6o 4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



example, let us say that two men of equal strength are pulling with all 

 their might on a thick stick. As long as the pull is the same on hoth 

 sides, the stick won't move. How the mind can exert such an influence 

 we do not know. This same idea of the counter-action of various 

 muscles applies to the whole body as well as to one arm. Yet some 

 one may ask how these muscles can have the power to stand more strain 

 than they do in the waking state. It is only that as our normal 

 selves we never use our full muscle power. This is because not enough 

 stimulation is ever given to the muscle to make it work to its full 

 extent. But in cases of great excitement or danger, even the weakest 

 seem to have superhuman strength. 



The loss of the sense of pain or anesthesia can also be accounted 

 for by the brain. When we say we have a pain in our finger, we 

 don't really mean that. The cut is in the finger, but the pain is in 

 the brain, and consciousness is necessary for us to have pain. Sup- 

 pose a man is going to have an operation on his finger and is made 

 unconscious. Now the finger is there, but the pain has disappeared, 

 showing that pain is not located in various parts of the body, but in 

 the domain of consciousness. So if, under hypnotic influence, you tell 

 the patient that he will have no pain, he thinks the pain away, so to 

 speak — knocks it out of his consciousness. 



How we can run needles into people and produce no blood seems 

 still more remarkable, but physiologically it can be explained. Let 

 me say here that if any one should pierce a large artery with a needle, 

 serious consequences might result. Let us say that we penetrate the 

 skin in a place where there are thousands of little capillaries. Each 

 one of these vessels is connected with the nervous system by two sets 

 of nerve fibers — those which can dilate the vessels, those which can 

 constrict them. Now, suppose I give the suggestion that I am going 

 to run a needle through a certain part of the arm. An impulse, sent 

 from the brain, constricts the blood vessels at this spot, inhibits the 

 sense of pain, and the needle comes out again wthout a drop of blood 

 following it. 



The explanation of the dizziness from water supposed to be whiskey 

 and the cure by salt supposed to be sugar is that both are the result 

 of an unexplainable force whereby the patient takes every word of the 

 bypnotizer as gospel, though it is contradictory to his own ideas. For 

 example, in one case a patient told me that he knew the glass contained 

 water and yet it tasted like whiskey, and he also knew that the sellar 

 contained salt and yet it tasted like sugar. 



The cure of the finger-nail habit and all the post-hypnotic sug- 

 gestions may be summed up briefly. All we should do is to refer back 

 to the perfect or subjective mind where all these suggestions are stored 

 up and say that the objective mind draws nutriment from it, and in 



