THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 765 



hand, the operator suggests that the subject is undergoing intense 

 pain, he will instantly take his cue, writhing his body, pressing 

 his hands upon his head or breast, and in all respects behaving 

 as if the suggestion were in accord with the facts. If he is told that 

 he is blind or deaf, he will act as if this were the case. If it is sug- 

 gested that a person actually present is in Timbuctoo, the subject 

 \vill entirely ignore him, will leave him out if told to count the 

 persons in the room, or try to walk through him if asked to move in 

 ihat direction. What is even more curious is that the organic 

 functions of the body are also liable to be influenced by suggestion. 

 A postage-stamp was placed on the skin of a hypnotized person, and 

 it was suggested that it would raise a blister. Next day a blister was 

 -actually found beneath it. The letter K, embroidered on a piece of 

 cloth, was suggested to be red-hot. The left shoulder was then 

 ' branded ' with it, and on the right shoulder appeared a facsimile of 

 the K as if burnt with a hot iron. The secretions can be increased 

 or diminished, subcutaneous haemorrhages, veritable stigmata,*can be 

 caused, and many of the 'miracles' of Lourdes and other shrines, 

 ancient and modern, repeated or surpassed by the aid of hypnotic 

 suggestion. Hypnotism has also been practically employed in the 

 treatment of various diseases, and particularly in functional derange- 

 ments of the nervous system. But care and judgment are necessary 

 on the part of the operator, and although as a rule there is no diffi- 

 culty in putting an end to the condition by a suitable suggestion, it 

 is said that in rare instances grave mischances have occurred. There 

 seems to be no ground for the opinion that women are more easily 

 hypnotized than men. Out of more than a thousand persons, Liebault 

 found only seventeen absolutely refractory. 



Relation of Size of Brain to Intelligence. While it is the case 

 that some men of great ability have had remarkably heavy and richly 

 convoluted brains, it would seem that in general neither great size 

 nor any other obvious anatomical peculiarity of the cerebrum is con- 

 stantly associated with exceptional intellectual power. In the animal 

 kingdom as a whole, there is undoubtedly some relation between 

 -the status of a group and the average brain development within the 

 group. But that this is a relation which is complicated by other 

 circumstances than the mere degree of intelligence is sufficiently 

 -shown by the fact that a mouse has more brain, in proportion to 

 its size, than a man, and thirteen times more than a horse ; while 

 both in the rabbit and sheep the ratio of brain-weight to body- 

 weight is nearly twice as great as in the horse, in the dog only half 

 as great as in the cat, and not very much more than in the donkey. 

 The following tables, too, which illustrate the weight of the brain in 



* I.e., bleeding spots on the skin generally corresponding to the wounds 

 -of Christ. In the well-known case of Louise Latour, which excited great 

 interest in France in 1868, blisters first appeared ; they burst and then 

 there was bleeding from the true skin. The probable explanation is 

 that she concentrated her attention on these parts of her body and 

 so influenced them, perhaps by causing congestion through the vaso- 

 tnotor centre. 



