178 ROUGH WAYS MADE SMOOTH. 



ARTIFICIAL SOMNAMBULISM. 



RATHER more than a quarter of a century ago two Ameri- 

 cans visited London, who called themselves professors of 

 Electro- Biology, and claimed the power of 'subjugating 

 the most determined wills, paralysing the strongest muscles, 

 preventing the evidence of the senses, destroying the 

 memory of the most familiar events or of the most recent 

 occurrences, inducing obedience to any command, and 

 making an individual believe himself transformed into any 

 one else.' All this and more was to be effected, they said, 

 by the action of a small disc of zinc and copper held in the 

 hand of the ' subject/ and steadily gazed at by him, ' so as 

 to concentrate the electro-magnetic action.' The preten- 

 sions of these professors received before long a shock as 

 decisive as that which overthrew the credit of the professors 

 of animal magnetism when Haygarth and Falconer success- 

 fully substituted wooden tractors for the metallic tractors 

 which had been supposed to convey the magnetic fluid. In 

 1851, Mr. Braid, a Scotch surgeon, who had witnessed some 

 of the exhibitions of the electro -biologists, conceived the 

 idea that the phenomena were not due to any special quali- 

 ties possessed by the discs of zinc and copper, but simply to 

 the fixed look of the ' subject ' and the entire abstraction of 

 his attention. The same explanation applied to the so- 

 called ' magnetic passes ' of the mesmerists. The monoto- 

 nous manipulation of the operator produced the same effect 

 as the fixed stare of the ' subject* He showed by his ex- 



