1884.] on the Physiological Aspect of Mesmerism. 39 



field, however, is a particularly bad one, and chiefly because so many 

 people concerned regard any careful examination of the subject as 

 impious. But in mesmerised j)ersons it seems probable that such 

 investigations could be made on a fairly satisfactory basis. Men 

 when mesmerised gradually lose remembrance of those things which 

 they remember when they are awake, but not infrequently other 

 things are remembered which are forgotten in the waking state.* 

 This is normally the case with a person who has been previously and 

 recently mesmerised. He may then remember little else than what 

 took place in the corresponding stage of his previous mesmerisation. 

 In a certain state, then, an event or a command will produce in the 

 central nervous system those changes which are necessary for the 

 event or the command to be remembered later, without ever rising to 

 consciousness in the waking condition. Thus a command to do a 

 particular thing, given to a subject in this mesmeric stage, may be 

 carried out when he awakes, although he is quite unconscious why he 

 does it. We may say that such an act is one of unconscious memory. 

 But it is, I think, something more than this. The subject is usually 

 uneasy and preoccupied until the thing is done ; he is to a greater 

 or less extent unable to fix his attention on other things ; he is, in 

 fact, in a state of unconscious attention to an unconscious memory. 

 This brings us to our point. It suggests that if a subject in a 

 certain stage of mesmerisation be told that in a few days a sore will 

 appear upon his hand, or conversely that a sore already there will 

 disappear, the conditions which accompany conscious expectation and 

 attention, will to a certain degree be established; and the trophic 

 influence of the nervous system on the tissues may be tested in a 

 manner which puts the experiment fairly within the control of the 

 observer, and to a certain degree excludes imposture. Such an 

 experiment has obviously some "drawbacks, it would probably only 

 succeed, if it succeeded at all, with a person whose nervous system 

 was in a state of unstable equilibrium ; and it can hardly be expected 

 that the effects would be so striking as when conscious expectation 

 is also concerned. Still observations of this kind are well worth 

 attention, on account of the medical, the physiological, and the 

 psychological issues involved in the results. 



A lightly mesmerised subject can be easily brought back to a 

 normal condition by a sudden slight shock, by sprinkling water in the 

 face, or by a current of cold air. These give rise to exciting impulses 

 which arouse to normal activity the inhibited parts of the brain ; just 

 as we have seen that any other part of the central nervous system can 



* A case is recorded by Braid, of a woman who, during natural somnam- 

 bulism — which is almost identical with a state that can be produced by mes- 

 merism—could repeat correctly long passages from the Hebrew Bible, and from 

 books in other languages, although she had never studied any of these languages, 

 and was quite ignorant of them wlien slie was awake. At length, however, it was 

 discovered that she had learnt the passages when she was a girl, by hearing a 

 clergyman with whom she lived read them out aloud. 



