, ofhypnotism, and of electro-biology. We have already,I hope, succeeded in eliminating from our minds thefalse theory the theory, that is to say, experimentatlyproved to be false that the will, or the gestures^orthe magnetic or vital fluid of the operator are neces-sary for the abolition of the consciousness and theabeyance of the will of the subject. We now seethat ideas arising in the mind of the subject are sufli-j cient to influence the circulation in the brain of theperson operated on, and such variations of the blood-supply of the brain as are adequate to produce sleepin the natural state or artificial slumber, either by

total deprivation, or by excessive increase or localaberration in the quantity or quality of blood. In alike manner it is possible to produce coma and pro-longed insensibility by pressure of the thumbs on thecarotid ; or hallucinations, dreams, and visions bydrugs, or by external stimulation of the nerves. Oragain the consciousness may be only partially affected,and the person in whom sleep, coma or hallucination isproduced, whether by physical means or by the in-fluence of snggestion, may remain subject to the will ofothers and incapable of exercising his own volition.

Let me illustrate how easily the will may be abolished

under the influence of imagination or of sudden im-pression, even in creatures the least imaginative andphysically the most restless and active. Some very oldexperiments will suffice, though it is easy to modifythem in new forms. I prefer the old, because the oldstory is one of ancient beginnings, of which we havenow, however, the means of a more rational under-standing. I take a cock, and I repeat on it what isknown as the experimentum mirahile of Kircher. It isfresh from the barn-yard, and a very pugnacious animal.If I hold it, it struggles and screams ; but I have only


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to place it quietly and firmly on a board, and draw achalk line from its beak, which I have depressed, untilit touches the board, and the bird remains firmlyhypnotised, It is motionless, or, as people would say,fascinated ; and it will remain in this position for anindefinite time. I take a rabbit and adjust it on itsback in a little trough, which is only used to preventit .from falling over, and this animal also becomes

rapidly hypnotised. The same thing can be done witha guinea-pig, a frog, or even with a young alligator.The limbs are plg-stic, can be moved in any direction,and will stay in the position in ^hich they are placed.The same thing can be done with a number of otheranimals, such as birds and cray-fish. Harting stated.that if this experiment be frequently repeated witha fowl, the bird will often beconae permanently para-lysed in some of its limbs. If I take up the hypno-tised rabbit, or lift the cock, they at once becomeactive, and come out of their hypnotic into their naturalstate. Position and tactile impression are the meansused in these experiments to produce hypnotismi7and

possibly also mental impression. Visual impressionproduces similar efiects. Richet has with a lime-lightproduced similar effects to those which Charcot pro-duces on his hypnotic, cataleptic, and hystericalpatiehts. Horses are very susceptible to hypnotisa-tion by any one standing in front of them, so thatthey have to look at the operator fixedly. This prac-tice was introduced into use in Austria by a cavalryoflScer, Balassa. It is called after him the Balassirenof horses, and according to. Moll it has been intro-duced by law into Austria for the shoeing of horsesin the army. Rabbits, when they are introduced intothe cage of a snake, fascinate themselves, as it is termed,by staring at it. The process is commonly spoken of

as though it were an active proceeding on the part ofthe snake which fascinates the rabbits. They are, infact, self-fascinated, and, as I pointed out in the caseof hypnotic patients, a mechanical means of impress-ing their senses suffices, and it is quite gratuitous toimport the notion of any sort of vital force or livinginfluence of fascination on the part either of the snakeor of the wily platform performer.

I now come to consider the subsequent conditionsof the individual who has submitted to any of theprocesses of hypnotisation or mesmerism. They aresufficiently various, striking, and interesting, though

they have been much misunderstood, considerably ex-aggerated, and the medium of much imposture. Theindividual is reduced more or less perfectly to the stateof a living automaton. The upper brain is more or Jesscompletely and more or less regularly bloodless, and itsfunctions are in abeyance. The will is abolished, sus-pended, or enfeebled. Sleep has been induced while thethought has been in relation to the person carrying onthe experiment, and the suggestions made by, or thedirections given by him are carried out without theintervention of the will of the subject and more or less


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completely without his knowledge. He may often beplaced in positions which, in his waking moments, histerror or his reason would prevent him from taking up orfrom maintaining. The suggestions of attack or of de-fence, of causes of terror or of delight, are at once adopted,and he is as an instrument on the keys of which theoperator can play his own tune. He accepts an y state-ment as to flavours or odours ; he swallows petroleum

with delight, and believes it is champagne ; mistakes,salt for sugar, and mustard for honey. Of course, when allthese tricks are played upon the platform, they are veryfar from always being genuine. A platform perform-ance, in order to be successful in drawing money, mustalways have its dramatic and histrionic incidents. Thesedesiderata cannot always be secured, and so confederatesare paid to simulate the phenomena of hypnotism andsuggestion ; but there are few of the things done regu-larly at exhibitions of the kind which I have not seenrepeated and surpassed from time to time in the studyor the hospital ward. I refer to the works of Charcot,of Bernheim, of Moll, and of Dejerine for the details of

marvellous effects of suggestion in producing, withoutthe consciousness of the patient, antics, muscular efforts,' contortions, perverted beliefs, bizarre actions which havehad no counterpart in stage performances ; but in thehands of the honest and capable men to whom I havereferred tliey are all ascertained to be due to the in-fluence of suggestion upon persons previously robbed oftheir will and thrown into the hypnotic state by any ofthe methods of physical or mental hypnotisation to whichI have referred. It may be asked what are the addedpowers of clairvoyance, prediction of future events, in-sight into hidden things, and the development of newpowers often attributed to somnambulists and hypnotics,and so frequently employed as a means of extorting

money. The answer is given in one word imposture imposture ^imposture ! It is an imposture which hasfrequently recurred, and, though often exposed, is solucrative and so attractive to the mystics and the so-called psychological researchers, that in one form oranother it frequently revives.

In 1837 the French Academy appointed a commis-sion to examine the marvels presented by blindfold /subjects who had been submitted to what was calledanimal magnetism. All their pretensions were dissi-pated ; there was neither magnetism nor any power ofsecond sight. This report was disputed. Dr. Budin

then offered a prize of 3,000 francs to any person,somnambulist or otherwise, who could read without theuse of his eyes. Six candidates from different parts ofFrance presented themselves, for animal magnetism andsomnambulism were then epidemic. A new commission -was appointed, new failures occurred. Trials wentonuntil October 1840, when, at the close of a series ofignominious failures, in which the tricks of each pre-tender in succession were unmasked, the Academydecided that it would no longer take notice of any com-munications relative to the imposture and folly, mis-


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called animal magnetism and clairvoyance. The samething occurred with Sir James Simpson, who twentyyears aft;er wards, when similar pretences were rife in ithe United Kingdom, and somnambulists and clair-voyants and thought-readers were again taking thefield, ofiered to present a 500Z. note, which he hadlocked in a box and placed in a bank, to anyone whocould read the number as the note lay in the box. It

was never claimed. Mr. Labouchere's similar experi-ment with the so-called thought-reader Bishop is ofquite recent date, but was performed under much lessrigid conditions, and by a person whose pretensions,although they excited a great deal of attention, weremore than usually absurd.

