HYSTERIA AND DE MONISM. o>79 



experience not to be discouraged by an apparent want of success. He 

 should make another trial on the next day, and again on the next ; but, 

 if after about the third sitting no result is obtained, it will be time to 

 give up the subject as intractable. Such cases are, however, rare, and 

 generally sleep is brought on at the third sitting, if not before. 



The first sign observed is a kind of torpor. The countenance loses 

 its mobility, and becomes dull and inexpressive. The subject feels a 

 heaviness in the limbs, and a singular torpidity which prevents him 

 from making the least exertion. He has vague sensations of heat, 

 cold, pricklings, and, while his hands continue motionless, he suffers 

 jerkings of the tendons and fibrillar contractions in the muscles. His 

 eyelids become heavy and close. With many efforts he vainly opens 

 them, only to shut them again ; the time comes at last when it is im- 

 possible to make them move. A curious spectacle is then presented of 

 a struggle between sleepiness and the will to resist it. The will has 

 to yield at last ; the head falls stupidly on the chair ; the arms become 

 motionless, keeping the attitude they had ; the face is fixed as a life- 

 less mask, expressing no internal feeling ; the closed eyelids are moved 

 by a few convulsive tremors ; the breathing is quiet ; the heart beats 

 slowly and regularly. We might at first believe that this induced 

 sleep is identical with ordinary sleep, but it is nothing like it, and is 

 characterized by very different symptoms. 



The fact that insensibility exists in both permits us to liken induced 

 somnambulism in a certain degree with the demoniac attack. We may 

 prick the skin of magnetized persons with a needle, tickle their nostrils 

 and lips with a feather, without provoking any sign from them. Un- 

 fortunately, while anaesthesia is complete in some subjects, it is wholly 

 wanting in others, so that we can not perceive in it a single essential 

 characteristic symptom which will permit us to judge whether the 

 sleep of the subject is real or assumed. For this reason, some of the 

 physicians who have employed this criterion have been led to deny 

 the reality of somnambulism ; for, instead of finding insensibility, as 

 they had expected, they have perceived that each pricking excited a 

 painful feeling. In certain cases even, sensibility, instead of being 

 diminished, is exaggerated to such a point that the slightest contact 

 excites pain. In a word, individual differences forbid us to adduce an 

 absolute law, and there are so many exceptions that we can not speak 

 of a rule. 



The person who is put to sleep is conscious of his condition, and we 

 may be sure that he is really asleep if he says that he is when we ask 

 him about it. If we then inquire as to the sensations he experiences, 

 we will generally be assured that this sleep is quite pleasant. Many 



of the patients whom I have put to sleep at the Hospital B assured 



me that their pains had disappeared. They also wished to remain 

 asleep for a long time, knowing that the wakening to their normal life 

 would be at the same time a wakening to pain. I add that, if the con- 



