HYPNOTISM, ITS HISTORY, N ATI BE AXD USE. 591 



with this wonderful power were called God's ministers. Soothsayers, 

 divine healers, the oracle ministers, all made the oriental people con- 

 strue this power by religious means. Among the Chaldeans, Baby- 

 lonians, Persians, Hindoos and other ancient peoples, there were 

 priests who, because of their power of exerting a superhuman influence 

 over others, were considered divine. To this day the vogis and fakirs 

 of India use this power and throw themselves into a state of hypnotic 

 ecstacy and revery. In the eleventh century it was used in the Greek 

 church, as it is now by the omphalopsychics. In the middle ages it was 

 practised by Paracelsus, who maintained that the human body pos- 

 sessed a double magnetism, the first magnetism coming from the 

 planets, the second from flesh and blood. All through the middle 

 ages, hypnotism was practised under different names such as witch- 

 craft, divinations, etc. It was supposed to be a supernatural power 

 derived from Satan himself, and, therefore, the user of this power was 

 expelled from society and sometimes put to death. Magic spells 

 where people went into trances or out of their head were of common 

 occurrence. Eeligious ecstasy, demon-possession, cures by shrines and 

 relics, the cure by the king's touch, etc., were all phenomena of this 

 same sort. 



During the seventeenth century, a number of faith-healers sprang 

 up all over the continent and British Isles. Many of these men were 

 noted for their skill, but the one who attained the greatest reputation 

 was one by the name of Greatrakes, who was horn in Ireland about 

 1628. This ' healer ' was sent for by a Lord Conway who expressed his 

 message in the following language : " to cure that excellent lady of his, 

 the pains of whose head, as great and unparalleled as they are, have 

 not made her more known or admired abroad than have her other en- 

 dowments." At Lady Conway's was a miscellaneous gathering, chiefly 

 engaged in mystical pursuits, ' an unofficial but active society for 

 psychical research, as that study existed in the seventeenth century.' 

 Says Mr. Lang: Greatrakes' special genius in these mystical pursuits 

 was of divine agency ; for he tells us that at one time " he heard a 

 voyce within him (audible to none else), encouraging to the tryals: 

 and afterwards to correct his unbelief the voice aforesaid added this 

 sign, that his right hand should be dead, and that the stroahing of his 

 left arm should recover it again, the events whereof were fully verified 

 by him three nights together by a successive infirmity and cure of his 

 arm." We are told that he failed to cure the lady's malady but that 

 he worked some wonderful miracles of healing among the sick of the 

 neighborhood. 



Henry Stubbe, a physician of Stratford-on-Avon, thus comments 

 on Greatrakes' miracles. He says " that God had bestowed upon Mr. 

 Greatrakes a peculiar temperament, etc., composed his body of some 

 particular ferments, the effluvia whereof, being sometimes introduced 