Finally, let me refer to an aspect of the influence ofsuggestion which, as a possible social danger, has engagedthe attention of lawyers and physicians the influenceof deferred suggestion. It has been shown that notonly will a hypnotic subject perform unconsciously, underthe influence of suggestion, acts which are dangerous

to himself and others, and are in themselves criminal so that he can be made to thieve, to commit arson,or to attempt violence but that cei*tain subjectscan, there is reason to believe, bi^made to receive asuggestion having in it a time- element. He can betold, * On this day week, at a given time, you willreturn to the hypnotic state, you will go to a givenplace, you will steal such and such property, or you willattack such and such a person, and you will not re-member who gave you the direction.' These are ex-treme cases, and this is a surprising and dangerousdevelopment of the influence of suggestion on theshould be considered the normal state of brain circula-tion, and which the abnormal or hypnotic, it would

be diflScult to determine; bat to recall these factssuffices to indicate that the introduction of the time-element in deferred suggestion has nothing of thesupernatural, implies no conferring of new powers onthe individual, and is only the introduction into ad-vanced and highly developed stages of hypnotism of afunctional action which is more or less natural withall brains. The only other examples to which I needrefer of the attempt to import into the subjectivephenomena described the element of the supernaturaland the discovery of an unknown force are the so-called spiritualists and the telepathists. Their pre-tensions are only a revival under a new form of the

old follies and deceptions often self-deceptions, andstill more often impostures which surrounded theearlier introductions of the errors of the magnetisers,the spiritualists, and the mesmerists of the middle ages.The second-sight and clairvoyance of the witches andthe demoniacs, of the mystics and the mesmerists,having been exposed and discredited, the same thingsare still from time to time revived under new namesmore suited to a generation which has got rid of someof the nomenclature of the past. Telepathy soundsbetter to modern ears than mesmeric trance or clair-


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voyance, but it has no more substantial foundation. Itis an attempt to discover whether it is possible to seewithout eyes, to hear without ears, to receive or conveyimpressions without the aid of the special senses. Thespirit-rappers, the Davenports, the Bishops, the thought-readers, the animal magnetisers, have dropped intodarkness, and are buried in oblivion. Telepathy is asilly attempt to revive in a pseudo-scientific form such

as self-deception of this kind has always assumed, butin a very feeble form, and with very futile aud inaneresults, the failures and impostures of the past. Happily,the belief in telepathy is confined to a few, and those,I am ashamed to say, chiefly in this country. It has hada feeble and lingering existence, and is undoubtedlydestined to die a premature death.

To conclude : these delusions, this miracle-monger-ing, these disordered visions and hysteric hallucina-tions, this exploitation of the love of the mysterious,these pseudo-magnetic attractions, these sham scientificfloatings in the air or fixations of the body, these

thought-readings and foretellings, these vain pronounce-ments concerning unseen worlds and invisible planes ofbeing, these playings on the fears, the hopes, the feeblesenses, the eager imaginations, and the ill-balancedreason of the masses, are as old as, nay, apparentlyolder than history. Sometimes in this, as in otherthings, we are tempted to ask, ' Does the world makeany progress, or are we still moving on the same planesand in the same grooves of ignorance and superstition,knavery, folly, and self-deception ? ' I think we mayfind comfort, however, in the historical review. It istrue that we have still with us the spiritists, the stagehypnotists, the living magiiets, the Mahatmas, thebelated psychical researchers, and the ghost seers. "But

they are only the stunted remnants, the vestigial andatrophied traces indicating the later stages of ages 'ofdevelopment, in which we have outgrown the periodwhen such follies and fallacies were the almost universalheritage of mankind, and led to burnings, drownings,torture, and wholesale misery, when the catalepticsand hypnotics were counted by thousands and some-times by hundreds of thousands at a time, when im-posture was widespread and high-placed, when philo-sophers were the dupes of their own self-deception,and when the mischiefs of hypnotic suggestion were ex-tended over large districts and sapped the reason andruined the lives of thousands. There are still perform-

ances and publications which in their follies and theircapacities for mischief rival some of those prevalent inthe darkest periods of ignorance and superstition, butthey are at the present time regarded as curiositiesand eccentricities, and provoke laughter and derisionwhere formerly they would have led to insanity andpersecution.

HYPNOTISM, ANIMAL MAGNETISM, AND HYSTERIA


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The Magnet in Medicine

The remarkable properties of the natural magnet, itscapacity for action without contact, and the respectiveattracting and repelling powers of its two poles, havegreatly impressed the imagination of mankind from avery early date ; and, as Richer,^ Binet, and F6re havepointed out, the assumption that the magnet possessed

some mysterious influence on the body, capable of beingturned to account in the cure of disease, was prevalentin the Middle Ages. Magnetic rings were worn to curenervouls diseases, and the electrotherapeutic frauds,follies, and delusions which are so rampant in the pre-sent day can boast a very ancient history of trickery,credulity and folly. Electric rings, belts, and boxeswere hung round the body in the time of Caedon.Paracelsus characteristically taught ' that the humanbody was endowed with a double magnetism that one

> JlepriAted from the British Medical Journal,

* Richer, Bulletin de la Societe de Biologies May 30th, 1884.Paul Richer, Nouvelle Bevite, August 1st, 1882. Binet and F6r6Animal Magnetism, 1888.

30 HYPNOTISM, ANTMAL MAGNETISM, AND HYSTEEIA

portion attracted to itself the planets, and was nourishedby them, whence came wisdom, thought, and the senses ;that the other portion attracted to itself the elements,and disintegrated them, whence came flesh and blood ;that the attractive and hidden virtue of man resemblesthose of amber and of the magnet, and that by this

virtue the magnetic virtue of healthy persons attractsthe enfeebled magnetism of those who are sick.'

Mesmer and his Dupes

Mesmer, who gives his name to the practice calledmesmerism, did not think it sufficient to use talismansand magic boxes, but introduced contact and passeswith the hand by which to communicate what he calledthe magnetic virtue due to animal magnetism. He de-clared that by this method * the physician may judgewith certainty of the Origin, nature, and progress ofdiseases, however complicated they be ; he may hinder

their development and accomplish their cure with-out exposing the patient to dangerous and trouble-some consequences, irrespective of age, temperamentand sex. Even women in a state of pregnancy andduring parturition may reap the same advantages.'

