Literary Notices. xxxiii 



neighborhood teUing fortunes, and healing diseases, and in this way 

 makes a good deal of money" (p. 37). The phenomena attending 

 seances are exactly such as those with which we are too well acqainted 

 here. " Tables are turned, chairs are rattled, and a general noise of 

 smashing is heard." Even Slade and his slate have their counterparts, 

 " the pencil moving of its own accord" (p. 69). The effect of the 

 mysterious is indubitable. We all recall that no less a person than Pro- 

 fessor Zollner was mystified by Slade and induced to commit himself 

 to absurdities which appear in high relief since the fraud was con- 

 fessed. That the oriental exorcism is associated with vulgar conjury 

 and legerdermain is evident throughout these pages and the skill of 

 oriental jugglers is almost past belief. That, on the other hand, there 

 is a certain amount of honest belief in the powers of spirit on the part 

 of the profession is also evident. A large class of semi-professional 

 healers occupies the same place as the " Christian healers" and " faith 

 healers " of our own locality. Almost while these lines are being 

 penned a new Man-Christ is touching and prescribing for all manner 

 of diseases and as many as are touched are made whole. Even hand- 

 kerchiefs acquire curative power by being blessed by this ignorant pea- 

 sant. A thriving trade is being driven in counterfeit blessings and ad- 

 vanced positions in the line at his door have sold for seven dollars. 

 But it is not necessary to seek isolated cases like that of Francis Schlatter 

 when any patent medicine circular will reveal a long roll of clerical at- 

 testations to absurdities too patent to deceive a healthy child. The 

 love of, and belief in the marvelous is too thoroughly ingrained to yield 

 easily to judgment or authority. 



Prominent among the facts forming the background of these ap- 

 pearances is the evidence of neurotic predispositions in the subjects 

 described. 



One curious fact familiar to all physicians seems to mystify the 

 author, i. e., that neurotic individuals are generally the reverse of 

 feeble in appearance. They generally look younger than others of the 

 same age and seem quite well to the untrained observer. Indeed it is 

 one of the special inconveniences of nervous disease that it is hard for 

 his friends to refer the irritable and distracted moods of the sufferer 

 to a diseased condition. He gets credit for pure malignity where he 

 perhaps deserves only profound sympathy, he himself frequently taking 

 the same view. 



So much for the background, but we must notice that the author 

 is at great pains to insist that there is no conceivable bias in favor of 

 the demon theory and the resulting practice of exorcism on the side 



