62 FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



wizards, and their followers to draw in their horns and 

 disappear. The germ, however, remained, and reappears 

 in various forms to-day. 



Thirty years ago some of the doctors in Paris believed 

 that a small disc of gold, or copper, or of silver, laid 

 flat on the arm could produce an absence of sensation 

 in the arm, and that whilst one person could be thus 

 affected by one metal another person would respond 

 only to another metal, according to a supposed " sym- 

 pathy" or special affinity of the nervous system for 

 this or that metal. This astonishing doctrine was 

 thought to be proved by certain experiments made with 

 the curiously " nervous " (hysterical) women who frequent 

 the Salpetriere Hospital as out-patients. That the loss 

 of sensation, which was real enough, was due to what is 

 called " suggestion " that is to say, a belief on the 

 part of the patient that such would be the case, because 

 the doctor said it would and had nothing to do with 

 one metal or another, was subsequently proved by 

 making use of wooden discs in place of metallic ones, 

 the patient being led to suppose that a disc of metal of 

 the kind with which she believed herself " sympathetic " 

 was being applied. Sensation disappeared just as 

 readily as when a special metallic disc was used. 



The old hypothesis of the influence of a magnet on 

 the human body was at this time revived, and Charcofs 

 pupils found that when a susceptible female patient 

 held in the hand a bar of iron surrounded by a coil of 

 copper wire leading to a chemical electric cell or battery 

 nothing happened so long as the connection was broken. 

 But as soon as the wire was connected so as to set up an 

 electric current and to make the bar of iron into a 

 magnet, the hand and arm (up to the shoulder) of the 

 young woman holding the bar, lost all sensation. She 

 was not allowed to see her hand and arm, and was 

 apparently quite unconscious of the thrusting of large 

 carpet-needles into, and even through, them, though as 