I have already spoken elsewhere * of the immensepopularity achieved by Mesmer's practices, and of hismesmeric haquets or troughs filled with bottles of waterand iron filings, around which stood rows of patients hold-


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* Nineteenth Century ^ 1891, and p. 8.

HYPNOTISM, ANIMAL MAGNETISM, AND HYSTERIA 31

ing iron rods issuing from the troughs, the subjects beingtied to each other by cords and joining hands. Perfect

silence was maintained, soft music was heard, and re-markable effects were obtained. Some patients wereconvulsed, and had to be taken away to a padded room,against the walls of which they might knock theirheads without injury ; others were thrown into a stateof semi-stupor, or, in the language of to-day, into ahypnotic state, in which they were submissive to themaster, and from which his voice or look could arousethem. Some patients became affectionate and em-braced each other, others fell into fits of immoderatelaughter, shrieking, or tears. The convulsive agitationfrequently lasted for hours, and according to the ac-count of an eye-witness (Bailly), these symptoms were

preceded or followed by a state of languor or dreami-ness, by a species of depression and even by stupor.I quote from Binet and Fere the following graphicaccount of the proceedings :

Mesmer, wearing a coat of lilac silk, walked up anddown amid this agitated crowd in company with Deslonand his associates, whom he chose for their youth andcomeliness. Mesmer carried a long iron wand, with whichhe touched the bodies of the patients, and especially thediseased parts. Often laying aside the wand, he magnetisedthe patients with his eyes, fixing his gaze on theirs, orapplying his hands to the hypochondriac region and to thelower part of the abdomen. This application was often

continued for hours, and at other times the master madeuse of passes. He began by placing himself en rapport

32 HYPNOTISM, ANIMAL MAGNETISM, AND HYSTERIA

witli his subject. Seated opposite to him, foot against foot,knee against knee, Mesmer laid his fingers on the hypo-chondriac region and moved them to and fro, lightly touch-ing the ribs. Magnetisation with strong currents wassubstituted for these manipulations when more energeticresults were to be produced. The master, raising his

fingers in a pyramidal form, passed his hands all over thepatient's body, beginning with the head, and going down-wards over the shoulders to the feet. He then returned tothe head, both back and front, to the belly and the back,and renewed the process again and again until the mag-netised person was saturated with the healing fluid, andtransported with pain or pleasure, both sensations beingequally salutary.^ Young women were so much gratifiedby the * crisis ' that they begged to be thrown into it anew ;they followed Mesmer through the hall, and confessed thatit was impossible not to be warmly attached to the person


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of the magnetiser.

The ' Possessed ' and the ' Demoniacs '

The inference drawn by eyewitnesses and by thesubjects of these practices was that * it is impossiblenot to admit from all these results that some greatforce acts upon and masters the patient, and that this

force appears to reside in the magnetiser/ Now theseconditions and practices will, no doubt, at once be seento have a very close resemblance and an obvious rela-tion to what may be read in the records of possessedpersons or ' demoniacs ' as they were called in theMiddle Ages who play so prominent a part in cer-

Jiouis Fi^er, HUtoire du Merveilleux^ vol. ii. p. 20. Paris : 1860.

\


tain phases of history, and in scenes which have beenpictorially depicted by some of the great masters ofItaly, Flanders, and France, from the fifteenth to theseventeenth centuries.* Their pictures of striking andhistoric scenes of this kind represent phenomena at-tested by a mass of the most undoubted evidence. It isnot the facts of which we need entertain any doubt ; itis only of the interpretation of them that we shall beable to afibrd a more modem version. To ProfessorCharcot and his pupils prominent among whom are

Richer, Babinsky, Bourneville, and Fere we are in-debted for a long series of masterly, laborious, andoriginal researches on the subject of hypnotism, itsnear relative hysteria and the whole chain of condi-tions belonging to the family of hypnotism. ProfessorCharcot's luminous researches are epoch-making in thisdepartment of knowledge, and his extensive collectionof photographic reproductions of hypnotic and hypno-hysteric patients is replete with treasures of nerveaberrations.

The Key to the Phenomena Subjective andResident in the Patient

It will, no doubt, readily occur to the minds ofthose who are at all versed in the scenes now witnessedfrom time to time that the occurrences, so vividlyrepresented in the pictures already referred to, and

' See Richer's Iaz Devumiaques dans VArt.



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those described as occurring among the patients ofMesmer under the influence of holding the iron rodsattached to his bottles and iron filings, are from timeto time reproduced in these our modern days on theplatform of the hypnotist, by the faith-curer, andamongst the pilgrims to Lourdes. But as we are lessapt to speak now of demoniacs and possessed, these

phenomena are usually characterised by words selectedfrom a pseudo-scientific and not from the theologicalvocabulary. I may say at once that I am now leadingup to the demonstration that the conditions induced,whether of convulsion, cataleptic immobility, languor,submissiveness, trance or acceptance of suggestion andcommand, may be shown to be due to a nervous con-dition or mental state arising in the individual subjecteither from physical or mental excitation ; and furtherthat such conditions, by whatever distinctive names theirvarieties may be called, are not and never were dueto any healing power or to any fluid or magnetic in-fluence or mesmeric or hypnotic power resident in the

operator. It is a common delusion that the mesmeristor hypnotiser counts for anything in the experiment.The operator, whether priest, physician, charlatan, self-deluded enthusiast or conscious impostor, is not thesource of any occult influence, does not possess anymysterious power, and plays only a very secondaryand insignificant part in the chain of phenomena ob-served. There exist at the present time many in-dividuals who claim for themselves, and some who


make a living by so doing, a peculiar property orpower as potent mesmerisers, hypnotisers, magnetisers,or electro-biologists. One even often hears it said insociety (for I am sorry to say that these mischievouspractices and pranks are sometimes made a societygame) that such a person is a clever hypnotist or hasgreat mesmeric or healing power. I hope to be ableto prove what I firmly hold, both from my own personalexperience and experiment, as I have already relatedin the Nineteenth Century that there is no such thingas a potent mesmeric influence, no such power residentin any one person more than another ; that a glass ofwater, a tree, a stick, a penny-post letter, or a limelight

can mesmerise as efiectually as can any individual. Aclever hypnotiser means only a person who is acquaintedwith the physical or mental tricks by which the hypnoticcondition is produced; or sometimes an unconsciousimpostor who is unaware of the very trifling part forwhich he is cast in the play, and who supposes himselfreally to possess a mysterious power which in fact hedoes not possess at all, or which, to speak more accu-rately, is equally possessed by every stock or stone.

