202 ROUGH WAYS MADE SMOOTH. 



ceptibility, he requested and received permission to test this 

 quality in her. In one of the usual ways he ' magnetised ' 

 her, and having so far satisfied himself, he ' demagnetised ' 

 her. He next proceeded to ' hypnotise ' her, adopting Mr. 

 Braid's method of directing the stare at a fixed point. ' The 

 result varied in no respect from that which had taken place 

 in the foregoing experiment ; the duration of the process was 

 the same, and its intensity of effect neither greater nor less.' 

 * De-hypnotisation ' again restored the young lady to herself. 

 'And now/ says Dr. Noble, 'we requested our patient to 

 rest quietly at the fire-place, to think of just what she liked, 

 and to look where she pleased, excepting at ourselves, who 

 retreated behind her chair, saying that a new mode was 

 about to be tried, and that her turning round would disturb 

 the process. We very composedly took up a volume which 

 lay upon a table, and amused ourselves with it for about five 

 minutes, when on raising our eyes, we could see by the 

 excited features of other members of the party that the 

 young lady was once more magnetised. We were informed 

 by those who had attentively watched her during the progress 

 of our little experiment, that all had been in every respect 

 just as before. The lady herself, before she was undeceived, 

 expressed a distinct consciousness of having felt our unseen 

 passes streaming down the neck? 



In a similar way, Mr. Bertrand, who was the first (Dr. 

 Carpenter tells us) to undertake a really scientific investiga- 

 tion of the phenomena of mesmerism, proved that the sup- 

 posed effect of a magnetised letter from him to a female 

 somnambule was entirely the work of her own lively imagina- 

 tion. He magnetised a letter first, which on receipt was 

 placed at his suggestion upon the epigastrium of the patient, 

 who was thrown into the magnetic sleep with all the 

 customary phenomena. He then wrote another letter, which 

 he did not magnetise, and again the same effect was pro- 

 duced. Lastly he set about an experiment which should 

 determine the real state of the case. * I asked one of my 

 friends,' he says, * to write a few lines in my place, and to 



