CHAP. xvn. HYPNOTISM AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 209 



and in publishing the results of his experiments. He 

 was, however, soon justified in the eyes of all the more 

 honest members of the profession by the publication of 

 so many cases of painless operations as to compel their 

 acceptance as facts ; 1 while he was supported by Dr. 

 Esdaile, who gave an account of more than 300 opera- 

 tions performed by himself and other surgeons in the 

 hospitals of Calcutta, which were confirmed by a com- 

 mission appointed to inquire into them by the Bengal 

 Government, and by the Governor-General himself. 

 The reports of these cases showed that the patients were 

 equally subject to the charge of imposition because they 

 did not exhibit reflex-action in the opposite limb; and 

 Dr. Elliotson made this point the subject of some justi- 

 fiable ridicule. He says: "It is really lamentable to 

 know that this Asiatic practised imposition as boldly as 

 the female in Europe. The Indian was convicted 

 through the self-same piece of ignorance. He too was 

 unaware that he ought to have moved his right elbow- 

 joint, if he felt nothing while his left was being cut off; 

 and so he did not stir it. The dark races are just as 

 wicked and just as ignorant of physiology as the white." 

 The facts, however, accumulated so rapidly and were 

 so well attested, that a few years later Dr. Noble, Sir 

 John Forbes, and Dr. W. B. Carpenter accepted them; 

 thus admitting that the great men who denied them were 

 wholly in the wrong, and that they had displayed igno- 

 rance and prejudice in their accusations of imposture and 

 bad faith. But just when the great importance of mes- 



" 1 Numerous Cases of Surgical Operations without Pain in the 

 Mesmermic State," by John Elliotson, M. D., F. R. S., London, 1843. 