Hypnotism and Hysteria Conditions of DistuRBED


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Equilibrium

The condition of hypnotism, mesmerism, &c., is amental condition a condition of disturbed equilibriumof the nervous system and brain apparatus of the person

86 HYPNOTISM. ANIMAL MAGNETISM, AND HYSTERIA

operated on. With that key to unlock this curiouscabinet of mysteries, delusions, and veritable pheno-mena, we shall be able the more easily to understandthe interpolated illustrations of hypnotic and pseudo-hypnotic patients and conditions. They representpatients in the Salpetri^re Hospital who present allthe conditions usually spoken of as due to the mys-terious power of the hypnotiser or the mesmerist,and associated with the exercise of some mysteriousinfluence by that sinister personage, by his command

of the imaginary fluid, magnetic, electric or tele-pathic, supposed to issue from his finger ends, or toemanate from his body. These phenomena are theinduction of sleep or partial sleep, of catalepticlethargy, of the loss or temporary abolition of ordinarysensation, of incapacity for feeling pain on beingpricked or cut, and of loss of taste, so that neither pepper,salt nor any nauseous substance produces any impres-sion on the palate, and any one substance may at thesuggestion of the operator be mistaken for any other,as paraffin for champagne, salt for sugar, cayennepepper for sweetmeats.

The Identity of Phenomena in Hysteria and

Hypnotic Suggestion

Everyone knows something about hysteria. Every-one is acquainted with that ordinary form of hysteriawhich is characterised frequently by what is known


as an hysterical fit, and is accompanied by temporaryconvulsions often not distinguishable from epileptic

convulsions, except that the patient, although uncon-scious, may generally be trusted not to hurt her orhimself. Hysterical patients rarely or never bite theirtongue as epileptics generally do, but they go throughviolent contortions, show evidences of various uncon-trolled emotions, the fit, whether lasting for a shortor a long time, commonly ending in languor, or a longsleep and perhaps a flood of tears. Here already someresemblance to the hypnotic state and to the conditionof convulsionists and demoniacs is apparent. Medicalmen know, however, and many others have become


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acquainted incidentally with the fact, that these attackswhen of a severe character or in highly nervous andunstable individuals may go much further, and somestriking illustrations ef most of the phenomena cha-racteristic of the extreme degrees of hypnotisation andsuggestibility, without the employment of any hypnoticinfluences and arising only out of the disturbed equili-brium of the nervous system of the patient herself or

himself, are here illustrated. I say herself or himself,because hysteria, even in its most highly-developedeccentric and extreme forms, is by no means the ex-clusive privilege of the female sex, although it is theirmore general attribute.


Self-suggested Emotions and Attitudes of

Hysterics

Fig. 1 shows a person in a state of what is nothysterical lethargy spontaneously arising in a hyste-rical patient, but hypnotic lethargy artificially induced.Fig. 2 is a photograph of a female hysteric seizedwith an attack in which her body is arched in a tetanicspasm, unconscious, and the whole weight of the bodyin this violently consti^ined position supported for alength of time by the head and heels. In fig. 3 wereturn to artificially induced hypnotic condition. Thepatient will stay in the position represented, into whichshe can be thrown artificially by a strong light or aloud sound, or by being made to stare at any fixedobject for an almost indefinite length of time. If the

most delicate form of register be attached to her up-lifted arm, it will be found that there is no tremor orunconscious muscular movement, which is not the casewith an impostor or with anyone voluntarily assumingthis posture for any length of time.

To these are added some of the emotional phasesand phenomena of hysteria. Fig. 4 is a characteristicpicture of hysterical delirium ; fig. 5 of an hystericalpatient who, in the course of her attack, is under theinfluence of pleasing impressions ; fig. 6, the samepatient under a similar self-suggested emotion of anger ;fig. 7 shows an hysterical patient who is subject to strong

religious impressions, and in one of the periods of herattack falls into the position of crucifixion.

HYPNOTISM, ANIMAL MAGNETISM, AND HYSTEKIA 53

Similar Conditions Induced in Hypnotics by Sugges-tion, Auto-suggestion, and Physical Impressions


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I now illustrate the artificially-induced hypnoticstate, and show how our hypnotic patient is subjectto the influence of impulses conveyed to her mindeither by the voice of the operator or by self-gene-rated influence in the brain, due to such simpje con-ditions as the position of her muscles and the natureof the attitude in which she is placed. She has

already been illustrated in the attitude of fixed andwhat is called * cataleptic ' immobility ; but her handsbeing raised into the attitude of astonishment (fig. 8),the change of expression in the face should be notedas indicating that the change of muscular attitude andthe influence of the associated muscular action, relatedhabitually to the emotion of astonishment, have pro-duced that emotion in her mind and it is strikinglydepicted in her face. In fig. 9 her fists have beendoubled, and she has been placed in a fighting atti-tude. In fig. 10 her hands are placed in the positionin which women, and especially Frenchwomen, arein the habit of going through the little performance

called ' throwing a kiss.' Few actresses, I imagine,however able, accomplished, and remarkable for his-trionic power and intelligence, could so rapidly assumeand maintain the unafiected expression of gracefulwelcome such as this unconscious and uneducated

54 nYPN0TlS3I, ANIMAL MAGNETISM, AND HYSTERIA

woman has assumed under the impulse of a brainemotion generated by the simple impulse of associatedmuscular influence in the related brain centres, unre-strained by the self-consciousness which so often spoils

the best acting. Self-consciousness is, in virtue ofher condition, completely abolished. She is a merepuppet, the slave of unconscious cerebration excitedby external influences and suggestion, or of the sug-gestion of her own muscles.

Another example of the influence of mere physicalsuggestion may be studied in fig. 11, a girl in theattitude of prayer. Note the intensity of her imploringexpression, which might serve as a study for a painter ;the idea of prayer has not been suggested to her byword of mouth, nor is this the self-suggestion of ahysteric ; it is the attitude induced, and always in-

duced in this particular patient, when hypnotised bythe sudden influence of a strong light thrown throughthe medium of blue glass. The same girl is alwaysdazed and thrown into the hypnotic state under theinfluence of a strong yellow light. Not only, how-ever, does the whole body of the hypnotised patientor of the highly hysteric patient lend itself thus easilyto the influence of physical excitation or suggestionfrom without, or of ideas aroused by the action of localgroups of muscles or of other physical excitations with-in the body, but individual muscles can just as easily


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be acted on and separately set in motion. The merestroking of the extensor muscles of one or two fingers

-^--


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I may add that in repeating over and over againthese experiments I have confirmed Braid's results, andhave further proved that the will of the operator hasnothing whatever to do with inducing sleep in thepatient. You may, in operating after the variedmethods of the mesmerist, the hypnotist, or the electro-biologist, will that the patient shall do whatever youplease sleep or not sleep, but your will, unless it is

expressed or indicated to the patient so as to afford hima mental suggestion on which he unconsciously acts,will count for nothing ; he will fall into hypnotic sleep.His condition depends on what he thinks you wishand not on what you really wish ; and if you set beforehim a glass of water or a penny-post letter, or put himin front of a tree or a candle, and tell him that youhave mesmerised it, and order him to look at it and tobe influenced by it, he will be influenced by it whetheryou have made any passes over it or not, whether youhave magnetised it or not, and whether you wish it


to influence him or not. You have, in fact, very littleto do with the matter as the operator, except in so faras you influence by your suggestion, and by the sub-ject's conception of your will, his nervous system andhis state of mind.

