[FOR THE USE OF MEMBERS.] 
Boyval Jnstitution of Great Writat. 
1852. 
WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 
Friday, March 12. 
Sir Cuarztes Lemon, Bart., LL.D., F.R.S. 
in the Chair. 
Wiuiram B. Careentrr, M.D., F.R.S., &c. 
On the Influence of Suggestion in Modifying and directing Muscular 
Movement, independently of Volition. 
Pustic attention has recently been so much attracted to a class of 
phenomena, which has received the very inappropriate designation of 
Electro- Biological, or simply Biological, and so much misapprehension 
prevails regarding their true nature and import, that it becomes the 
Physiologist to make known the results of scientific investigation, 
directed in the first place towards the determination of their genuine- 
ness, and in the second to the elucidation of the peculiar state of 
the nervous system on which their production depends. 
With regard to the genuineness of the phenomena themselves, 
the Lecturer stated that he could entertain no doubt whatever; 
since they had been presented to himself and to other scientific en- 
quirers, by numerous individuals, on whose honesty and freedom 
from all tendency to deceive themselves or others implicit reliance 
could be placed. But from the account commonly given of these 
phenomena,—to the effect that the will of the ‘ biologized’ subject 
is entirely subjected to that of the operator,—he entirely dissented ; 
and believed that he should be able to show that the state in ques- 
tion is essentially one of reverie, in which the voluntary control over 
the current of thought is entirely suspended, the individual being 
for the time (so to speak) a mere thinking automaton, the whole course 
of whose ideas is determinable by suggestions operating from with~ 
out. The ‘ biologized’ individual cannot get rid of any notion with 
which he thus becomes possessed, by any effort of his own; because 
the abeyance of his voluntary power alike prevents him from directing 
the current of his thoughts into another channel, and from having 
recourse to his ordinary experience for the correction of its fallacies ; 
and so long as he is under its domination, all his conversation and 
actions are nothing else than an expression of it. A condition very 
No. 10, 
