126 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



consists of nerve-cells and nerve -fibres, there being, it is said, 

 a thousand milhon of cerebral cells, and about three times as 

 many nerve-fibres connecting them. The nerve-cells produce 

 and accumulate nerve-force ; the fibres, like telegraph-wires, 

 conduct the current to any place required. Impressions from 

 without are conducted by certain nerves to the brain, and we 

 become conscious of them. Another set of nerves transmits 

 the impulse from the brain to different parts of the body, and 

 is connected with the muscles, and calls them into action. 



The brain has been compared to a galvanic battery in which 

 an electric current is generated, the nerve-force being said to 

 resemble electricity, for a current of electricity passed along a 

 nerve produces the same effects. " The conductive system of 

 the nerves," says Sir William Armstrong, "is in keeping with 

 our conception of an electrical arrangement. In fact, a descrip- 

 tion of the animal machine so closely coincides with an electro- 

 dynamic machine actuated by thermo-electricity that we may 

 conceive them to be substantially the same thing." All this 

 is mere elementary knowledge, which I venture to recall to 

 your minds in the hope of making subsequent explanations 

 more intelligible. Now, the hypnotized brain, you will re- 

 member, is shut up and dormant except to the voice of the 

 operator. His voice, like all sounds, produces air- waves ; 

 these enter the ear of the patient, and, after vibrating through 

 the inner chambers of that organ, " are finally converted into 

 impulses, which act as irritants of the ends of the auditory 

 nerves." The nerve-element is said to be in a state of equi- 

 librium when undisturbed by any impulse ; but when so 

 disturbed the impulse travels along the nerve to the brain, 

 creates vibrations more or less powerful in certain nerve-cells, 

 rouses into activity portions of the cerebral apparatus, and 

 there follows an involuntary exercise of the faculties in obedi- 

 ence to the impulse given. In the hypnotic sleep certain 

 cell-territories seem to be thrown into some peculiar receptive 

 condition, and the suggestions of the operator set in immediate 

 motion the automatic forces latent in the brain. You will bear 

 in mind also that the intelligence and volitional power are not 

 only asleep, but less capable, by the circulation of a diminished 

 quantity of blood through the brain, of withstanding the 

 vigorous brain-action of the operator. The patient is in the 

 condition of a machine with its own motive-power withdrawn, 

 and a stimulus from without substituted, by which it is made 

 to move and perform its usual work. As Edison's recent in- 

 vention, the phonograph, retains the sounds impressed upon 

 it, and reproduces them in a mechanical way, so the human 

 brain, set in motion by the operator's voice, performs many of 

 its functions in the same mechanical manner. That is my 

 view of the involuntary and unconscious acts of the patient in 



