22 LIFE AND EXPERIENCES CHAP. 



Dr. Rigby, of that city. My friends used to joke me 

 as a young man about Miss Jane Rigby, and I 

 believed her long since dead. She is now also in her 

 ninetieth year." 



Another family with whom we were intimate was 

 that of Mr. S. D. Darbishire, of Manchester, who 

 lived in Greenheys. There was then a large garden 

 attached to his house, but the whole is now, alas ! 

 covered with small cottages. The third son, Vernon, 

 had suffered, as a boy, from an attack of rheumatic 

 fever, and all his tendons had become so contracted 

 that he could not walk but shuffled about upon the 

 floor. There was practising in Manchester at that time 

 a physician, Dr. Braid, who was one of the first to 

 investigate the subject of mesmerism or, as it is now 

 called, hypnotism and one of his patients was Vernon 

 Darbishire. I often witnessed Vernon being put into 

 the cataleptic state, and the phenomena were very 

 similar to those I observed many years afterwards at 

 the Salp^triere under Charcot. The boy was soon 

 put into a condition of insensibility, and then Braid 

 would extend and flex the tendons without any 

 pain to the patient, though in his ordinary state the 

 pain would have been excruciating. This treatment 

 went on for many months, and ended in his recover- 

 ing to a great extent his powers of locomotion. 



During the trance he certainly performed remarkable 

 feats, some of which can be attributed to a heightened 

 sense of touch. For instance, if one took a handful 

 of silver coins with a few gold ones among them, 

 and told him that gold burnt, and then dropped the 

 coins quickly one after the other into his hand (his 

 eyes being, of course, blinded), the moment a sove- 

 reign touched his palm he let it drop with a cry of 

 pain. More remarkable, however, was the way in 



