March 4, 1887.] 



BcmNG:E. 



221 



the effect of impulsive mania ; that is, seclusion 

 in a criminal asylum for an indefinite period until 

 a complete cure is established, or until the patient 

 passes into some other condition that renders a 

 repetition 'of the act an absolute improbability. 

 Campili thinks that it would be difficult to apply 

 the same punishment to an hypnotic criminal, 

 since he did not commit the crime of his own ac- 

 cord but under the influence of a third person, 

 who is the true culprit : the hypnotic subject is 

 simply an instrument of crime in the hands of the 

 hypnotizer the same as a revolver or a knife, and 

 it is he who ought to bear the responsibility of the 

 act. This is a subtle distinction. The hypnotic 

 subject, like the epileptic, is a dangerous person, 

 a veritable malade, since he allows a very simple 

 manoeuvre to make him commit a crime. It is 

 absolutely necessary to put him beyond the possi- 

 bility of doing harm. Moreover, it is probable 

 that the dread of punishment exercises a restrain- 

 ing influence over the minds of those who 

 submit voluntarily to be hypnotized : in fact, 

 Binet holds, many persons who are slightly hyp- 

 notizable may resist hypnotization successfully, 

 and ought to be responsible for consenting to sub- 

 mit themselves to the experiment. There is the 

 strongest reason for this conclusion if the subject 

 knows in advance, before going to sleep, that a 

 criminal suggestion will be given to him. There 

 is one curious hypothesis that Campili has not an- 

 ticipated, and one which well-known facts render 

 extremely probable, and th:it is that we may find 

 some day in some band of thieves or assassins a 

 hypnotic subject who of his own accord yields 

 himself to criminal suggestions : the usefulness of 

 hypnotic suggestion under such circumstances is 

 easily understood, for those who are under the 

 control of a suggestion have more audacity, more 

 courage, and even more intelligence, than when 

 they act of their own accord. There are patients 

 who, dreading to be put to sleep by some one that 

 they dislike, offer to the hypnotic suggestion of 

 one of their friends a power of resistance that 

 they do not have naturally. Others, wishing to 

 accomplish some act, and fearing that their cour- 

 age will fail at the last moment, suggest them- 

 selves the act that they wish to do. In these cir- 

 cumstances the subject should be punished as the 

 principal and the hypnotizer only as an accom- 

 plice. 



The Paris correspondent of the Medical record 

 writes last December that an epidemic of hyp- 

 notism prevails there, and he paints the pi'evailing 

 distemper in exceedingly dark colors. Every 

 steamer brings some new book on hypnotism or 

 mental suggestion, and the amount of literature 

 that has accumulated within the past year is enor- 



mous. Public exhibitions of hypnotism have been 

 interdicted in Germany, Italy, and Austria. This 

 is but one side of the shield, however, and bril- 

 liant therapeutical results have been reported by 

 the skilled coterie of French physicians that has 

 advanced our knowledge of hypnotism so much 

 within the past few years. Yet on the whole, 

 perhaps, it is a matter for congratulation that the 

 more stolid American mind has been little affected 

 by hypnotism up to this time, not even to the 

 extent of furnishing sufficient subjects for the 

 Society for psychical research. It may be that 

 the ' mind-cure ' is our cross, and at any rate the 

 connection between this and hypnotism offeis a 

 promising field to the investigator. 



William Noyes. 



PALEOLITHIC MAN IN LONDON AND 

 ITS NEIGHBORHOOD. 



Ever since Dr. John Evans, in the year 1860 

 {Archeologia, xxxviii. 301), showed that the ob- 

 ject was a genuine paleolithic implement of the 

 Chellean type, which, under the disguise of *a 

 British weapon found with elephant's tooth near 

 Gray's Inn Lane,' had been lying for years unno- 

 ticed in the British museum, a peculiar interest 

 for prehistoric archeologists has attached to the 

 quaternary gravels of the valley of the Thames. 

 This noteworthy implement seems to have been dis- 

 covered some time at the close of the seventeenth 

 century, and an account of it, illustrated by a rude 

 engraving, had been printed so early as 1715. Con- 

 sequently the city of London may lay claim to be 

 the site of the first recorded discovery of the earli- 

 est implements of mankind. Similar discoveries 

 have continued to be made in different parts of 

 the valley of the Thames, especially in that por- 

 tion of it lying within the county of Middlesex. 

 Mr. Worthington G. Smith, in particular, pub- 

 lished in the Journal of the anthropological insti- 

 tute accounts of finding paleolithic implements in 

 the little tributary valleys of the Lea and the 

 Brent. But in 1883, after five years of patient 

 research, he made known the interesting discov- 

 ery (published in the same journal, xiii. 357) of a 

 ' paleolithic floor at North-east London.' He 

 showed that a stratum of worked flints of the 

 paleolithic age lay spread for many miles a few 

 feet beneath the present surface of the ground. 

 The majority of the implements contained in it 

 were found at the height of about seventy- five 

 feet above the present level of the Thames. " As 

 a rule," he says, "every implement and flake is as 

 Paleolithic man in north-west Middlesex. The evidence 

 of his existence and the physical conditions under which he 

 lived at Ealing, and its neighborhood, etc. By John Allen 

 Bkown. London, Macmillan. 