Verbally EfxPRESSED or Physical Impressions onlyARE Capable of Conveying Suggestions

In the same way, when once the subject is thoroughlyhypnotised the operator can do nothing with him by

willing or by wishing unless he express to him inwords, or indicate to him by some other method capableof physically conveying to him a suggestion, what hewishes him to do or what the subject thinks the operatorwishes him to do. Any physical excitation may in thishypnotic state excite physical changes, as I have shown,in his muscular or nervous system, which will in theirturn give rise in the subject to mental emotion, tohallucinations, or to self-generated acts of the strangestkind. So largely is his restraining brain power put tosleep, and for the time abolished, so largely is his in-telligent consciousness held in abeyance, that he becomesa marvellous machine, astonishingly, blindly, actively

obedient to the wildest orders or the most bizarre sug-gestions. He can be made to believe himself a cat, a dog,a lion, a rat, and to act accordingly, so far as a humanmachine can act. His intelligent consciousness ofimpressions conveyed by the nerves of common sensa-


tion or of special sense has been abolished; his skin


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may be pierced with needles and he will not feel it ;mustard or salt or assafcetida may be placed on histongue, and he will either not taste them or mistakethem for anything the operator pleases to name, andhe will testify the most genuine and ludicrous dislike ofor most intense disgust at the substance placed in hismouth. The operator can induce sentiments of anger,nay, even of violent and destructive rage, ecstasy, affec-

tion or grief, at will, by verbal suggestions. He has,in fact, under his hands a marvellous and God-createdmachine, abased and degraded by the abolition of in-telligence and self-restraint.

The Oondition Purely Subjective: Anyone orAnything can Hypnotise

To produce these effects there is no clevernesswanted on the part of the hypnotiser, there is nospecial power in this matter resident in him ; anyonecan hypnotise and everyone can hypnotise if he ispatient enough, and either scientifically intelligent or

ignorantly fanatic. The marvel and the mystery isin the individual operated upon. What is the pre-cise nature of this complex and astonishing mechanismof body and mind which binds together, in such sin-gular complexity of relation, muscle and nerve, lowerbrain, upper brain, nerves of special sense, body andviscera, no anatomist, however accomplished, no physio-

HYPNOTISM, ANIMAL MAttNETISM, AND HYSTERIA 67

legist, however learned or acute, can explain. Wehave before us only the wonderful facts, and they

are far more wonderful than any of the sham tricksof the clairvoyant, the mesmerist, or the magnetistwho plays upon them and uses them for his pur-pose of imposture, self-deception, or of vain mystery-mongering.

The Therapeutic Uselessness and Social Mischief

OF Hypnotism

Can these facts be put to any good use ? Of thisI am bound to say there is no present evidence exceptwith relation to the most insignificant and imperfect

results, and in my opinion there is little prospect ofany. Esdaile showed long ago that the anaesthesiainduced by hypnotism can be employed for the pur-poses of surgical operation, but the process is sotedious, the duration of anaesthesia so uncertain, andthe number of persons whose nervous system is inthe unstable condition which makes them amenable tohypnotic influence happily so few, that as a practicalmethod of anaesthesia it is unavailable, and far inferiorto the chemical action of chloroform and other narcoticvapours. The same holds good of hypnotism as an


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oi*dinary hypnotic. It is far less certain, far moretroublesome, much more rarely capable of applicationand much more likely to produce mischief, than opiumor salphonal, or any other of a dozen narcotics which

i .

%

68 irYPNOTISM, ANIMAL MAGNETISM, AND HYSTE

it-

: i

I >-

ii'

I

are always at hand, are cheap, easily used and ui

ordinary circumstances innocuous when properlyministered.1 1 As to the treatment of other diseases, I have

believe, read all that is to be read on the subjwhether from the schools of Nancy, Paris, or Vieiand I have arrived at the conclusion that ProfeiCharcot, with his abundant good sense, his gierudition, and his vast experience, is fully justifiedijr the conclusion at which he and his eminent puj

I Richer, Babinsky, D6jerine and others have arriv

that for curative purposes hypnotism is very raiuseful, generally entirely useless, and often injurioui

The Practice of Hypnotism, except by SkilliPhysicians, should be Forbidden

And here I will end by saying that, sinceevident advantage has during forty years of extenspatient and elaborate trial and research been obtj


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able by the hundreds of physicians and physiologwho have devoted themselves to the study of the qi''% tion, it is therefore justifiable to conclude that

;=i.:V| practice of hypnotism, mesmerism, electro-biology,

so-called animal magnetism, being almost invarifuseless and often dangerous, even in the hands of

most highly skilled, careful and conscientious psicians, is a practice which ought to be forbiddenthe unqualified, and is most unfit and improper

til'i

I- \.A


platform performances. It is equally unsuited forprivate amusement and is dangerous and improper asa society game. It is liable to gross abuse, and isfrequently the means of fraud and imposture, extortionof money, and degradation of body and mind, and isapt to induce serious injuries to both. The confirmedand trained hypnotic subject is a maimed individualin mind and body, and is likely at any time to bedangerous to himself and to society. Instances of these

results are so common that I need not follow up thisbranch of the subject. I conclude by expressing thehope that this outline of the physical facts connectedwith hypnotic phenomena may help to arm those whohave not previously had an opportunity of investigatingthe subject against the wiles of the impostor and thefalse suggestions of the somewhat profane persons whoendeavour to connect these phenomena with the in-carnation of spiritual power and relations in them-selves or their favourite * Sludge.' At any rate, I ven-ture to hope that it may have given some correctideas of the nature of the hypnotic state, and havecleared away some of the fictions which have been

associated with it by imaginative, ill-informed, or in-terested persons.

