94 ON CERTAIN PHENOMENA OF HYPNOTISM. 



patient must be " bled several times " as a remedy for intestinal 

 obstruction. This report, which gave so much satisfaction to the 

 magnetisers that the Academy did not venture to publish it, sent 

 everyone off the right track for a considerable time. Instead of 

 seeking to discover if any of the phenomena of somnambulism 

 could be explained by natural laws, known or unknown, the 

 opponents of the struggling science demanded that the results of 

 any given experiment should transcend the limits of the possible, 

 and refused to believe without the working of miracles. The 

 commissioners erred in a similar matter ; they " directed their 

 attention to those experiments most open to dispute, such as the 

 transposition of the senses, the power of reading with bandaged 

 eyes or vision, by means of the internal organs, the epigastrium, 

 and the top of the head, together with the diagnosis of diseases, 

 and an acquaintance with their remedies." 



About this time, Pigeaire, a Montpellier doctor, claimed that 

 his daughter could read, having her eyes covered with a bandage 

 of black silk. M. Burdin, a member of the Academy, had 

 offered a prize of 3,000 francs to any somnambulist who could 

 read without using his eyes. The Academicians were not 

 satisfied with the bandage, which they justly considered could not 

 be adjusted so that a clever trickster would be really blinded. 

 They suggested instead an apparatus of black silk, which was to 

 be held at the distance of six inches from the girl's face. Pigeaire 

 objected to this arrangement, and the Burdin prize was not 

 awarded. A fresh magnetiser, Teste, boasted the possession of 

 a somnambulist who could read writing enclosed in a box. But, 

 under the lynx eyes of the commissioners, the gifted medium 

 failed to read a word of the writing. Having thus duly ascertained 

 that somnambulists could not perform miracles, it was proposed 

 that the Academy should henceforth not pay any attention to the 

 question of animal magnetism, which was to be treated for the 

 future as the Academy of Sciences treats propositions which refer 

 to perpetual motion or to the squaring of the circle. At this 

 darkest hour before the dawn an event of happy augury occurred ; 

 the iniquitous practices of the magnetisers were severely con- 

 demned by the Inquisition, as applying " physical means to things 

 in reality supernatural ... a heretical practice worthy of 



