OX "ANIMAL MAGNETISMS 



137 



phenomena above described are present, namely, 

 immobility, absence of self-control, catalepsy, so 

 that the tongs may be quietly removed without 

 causing the animal to move. The eyes usually 

 remain open, and, as in the other experiments, 

 the pupil is often contracted. Surely no one will 

 maintain that a lively frog may fall fast asleep 

 within the one second of time which it takes to 

 seize it with the tongs and to lay it on a table. 

 On the contrary, it is highly probable that the 

 frog, accustomed during its whole life to perse- 

 cution, will, like animals of a higher mental de- 

 velopment, on being suddenly clasped or seized, 

 be frightened, and more intensely frightened than 

 he would be under any other circumstance. While 

 suspecting nothing, perhaps while watching a fly, 

 or listening to the croaking of another frog ; while 

 enjoying the sense of perfect security and undis- 

 turbed quiet in its pond, or in an aquarium, the 

 animal is without the least warning suddenly and 

 noiselessly seized from behind by the leg, or the 

 foot, or by the body, with iron tongs in such a 

 way as to make resistance impossible. Would 

 the frog fall asleep during that moment? It 

 would, at all events, first of all, be frightened. 

 Under the influence of terror it loses all power 

 of reflection, and in most cases falls forthwith 

 into a state of immobility without making any 

 effort to escape. But if we seize the frog, and 

 keep touching it till it just begins to make its 

 ineffectual efforts to become free, it is often sev- 

 eral minutes before the state of repose sets in, 

 and in that case there intervenes between that 

 state and the moment of seizure a stage wherein 

 reflection may still appear, the animal thinking 

 to itself, " I am a prisoner, and must escape." 

 And as the idea, " I am lost," is ever recurring 

 to the animal, why may not fright develop here, 

 too, its paralyzing influence ? Frogs no less than 

 warm-blooded animals are " cataplegic." 



But it can be still more strikingly shown, by 

 another kind of experiment, that we have to do 

 here with something different from ordinary 

 sleep. If, after the animal has been suddenly 

 and firmly grasped with a pair of tongs by the 

 leg or foot or body, we then, without touching it, 

 throw around it a loop of packthread and sus- 

 pend it vertically in the air ; or if with a loop, as 

 with a lasso, we suddenly twist it out of its easy, 

 unconstrained posture on a gallows, so to speak, 

 it, with little or no movement, remains passive in 

 the hanging position until death, which usually 

 comes within twenty-four hours, the animal un- 

 consciously drying up precisely after the manner 

 of a frog deprived of its cerebrum. Even when 



it is half immersed in water, it remains in the 

 same position for hours. If after some minutes, 

 or an hour, or several hours, we take down the 

 frog, with the line attached, we may, without re- 

 sistance on its part, lay the animal on its back as 

 though it were dead. The animal is decidedly 

 cataplegic ; even, though it may hare been pre- 

 viously hanging free in air, we may plunge it 

 totally under water and yet it will not come to 

 itself. Nay, oftentimes the extremities may be 

 cautiously but very firmly compressed or vio- 

 lently stretched without calling forth any re- 

 sponse, any effort to escape. But when we re- 

 move the cord, and, with the hands freeing the 

 animal, we leave it to itself, it leaps away either 

 at once or after a few moments, seldom minutes, 

 of resuscitation. 



In both of these modes of experimentation 

 noiselessness and quiet are no more necessary 

 than when we experiment on warm-blooded ani- 

 mals. When the cataplexy has continued for 

 some time, we may talk aloud and move about 

 the room without arousing the animals out of 

 their torpor. Hence, however much the success 

 of the experiments may he facilitated by remov- 

 ing all causes of excitation for the cerebrum, such 

 removal is not indispensable. The being caught 

 in a loop, no matter how loose it may be, is a 

 violent and unwonted sensation for the frog, 

 whose own weight, even in water, causes the 

 loop to hold it tightly. Yet, however tight the 

 loop, the animal can free itself by a single move- 

 ment, but does not do so. 



As my honored colleague, Prof. Haeckel, has 

 reminded me orally, this experiment is often 

 made on a large scale, though with this differ- 

 ence, that escape is more difficult, or even impos- 

 sible. In taking on board ship and in landing 

 large animals destined for zoological gardens and 

 menageries — for instance, buffaloes — a wide belt 

 is passed round the body of the animal, which is 

 then hoisted by means of a crane. Very fre- 

 quently the wildest specimens, those that made 

 the stoutest resistance when the belt was being 

 thrown around them, on finding that they no 

 longer have firm ground under their feet, become 

 petrified as it were, motionless and voiceless, so 

 long as the aerial journey lasts. They quickly 

 recover after the belt is taken off and they tread 

 the ground once more. No one will pretend that 

 the animals were asleep in the brief interval. 

 That they were frightened does not admit of doubt. 

 Here, then, we have a clear case of cataplexy just 

 as in the animals (rabbits, Guinea-pigs, frogs) 

 suspended in slings in my experiments. While 