70

MESMERISMAND THE NEW WTTCHCRAFT


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The Forgotten Imjjostors The Scientific Stvdies of Braid, and ofCharcot and his School Experiments and Pullications ofthe author on Mesmerism, ffypnotismf and Hysteria Thenational Interpretation of the Veritable Facts Hypnotism, aSubjective Phe^umienon The Marvels of La Charite and of theFcole Pulytech7iiqne lieports of British Journalists thereon The Subjects of Demonstration Definition and Preliminary

Phenomena of Hypiiotisation : Their Dangers Methods ofInduing Sleep * Magnetic * Susceptibility and Perceptions Blue Flames a/nd Bed Attraction am,d Repulsion Ma,gn>etisedPhotographs and Fngravin^fs Stored-up ThougMs in a Mag-netic Band Psychical Phenomenal Influence of Drugs inTubes applied ta the Keck Drunkenness mthout Drink AHuman Cat Dr. Luys's DemonMration The Control Experi-ments Dr. Luys's Recent Declaration that his Subjects wereUnworthy of Confidence The Moral Dilemma Ajrpeal to Dr.Luys for Explanations Details of Experiments roith FalseMagnets and Misnamed Medicinal Tubes Res%dts of the Co^i-trol Some Counter-Experiments Evidence of Drs, De Cyon,Louis Olivier^ and Initaud FaM and Fiction in Hypnotism

Hysteria at the Salpetriere and Hypnotism at La Cha/rite Dr. Luys^s Testimony to the Dangers of Hypnotism Letter fro^na Trained Subject Hypnotism andthe New Magic The Libraryof Marvels A Modem Sorceress Evidence of Charcot andBabin^ki Medical Uses qf Hypnotism Limited to Manifestationsof Mysteria Its l^regu&nt Failures even in that Domain Valueless in tha. Treat m ent qf.-MefntoLDisea&e {Magnant Forel,Briand) Hypnotism before the Courts of Law In^plicable

MESMERISM AND THE NEW WITCHCRA.FT 71

to Surgery or Ohstetr uis Essenti al T dentity. _oI Faith- Cures

and Tl%i2n^t3dLj}iures Summary The Relative Success of theFaith- Cures of the Laboratory y the Chapel^ and the Chrotto,

I HAVE been spending Christmas week and the earlydays of the new year in the ' Pays des Merveilles.' Forscenic effects and thaumaturgical performances thewards of Dr. Luys, membre de I'Academie de M^decine,at the Hopital de la Charit6, surpass those to which wehave all been more or less accustomed at the theatres ofmagic and the conjurers' halls on the boulevards ofParis or in Piccadilly. Ordinary hypnotic performanceshave still enough attraction to draw large audiences inthe provinces, but they are growing somewhat stale and

out of fashion in the metropolitan centres. The spiritual-istic tricks of the Davenport Brothers, the reading ofnames and dates in sealed envelopes, and the appear-ance of corresponding writings on the arms of mediumssuch as Foster, the materialisation of flowers anddiamond rings out of space, the externalisation of the* spirit form ' of mediums as in the case of Katie King,the slate-writing of Slade, the levitation of Hume, thereinforcement of muscular strength of the GeorgianMagnet, have all had their day of sham mystery, ofpseudo-marvel and of profitable exploitation. They


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have in turn retreated into the shadow of obscurityand oblivion, or passed to the platform of other con-jurers who ^show how it is done.' But the love ofmystery and the pursuit of the unknown are durableelements in what, in order to be quite modern, must

72 MESMEBISM AND THE NEW WITCHCEAFT

perhaps be termed the psychology of mankiiid, and ' thepublic ' still clamour to be deceived.

Recently attention has been attracted anew to thephenomena which have been known and described inone form or other for centuries under the titles offascination, mesmerism, animal magnetism, and hypno-tism, phenomena which were for the first time intelli-gently investigated and rationally explained by ourcountryman Braid. Since the time of Braid little ornothing had been added to our knowledge of the phe-

nomena in question until Professor Charcot thoroughlystudied the subject at the Salpetri^re Hospital, con-vinced himself of the identity of the hypnotic sus-ceptibility with the condition of hysteria in men andwomen, and worked upon those lines.

The long-continued studies of Charcot, and of hispupils Binet, Fere, D6jerine, Richer, Bourneville,Babinski and Ballet, and the continuous and muchfrequented public demonstrations at the Salpetri^reHospital, naturally attracted great attention to thesubject. These studies and demonstrations have helpedmaterially to define and classify the forms and stagesof the hypnotic and hysteric conditions.

In a lecture which I gave at Toynbee Hall, andwhich constitutes the first chapter of this book, Ipublished for the first time the results of a seriesof experiments and observations made by me fromtime to time during the last thirty years on the factsand follies of mesmerism and hypnotism. These in-

MESMERISM AND THE NEW WITCHCRAFT 73

Testigations had convinced me, after the employment

^f rigid test experiments and methods of control,that the familiar and now well-known phenomenaof the hypnotic state are due to purely subjectiveconditions; that there is no fluid of any sort and noinfluence of any sort, tangible or intangible, whichpasses in these cases from the operator to the subject,except a suggestion by word of mouth or visible indica-tions, and that it is quite suflScient that the subjectshould have the belief that will is being exercised inorder that the acts should be performed and the con-ditions induced which are supposed to be the result


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of a transferred influence or an unexpressed will. Ihave repeatedly ascertained by test experiments, whichanyone can repeat, that the will or the * emanations 'from the person of the operator, so often invoked ascausatives, have nothing essentially to do with theinduced conditions in the hypnotic subject. I haveascertained by repeated experiments that the makingof passes is a senseless and unnecessary mummery,

unless it be done to impress the imagination, and thatthe introduction of magnets, near or distant, has no realrelation to the induced conditions. The sound of agong or the light of a wax candle, or of a limelight,or an electric light, the striking of notes on a piano-forte, the vibrations of a tuning-fork, a look, or a word,the gazing at any bright object such as a metal spoonor a coin, or the mere belief, however false and con-trary to the fact, that an external influence is being

74 MESMERISM AND THE NEW WITCHCRAFT

exercised, have in my experience suflSced to producein what are called susceptible subjects partial or pro-found sleep, catalepsy, somnambulism, lethargy, orlucid slumber, and to reduce the subject to a condi-tion of more or less complete automatism. In themore recent lecture on 'Mesmerism, Hypnotism, andHysteria,' which precedes this paper, I have aimed atshowing, and as I believe have shown, how closely theseresults to which my experiments had long since ledme are in accord with the carefully observed factsand elaborate conclusions of Professor Charcot andhis school, and I have illustrated by photographs theidentity of the phenomena of hypnotism with those of

hysteria.

