650 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ively directed to a multitude of different objects, with a rapidity 

 and a lucidity which are truly marvelous. Fear becomes terror ; 

 courage is developed into rashness which nothing checks ; the 

 most unfounded doubt or suspicion becomes a certainty. Tlie 

 mind has a tendency to exaggerate everything." So, also, De 

 Quincey, of the effects of opium : " Whatsoever I happened to call 

 up and trace by a voluntary act upon the darkness, was very apt 

 to transfer itself to my dreams. Whatsoever things I did but 

 think of in the darkness, immediately shaped themselves into 

 phantoms of the eye ; and, by a process apparently no less inevi- 

 table, when once thus traced in faint and visionary colors, like 

 writings in sympathetic ink, they were drawn out, by the fierce 

 chemistry of my dreams, into insufferable splendor that fretted 

 my heart." In the delirium of fever and in the coma of ether 

 and nitrous oxide suggestibility is sometimes noted, but it is not 

 a common phenomenon, and more information is much needed. 



Idiopathic suggestibility has been reported by many observers, 

 but I shall limit myself to the description of one case which has 

 fallen within my own ken. Florrie is a little girl aged twelve. 

 Her father is a blacksmith in good health but not robust. Her 

 mother is a work-worn woman, slow of speech and slower of wit, 

 and is easily hypnotized. Florrie is a quiet child, has suffered 

 from frequent and violent headaches, and is very forgetful. In 

 all other respects she is quite normal. She was hypnotized some 

 time ago by a traveling showman. Of her condition before that 

 time there is no record, but since then she has been markedly sug- 

 gestible. A command forcibly uttered, once, twice, or thrice, is 

 sufficient to displace her upper consciousness and throw her into 

 a dreamlike state in which she executes nearly all suggestions. 

 A typical experience with her will serve as an illustration. I had 

 been lecturing in an amphitheater crowded with students, and she 

 had been waiting outside. The patients I had already shown 

 aroused a great deal of laughter, and when I went for her I found 

 her panic-stricken, sobbing bitterly : she would not go, no, she 

 would not go before all those men she was afraid. I said to her 

 in a low tone : " Florrie, of whom are you afraid ? Are you afraid 

 of me ?" " No." " Of your mother ? " " No." " Well, there is 

 no one else here." After much persuasion I got her to look out. 

 " There," said I, triumphantly, pointing to a crowd of physicians 

 and nurses, " don't you see that bare wall ? There is no one here 

 but us three." Her tears were dried at once. I led her into the 

 amphitheater and said, pointing to the rows upon rows of men, 

 " Don't you see, Florrie, there is nothing here but empty benches 

 and ourselves ? " She saw nothing save what I told her to see, 

 was perfectly cheerful and happy, entirely at her ease, and abso- 

 lutely subject to my commands. She seemed to be quite normal. 



