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HYPNOTISM AND ITS PHENOMENA.. 



BY P. H. BRYCE, M. A., M. B.,»L. R. C. P. & S. Edin. 



(Read before the Institute on the 11th Ma<xh, 1882.) 



In choosing this subject upon which to base some remarks, I feel' 1 

 how imperfectly anything I maj r say can serve to convey to you any 

 adequate idea of the strange series of phenomena attendant upon the 

 hypnotic state. My excuse, however, for choosing it must be given 

 in the fact that some months ago a patient came under my charge, 

 after having passed through the hands of several physicians, who had 

 given different opinions as to the real nature of her malady. Seeing 

 her for the first time, I was at once struck by the similarity of her 

 condition and appearance to certain patients I bad been accustomed 

 to see in Professor Charcot's wards in the Hospice de Salpe*triere in 

 Pai'is. 



Her lower limbs were found in a condition of tonic rigidity, while 

 various clonic contractures were taking place in various other sets of 

 muscles. With the ophthalmoscope I endeavored to make out the 

 vascular state of the retina, but was through her movements unable 

 to do so. To perfect, however, my diagnosis I tried the hypnotizing 

 experiment, and in a short time she had passed into a profound 

 slumber. After she had so passed into a slumber I raised an eyelid, 

 thus allowing light to strike upon the eye, when I found that a state- 

 of complete cataleptic rigidity had seized upon that side of the body. 

 My diagnosis was finally made beyond doubt when I found that 

 the slightest pressure over the ovaries, after she was again awake, 

 proved their state of extreme hyperesthesia by inducing an hystero- 

 epileptic attack which was checked by continued firm pressure upon 

 them. Before me was, in very truth, a case of Hystero-epilepsy, 

 precisely similar to those seen in Prof. Charcot's wards, and which 

 have excited the wonder of all scientific men, who have ever had the 

 good fortune, while in Paris, to visit the wards of Salpe"triere. 



From the nature of the case it will be impossible for us to study 

 the phenomena of hypnotism without to. some extent introducing 



