196 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



though they were the rarest delicacies ; the hypnotic state is also 

 attended by " analgesia " or freedom from pain, and serves as an 

 effective anodyne in dental and surgical operations ; but we can 

 recall no well-authenticated case in which it has rendered the hu- 

 man body incombustible. The hypnotizer can prevent the sub- 

 ject of his experiment from feeling the surgeon's knife, or cause 

 him to regard the cutting as an agreeable sensation, but we are 

 not aware that he is able to make the flesh impenetrable to the 

 scalpel, although it is possible for him, as Donato has shown, to 

 thrust sharp instruments into the arm of a hypnotized person 

 without drawing blood or leaving a visible wound. By hypnotic 

 suggestion a man may believe himself to be a dog, a wolf, or any 

 other animal, and act accordingly; and this imaginary meta- 

 morphosis may perhaps explain the supposed existence of were- 

 wolves. In like manner, pure water may produce an intoxicating 

 effect, while, on the contrary, alcohol ceases to inebriate ; and a 

 simple piece of paper placed on the skin may raise a blister, al- 

 though the strongest irritant fails to do so. Here we have to deal 

 with enigmas of the physical and psychical organization, hitherto 

 unsuspected, the study of which opens up a wide and fruitful field 

 for research. 



THE PHENOMENA OF DEATH IN BATTLE. 



BY GEOEGE L. K1LMEB. 



IN an article printed in the Monthly for June, 1892, 1 presented 

 some of the phenomena of the soldier's first actions under a 

 death-hurt. A field for investigation lying just beyond that as 

 I infer from the incomplete records and deductions offered by 

 men of science is that of the phenomena of death itself. In a 

 casual way I stated in my paper that the symptoms attending 

 death in battle might, in certain cases, be determined by the ap- 

 pearances of the bodies, and cited a remarkable scene at Antie- 

 tam, where dead Confederates in one place, to the number of sev- 

 eral hundred, seemed to have been killed instantly, and to have 

 retained in death something of the last attitudes of their combat- 

 ive life. After my manuscript had been given to the editor, my 

 attention was called to a brief discussion of this question in a 

 sketch by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, in the Century for February, 

 1892. The views of Dr. Mitchell are not openly declared in his 

 Century article, but he quotes, on the lips of fictitious characters, 

 the opinions of Generals Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan, and re- 

 fers to Dr. J. H. Brinton, an army surgeon, who is on record as a 

 very positive witness in this matter. General Sherman, accord- 

 ing to Dr. Mitchell, told the story of a soldier killed by a bullet in 