I had of course read for some years past from timeto time the statements and publications of a certainschool of writers, chiefly French, of whom the mostnotable is Dr. Luys, physician to La Charity Hospital.I also had the opportunity of seeing a quaint seriesof experiments carried out some years ago by Dr.Dumontpallier at La Pitie Hospital, which impressedme only as indicating a surprising credulity and a stillmore surprising ignorance or neglect of the ordinaryphenomena of hysteria. The published lectures andreported demonstrations of Dr. Luys involved so many

extravagances and such singular conclusions that I hadpurposely abstained from going to witness the perform-ances. It was obviously difficult to test them impar-tially and independently, and it might have been hoped


that they would in the end prove innocuous by reasonof their extravagance, and would not seriously affect


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t,\ie mind of any large portion of the intelligent publicin Paris, as they certainly had not had any success ininfluencing medical opinion in this country. Shortlybefore my going to Paris, however, in response to anofficial invitation to the Pasteur Jubilee, there appearedin the * Pall Mall Gazette ' of December 2 and 15 twoarticles headed ' Hypnotisers and Hypnotised in Paris,in which were picturesquely described, and vouched for

in evident good faith, performances of an astoundingcharacter in the wards of La Charite and at the EcolePolytechnique by a gentleman of considerable attain-ments, I believe, in physical science, and of undoubtedsincerity. Other articles in the London journals,and in particular two communications on 'The NewMesmerism ' in the ' Times,' gave almost simultaneouslystill greater prominence to these performances. I deter-mined, therefore, to take the opportunity of witnessingthese demonstrations and of learning whatever theremight be new and capable of verification in this seriesof experiments. They carried the pretensions of themagnetist and the hypnotiser much further in certain

directions than had ever before been claimed by seriousexperimenters in modem times. Moreover and espe-cially, these demonstrations were alleged to be of thenature of scientific and physical experiment, thereforecapable of control and test, which is very often not thecase where the phenomena presented pretend only to

76 MESMERISM AND THE NEW WITCHCBAFT

be the result of new mental endowments, sharpenedand enlarged intellectual perceptions, or the transferenceof ideas and thoughts by contact or ' through space.'

The reports of the Psychical Research Society ofGreat Britain have given only such crude results andinchoate conclusions, that they had never inspired mewith much desire to test what I venture to consider thesingularly inadequate and even puerile demonstrationswhich they professed to aflford of telepathy and thoughttransference. But here the existence of broad, stronglymarked and palpable results were averred which, ifthey bore the test of experiment, as it was declaredthey did, would prove nearly conclusive. On myway to Paris I met a medical friend, Dr. Lutaud,formerly resident in London, now a hospital physician

in Paris, and editor of the * Journal de Medecine,' whoundertook to communicate with Dr. Luys, and to askwhether he would be willing to give me a demonstrationof his experiments of thought transference, transferenceof sensibility, extemalisation of sensation, influence ofmedicines in sealed tubes, &c., and of his results, alsowhether I could see the much-vaunted experiments ofColonel de Rochas d'Aiglun. The occasional corre-spondent of the ' Times ' had expressly declared thatthey were conducted in the wards of the hospital undercircumstances which put imposture out of the question.


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I received in due time a communication from Dr.Lutaud, informing me that Dr. Luys would be at thehospital on the following morning and would afiord


tube containing 15 grains of brandy was put in contactwith her neck. A few seconds later she commenced tomake grimaces, and moved her tongue and lips as if shewere tasting liquor of some kind. She then began talkingin broken phrases : " I'm thirsty ; I want something todrink ; give me something to drink ; my head pains me so ;anyone would say I was drunk/' She tried to stand on herfeet, and fell heavily down into a chair. " There," said Dr.Luys, who had previously taken his visitors out of theroom to explain what would happen on contact of the tubecontaining alcohol with the hypnotised person, "now, astrange thing is that this artificial state of drunkennesscan be transferred to another hypnotised person."

* A man was brought in from an adjoining room andhypnotised. One of his hands was placed in the hand ofthe woman, and the passage of a magnet along their armsin the direction of the man sufficed to transfer the symptomsof drunkenness to him. To all appearances he was quiteas drunk as the woman seemed to have been a few momentsearlier. The transfer of disease to hypnotised subjects isone of the most frequent methods of cure adopte'd by thdoctors in charge of the Clinique Hypnothdrapique of thCharity. It is not every patient that can be hypnotisedand submitted to a course of treatment by suggestion, sothis alternative way of profiting by hypnotic methods is io-vogue.'

Extract from the 'Pall Mall Gazette,'December 15, 1892,

*I was led to study the exteriorisation of the sensitivenessin this way, and it was the merest chance that it happened.One day it happened that I hypnotised a subject on a velvet-backed chair in my office. The subject was taken across theroom, and when she was seated at some distance from the


chair I accidentally touched the velvet, and, to my surprise,the woman put her hand to her back and showed signs ofintense suffering. It was evident that the earlier contact ofthe subject and the chair had charged the latter in someway. I then tried with a silk-covered chair, but the sameresult was not produced. Still, the first observation satis-fied me that not only was it possible to exteriorise the sen-sitiveness of a human being, but that the sensitivenesscould be stored up in some other substance. At the Hdpitalde la Charity you have yourself seen it transferred to a


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glass of water, and have noticed that while the subject isunaffected by the touch of the hand, or even the prickingof a pin, it suffers excruciating pain the moment you touchthe surface of the water with the tip of your finger, thoughthe water may have been carried some distance away fromthe sleeping person. The water becomes highly chargedwith the sensitiveness of the individual, but loses it in acomparatively short time. On the other hand, a fat or

greasy substance will retain the sensitiveness longer ; while,if transferred to a liquid, which is afterwards crystallised,it impregnates the mass for a fortnight, or even longer ;and during the whole of that period the person, whenwithin a reasonable distance, would be conscious if I touchedthe charged substance, and would suffer pain if I pinchedit violently or attempted to stick a pin into it.'

Extract from the * Times' op December 28, 1892.

* There remains, however, one set of recent experimentswhich, from their novel and startling character, deservespecial attention. I refer to the transference of sensibility

from a hypnotic subject to inanimate objects. I have beenfortunate enough to witness some of these experiments,and wiU describe what I saw. They were not carried outby Dr. Luys, but by an amateur who attends h.ia oWxaQ..


