HYPNOTISM AND ITS PHENOMENA. 71 
placed these hypotheses in the region of verified facts.” How incon- 
ceivably impressible is the nerve system to influences, seems to be 
further substantiated trom recent experiments by Jaeger, so wholly 
new, and, if true, so remarkable that I cannot refrain from a brief 
reference. ‘To use his own words concerning his experiments with 
the chronoscope, he says, with reference to neural analysis :—‘‘ My 
discovery relates chiefly to the yemeingefihl (collective-feeling, 
emotions), which by physiologists is distinctly separated from the 
perception by the senses (the philological difference between soul 
and mind corresponds exactly to this physiological difterence). The 
essential peculiarity of the emotions is that the accompanying func- 
tional changes are not limited only to a few anatomical parts of the 
body, but concern ali parts of its muscles, nerves, glands, &e. In 
other words emotion is a condition of the whole body. Hence it 
follows that not only the sensory nerves undergo a change, but also 
the muscuiar or (7. e., motor) nerves. That which is changed is the 
nervous excitability, and that which produces these changes are 
soluble substances which enter into the liquids of the body, and 
amongst which the volatile ones (odorous) produce the greatest effects. 
The changes of excitability are indicated by the motor nerves as a 
quantitative index of the conductibility of these nerves for percep- 
tious. Thus we are enabled graphically to illustrate the peculiarity 
of the emotions by registering an involuntary movement, viz., that of 
the heart, since every such substance entering the system affects the 
rhythm of heart and pulse, and may be measured by the sphygmo- 
graph. Thus what the nerve of smell, smells, nerve of taste, tastes, 
and nerve of sight, sees, are all registered by the muscle nerve. He 
then gives diagrams of sphygmographic tracings of curves of joy 
(Jargonelle pears). of anger (rancid butter), of nausea (bad drinking 
water, &.). Now, allowing that there is a basis of fact underlying 
what to many may seem fanciful theorizing, we further see how im- 
pressible is the nervous system, as shown time and again by Charcot’s 
method for ending the hypnotic state by simply a puff of breath 
upon the face of the patient. 
From these extended remarks, then, it would seem as if we have 
something like a definite explanation possible of the causation of the 
hypnotic state, which we miay describe as at least a functional patho- 
logical state, having its near analogue physiologically in sleep, but 
with several additional phenomena superadded; and of all these the 
