262 ROUGH WAYS MADE SMOOTH. 



mind is not excited to activity by the stimulus of external 

 impressions, the hypnotised subject appears to be profoundly 

 asleep ; a state of complete torpor, in fact, be ; ng usually the 

 first result of the process just described, and any subsequent 

 manifestation of activity being procurable only by the 

 prompting of the operator. The hypnotised subject, too, 

 rarely opens his eyes ; his bodily movements are usually 

 slow ; his mental operations require a considerable time for 

 their performance ; and there is altogether an appearance 

 of heaviness about him which contrasts strongly with the 

 comparatively wide-awake air of him who has not passed 

 beyond the ordinary biological state.' 



It would not be easy to find an exact parallel to the case 

 of the two-lived boy in any recorded instance of somnam- 

 bulism. In fact, it is to be remembered that recorded in- 

 stances of mental phenomena are all selected for the very 

 reason that they are exceptional, so that it would be un- 

 reasonable to expect them closely to resemble each other. 

 One case, however, may be cited, which in certain points 

 resembles the case of Dr. Brown -Sequard's patient. It 

 occurred within Dr. Carpenter's own experience. A young 

 lady of highly nervous temperament suffered from a long 

 and severe illness, characterised by all the most marked 

 forms of hysterical disorder. In the course of this illness' 

 came a time when she had a succession of somnambulistic 

 seizures. ' The state of somnambulism usually supervened 

 in this case in the waking state, instead of arising, as it more 

 commonly does, out of the conditions of ordinary sleep. In 

 this condition her ideas were at first entirely fixed upon one 

 subject the death of her only brother, which had occurred 

 some years previously. To this brother she had been very 

 strongly attached ; she had nursed him in his last illness ; 

 and it was perhaps the return of the anniversary of his death, 

 about the time when the somnambulism first occurred, that 

 gave to her thoughts that particular direction. She talked 

 constantly of him, retraced all the circumstances of his ill- 

 ness, and was unconscious of anything that was said to her 



