CHARCOT AND HYPNOTISM 61 



his assistants were making very interesting experiments 

 on hypnotism. Charcot allowed great latitude to the 

 young doctors who worked with him. They initiated 

 and carried through very wild "exploratory" experi- 

 ments on this difficult subject. Charcot did not dis- 

 courage them, but did not accept their results unless 

 established by unassailable evidence, although his views 

 were absurdly misrepresented by the newspapers and 

 wondermongers of the day. 



At this time there had been a revival of the ancient 

 and fanciful doctrine of " metallic sympathies," which 

 flourished a hundred years ago, and was even then but 

 a revival of the strange fancies as to "sympathetic 

 powders," which were brought before the Royal Society 

 by Sir Kenelm Digby at one of its first meetings, in 

 1660. In the journal-book of the Royal Society of 

 June 5 of that year, we read, " Magnetical cures were 

 then discoursed of. Sir Gilbert Talbot promised to 

 bring in what he knew of sympatheticall cures. Those 

 that had any powder of sympathy were desired to bring 

 some of it at the next meeting. Sir Kenelm Digby 

 related that the calcined powder of toades reverberated, 

 applyed in bagges upon the stomach of a pestiferate 

 body, cures it by several applications." The belief in 

 sympathetic powders and metals was a last survival of 

 the mediaeval doctrine of " signatures," itself a form of 

 the fetish still practised by African witch-doctors, and 

 directly connected with the universal system of magic 

 and witchcraft of European as well as of more remote 

 populations. To this day, such beliefs lie close beneath 

 the thin crust of modern knowledge and civilisation, 

 even in England, treasured in obscure tradition and 

 ready to burst forth in grotesque revivals in all classes 

 of society. The Royal Society put many of these 

 reputed mechanisms of witchcraft and magic to the 

 test, and by showing their failure to produce the effects 

 attributed to them, helped greatly to cause witches, 



