HYPNOTISM. 369 



sensitive subjects. Letters were traced by the finger of the 

 hypnotiser on the skin of the " subject's " arm, and the 

 suggestion was made that these should appear as letters of 

 blood. Watch was kept on the person in the wards of a 

 hospital to prevent any deception being practised ; and it 

 was found, at the end of twenty-four hours, that little drops 

 of blood were oozing from the skin, marking out the letters 

 previously traced. Again, on the skin of a hjqonotised 

 " subject," a postage stamp was fixed, the suggestion being 

 made that it was a blister. In a short space of time distinct 

 vesication and ulceration occurred. 



These results are most interesting, inasmuch as they are 

 vaso-motor and trophic phenomena, the direct outcome of 

 hypnotic suggestion, i.e. of mental origin. They enlarge 

 our conceptions of the enormous influence that mental 

 occurrences have on the body. Further, they offer a satis- 

 factory explication of those hitherto most obscure pheno- 

 mena — stigmata,* and of events analogous to these. 



Hallucination and illusion. — Before describing the sen- 

 sory condition of a person in the hypnotic state, it will be 

 well to shortly discuss the meanings of the words hallucina- 

 tion and illusion. 



To make matters simpler, we will take visual hallucina- 

 tions and illusions only. 



We may first dismiss with a few words that class of 

 visual hallucinations which are generally due to nervous 

 impulses continuing to pass up from the eye to the brain 

 after the object which excited the retina has been removed. 

 Thus if we glance at the sun, and then look away, we " see 

 the sun " for some little time afterwards. We have an 



* See, for an interesting account of this strange by-path of religious 

 enthusiasm, the article by Macalister, "Stigmata," in the ninth edition of 

 the Encyclopedia Britannica, 



