600 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



except by waking the patient up, or making her pass into lethargy. 

 The hypnotized patient therefore is much in the state of the frog, 

 which when thrown into a pond, even after its brain has been re- 

 moved, begins to swim on touching the water, aimlessly, automati- 

 cally. 



Sometimes a movement repeatedly executed by the operator in 

 front of the patient will be imitated and carried out by the patient 

 until stopped : this is a case of suggestion through the organ of sight. 

 Or more complicated trains of movement may be initiated by present- 

 ing to the patient objects suggestive of certain actions, such as a plate 

 and spoon, a brush and comb, and the like. The sight of a boot will 

 start an endless repetition of putting it on, lacing and unlacing, taking 

 it off, putting it on again, and so forth indefinitely. 



The field of suggestions through the ear by means of language is 

 boundless. Such words as " rats, " " bird," " flower," wake up a train 

 of imagery in the patient's brain which is immediately projected out- 

 ward in an expressive display of appropriate gestures of aversion or 

 desire, and corresponding movements of avoidance or capture. If in 

 deep hypnotism, the subject is immediately wrapped up in those cre- 

 ations of the imagination ; if slightly hypnotized only, repetition of 

 the suggestive words is needed to neutralize the controlling influence 

 of the senses. The ordinary phenomenon of hypnotism, the impossi- 

 bility which the subject feels of escaping the prohibiting influence of 

 a suggestion, belongs to this category. You assure him that he can 

 not move his arm, for instance ; he feels that he can, and yet he can 

 not. The volitional current from his higher brain-centers is neutral- 

 ized, as it were, by the current from other centers in which the sug- 

 gestion has created a fixed idea of his own incapacity. As hypnosis 

 becomes deeper, every trace of resistance disappears, and the fixed 

 idea reigns supreme. 



Such are the leading phenomena of hypnotism as observed in those 

 highly sensitive subjects, the sufferers from the graver form of hysteria, 

 or hystero-epilepsy. It would take us too far to describe the various 

 symptoms of this form of nervous derangement, which, though com- 

 paratively common in France and among certain other nations, seems 

 to be very rare, at least in its full development, among the Germanic 

 races. In Dr. Richer's work, already mentioned, a full account is 

 given of the appalling violence of the convulsive seizures and of the 

 delirium that characterize the disease. Epidemics of hystero-epilepsy 

 were rife in the middle ages, especially among the members of relig- 

 ious bodies ; and even now it seems to be closely related to supersti- 

 tions or mystical beliefs and practices. 



Though essentially a disease of the female nervous organization, 

 many instances are found of men suffering from more or less modified 

 forms of hystero-epilepsy. The less striking symptoms of it, such as 

 various forms of paralysis, loss of sensation, loss of speech (aphasia), 