This gentleman had a roughly-constructed figure, about afoot high, resembling the human form, and made of gutta-percha or some such material, and he experimented with iton a hysterical young woman, one of the hospital patientsand an extremely sensitive subject. She was placed in an

arm-chair and hypnotised, and he seated himself immediatelyopposite in close contact with her, their knees touching andher hands placed upon his knees. After some preliminarybusiness of stroking her arms and so forth, he produced thefigure and held it up in front of her, presumably to becharged with her magnetism, for these experiments rest onthe magnetic theory. Then he placed it out of her sightand pinched it. Sometimes she appeared to feel it andsometimes she did not, but he was all the time in actualcontact with her. Then he held it where she could not seeit, and this time she obviously suffered acutely whenever hetouched the figure and in the place where he touched it,although she did not look at it or seem to observe it.

Especially when he touched the sole of the foot it evidentlytickled her beyond endurance. Then the figure was placedaside on a table out of sight both of the girl and of theoperator, while another gentleman put one hand on theoperator's back and the other on the figure. I was in sucha position as to see them all, and whenever the secondgentleman touched the figure the girl felt it. Then she wastold that she was to feel it just the same after being wokeup, and an attempt was made to wake her, but she was bythis time very profoundly affected, and the attempt wasonly partially successful. In this state that is, still som-


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nambulistic she stood up and moved from her place. Theoperator did the same, and being separated from her bysome feet he turned his back to her and held the figure insuch a position that she could not possibly see it. Then hepinched the back of the figure's neck and the girl felt it at


the same moment, but in the wrong place. The place whereshe did feel it caused her some embarrassment, thoughharmless enough, as she informed him of the locality in awhisper which I overheard. I can answer for it that shefelt something at the moment when he touched the image,and that she could not see it and was not in contact withhim, because I was standing almost between them. Butshe felt it far more acutely when he pinched his own wristunder the same circumstances. That brought the experi-ments to a conclusion. They occupied at least half anhour, and included a number of interesting details which

I have been obliged to omit.

* I shall only offer one comment on this exhibition, whichwas perfectly genuine. To my mind it in no way provedthe transference of sensibility to the image, but it did provethat suggestions and impressions can be conveyed from oneperson to another by mere contact and even across an in-tervening space. But that is no new thing in mesmerism.Abundant proof of its occurrence is on record, explain ithow you will.'

Other reports of a similar character had appearedin ' La Justice,' ' L'Echo de Paris,' and other Frenchjournals.

In subsequent articles I shall describe and illustratethe extraordinary performances here referred to. Ihave been able by control-experiments on the very sub-jects here described, and on others who have furnishedthe basis of many of the lectures and publications byDr. Luys and Colonel de Rochas, to unmask the de-ception and credulity which have given rise to thesestrange proceedings. An extensive and pretentious


mass of literature has accumulated around them, andboth from the Continent and from this country many-persons have been attracted to them, and led to attachto them a scientific value which I shall show to bewholly absent. It is, therefore, a case in which firmand plain words need to be spoken ; and I cannotshrink from so doing. It is lamentable that such pro-ceedings should be carried on in the name of science,and that one of the greatest of the Paris hospitals shouldbe made the theatre of such inanities and deceptions.


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The scientific reputation of a department of a greatState institution is seriously afiected by these mum-meries, and the honour of French medical science isinjured before the world when the able journalists ofthe Continent and Great Britain are hoodwinked byimpostors acting under the shelter of the name of aphysician who has allowed himself to be their un-conscious dupe and enthusiastic patron. Colonel de

Rochas is a gentleman of the most undoubted goodfaith. Neither can any one for a moment doubt thehonour and good faith of Dr. Luys, however muchwe may regret and even blame the persistent credulityhe has shown and the inadequacy of the means whichhe has taken to protect himself and his pupils, hisforeign visitors and his right-minded patients fromvery mischievous deception, and from contact with acertain number of persons, all communication withwhom ought for many serious reasons to be shunned.For in connection with some of the subjects of demon-

MESMEEISM AND THE NEW WITCHCEAFT 83

stration there are underlying questions for the noticeof the police and the correctional tribunals to which Idesire to call the attention of M. Monod and theCouncil of the Assistance Publique over which he soably and worthily presides.

In order to give an idea of the practices in voguein the so-called hypno-therapeutic department of LaCharite Hospital, under the direction of Dr. Luys, andof the principal performances which are given there, Iwill briefly summarise the leading features of some of

those shown to me by M. Luys during several of myvisits to his clinic. I may mention that both Dr. Lutaud,who accompanied me on one or two of these visits, andwho had in the first instance communicated with Dr.Luys on my behalf, and Dr. Sajous, the editor of the' American Annual of Medical Sciences,' who was alsopresent on several occasions with me at La Charite, ex-plained to Dr. Luys, at the outset, as I took occasion todo myself, that I was of a sceptical, as well as of an in-quiring turn of mind, with some experience in thesematters, and that it was desirable only to show mephenomena which he could rely upon as genuine, andwhich would bear investigation.

The subjects on whom Dr. Luys demonstrated werechiefly two patients in the hospital, (1) a man namedMervel, whom I shall have occasion to mention fre-quently, and (2) a young woman, Marguerite. Therewere also (3) a girl named Clarice, a former patient,who arrived at the wards on New Year's day as a



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visitor, and who had for a long time previously beena patient and the subject of lectures and demonstra-tions by Dr. Luys, but who has since, and does now,largely make her living out of her accomplishments,infirmities (and, I must at once add, her tricks), as atrained subject ; (4) a woman, whom I shall speak ofas Madame V., who was present at my first visit,

having been brought there by Colonel Rochas d'Aiglun,and on whom were displayed all the phenomena knownunder the mystical and pseudo-scientific names ofprofound hypnosis, externalisation of sensation, trans-ference of sensibility to inanimate objects, sensitivisationof the atmosphere, &c. ; (5) a subject, Jeanne, longan inmate of the hospital and still a subject of de-monstration there, who has set up for herself, and is athriving practitioner as well as a subject in hypnotism.There was some monotony in the repetition of theseperformances from day to day, so that for the purposesof condensation and classification I shall name them intheir generic order, rather than in the precise succession

of daily dates in which they occur in my note book.

First, as to the general character of the preliminaryphenomena. Dr. Luys professes to base himself on pre-cise experiments demonstrating the principal pheno-mena of what he calls ^ great hypnotism,' as describedfor the first time in France in masterly fashion by hiseminent colleague of the Salpetri^re, Professor Charcot,who would, however, be far from endorsing either theexperiments or the conclusions of Dr. Luys. But he


adds to those special researches a series of documentspersonal to himself collected in the Charit6 Hospital,where he finds a younger, neuropathic population' nearer the initial period of these maladies, and evenon the borderland of the physiological condition.' Imay say that I found no physiologically sound personsat the Charit6 under experiment, but those on whom hedemonstrated were profoundly neuropathic, with theexception of Madame V. (Colonel Rochas

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