PHRENOPATHY. 399 



direction. If the arm is placed up, there it will stay : but a waft 

 of air will cause it to fall down. Why ? Because it is already up, 

 and the new motive changes the direction. If the arm be down, 

 another waft will raise it. If down, and prevented from moving 

 up, the impression will send it sideways. When the frame is erect, 

 a touch behind in the bend of the knees, will send it into genuflexion, 

 which will at once suggest prayer, as noticed before, &c. 



An interesting question arises : In what does hypnotism differ 

 from mesmerism, and from common sleep ? Are the two former 

 identical ? We think not. We recognize the three as the main 

 trine of sleep, each depending on its first principle. The atom of 

 sleep is diffusion : the mind and body are dissolved in unconscious- 

 ness ; they go off into nothing through the fine powder of infinite 

 variety, and die of no attention j common sleep is impersonal. 

 The unit of hypnotism is intense attention, abstraction, the personal 

 ego pushed to nonentity. The unit of mesmerism is the common 

 state of the patient, caught as he stands, and subjected to the radi- 

 ant ideas of another person : it is mediate ; or both personal and 

 impersonal. Neither sleep nor hypnotism can exist in the presence 

 of a second person, without partaking more or less of mesmerism. 

 The sleep-brain is fluid, the hypnotic brain movable-pointed, and the 

 mesmeric brain elastic. Sleep=influx; hypnotism = efflux ; mes- 

 merism = afflux. 



Patients can produce the hypnotic effects, upon themselves with- 

 out any second party • although a second will oftentimes strengthen 

 the result by his acts or presence ; just as one who stood by, and 

 told you that you were to succeed in a certain work, would nerve 

 your arm with fresh confidence. 



We presume it is evident to the reader, what a power Mr. Braid 

 has methodized and called into play for the treatment of diseases. 

 As a curative agent, hypnotism contains two elements — each valua- 

 ble of its kind: 1. Where it produces trance, it has the benefits 

 of the mesmeric sleep, or furnishes so strong a dose of rest, that 

 many cases are cured by that alone. But 2. The suggestion of 

 ideas of health, tone, duty, hope, which produce dreams influential 

 upon the organization, enables the operator by this means to fulfil 

 the indication of directly ministering to that mind diseased, which 



