ARTIFICIAL SOMNAMBULISM. 195 



In like manner, the will may be directed so entirely to 

 the operations necessary for the performances of difficult 

 feats, that the hypnotised or somnambulistic subject may be 

 able to accomplish what in his ordinary condition would be 

 impossible or even utterly appalling to him. Thus sleep- 

 walkers (whose condition precisely resembles that of the 

 artificially hypnotised, except that the suggestions they 

 experience come from contact with inanimate objects, instead 

 of being aroused by the actions of another person) ' can 

 clamber walls and roofs, traverse narrow planks, step firmly 

 along high parapets, and perform other feats which they 

 would shrink from attempting in their waking state/ 

 This is simply, as Dr. Carpenter points out, because they 

 are not distracted by the sense of danger which their vision 

 would call up, from concentrating their exclusive attention 

 on the guidance afforded by their muscular sense/ 



But the most remarkable and suggestive of all the facts 

 known respecting hypnotism is the influence which can by 

 its means be brought to bear upon special parts or functions 

 of the body. We know that imagination will hasten or retard 

 certain processes commonly regarded as involuntary (indeed, 

 the influence of imagination is itself in great degree involun- 

 tary). We know further that in some cases imagination will 

 do much more than this, as in the familiar cases of the dis- 

 appearance of warts under the supposed influence of charms, 

 the cure of scrofula at a touch, and hundreds of well-attested 

 cases of so-called miraculous cures. But although the 

 actual cases of the curative influence obtained over hypno- 

 tised patients may not be in reality more striking than some 

 of these, yet they are more suggestive at any rate to ordinary 

 minds, because they are known not to be 'the result of any 

 charm or miraculous interference, but to be due to simply 

 natural processes initiated by natural though unfamiliar 

 means. 



Take, for instance, such a case as the following, related 

 by Dr. Carpenter (who has himself witnessed many remark- 

 able cases of hypnotic cure) : ' A female relative of Mr. 



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