HYPNOTISM AND ITS PHENOMENA, 
BY P. H. BRYCE, M.A., M.B., L.R.C. P. & S. Epin. 
(Read before the Institute on the 11th March, 1882.) 
In choosing this subject upon which to base some remarks, I feel 
how imperfectly anything I may say can serve to convey to you any 
adequate idea of the strange series of phenomena attendant upon the 
hypnotic state. My excuse, however, for choosing it must be given 
in the fact that some months ago a patient came under my charge, 
after having passed through the hands of several physicians, who had 
given different opinions as to the real nature of her malady. Seeing 
her for the first time, I was at once struck by the similarity of her 
condition and appearance to certain patients I had been accustomed 
to see in Professor Charcot’s wards in the Hospice de Salpétriére in 
Paris. 
Her lower limbs were found in a condition of tonic rigidity, while 
various clonic contractures were taking place in various other sets of 
muscles. With the ophthalmoscope [ endeavored to make out the 
vascular state of the retina, but was through her movements unable 
to do so. To perfect, however, my diagnosis I tried the hypnotizing 
experiment, and in a short time she had passed into a profound 
slumber. After she had so passed into a slumber I raised an eyelid, 
thus allowing light to strike upon the eye, when I found that a state 
of complete cataleptic rigidity had seized upon that side of the body. 
My diagnosis was finally made beyond doubt when I found that 
the slightest pressure over the ovaries, after she was again awake, 
proved their state of extreme hyperesthesia by inducing an hystero- 
epileptic attack which was checked by continued firm pressure upon 
them. Before me was, in very truth, a case of Hystero-epilepsy, 
precisely similar to those seen in Prof. Charcot’s wards, and which 
have excited the wonder of all scientific men, who have ever had the 
good fortune, while in Paris, to visit the wards of Salpétriére. 
From the nature of the case it will be impossible for us to study 
the phenomena of hypnotism without to some extent introducing 
