HYPNOTISM AND ITS PHENOMENA. 71 



placed these hypotheses in the region of verified facts." How incon- 

 ceivably impressible is the nerve system to influences, seems to be 

 further substantiated I'rom recent experiments by Jaeger, so wholly 

 new, and, if true, so remarkable that I cannot refrain from a brief 

 reference. To use his own words concerning his experiments with 

 the chronoscope, he says, with reference to neural analysis : — " My 

 discovery relates chiefly to the yemeinge/uhl (collective-feeling, 

 ■emotions), which by physiologists is distinctly separated from the 

 perception by the senses (the philological difference between soul 

 and mind corresponds exactly to this physiological difference). The 

 essential peculiarity of the emotions is that the accompanying func- 

 tional changes are not limited only to a few anatomical parts of the 

 body, but concern all parts of its muscles, nerves, glands, &c. In 

 other words emotion is a condition of the whole body. Hence it 

 follows that not only the sensory nerves undergo a change, but also 

 the muscular or (i. e., motor) nerves. That which is changed is the 

 nervous excitability, and that which produces these changes are 

 soluble substances which enter into the liquids of the body, and 

 amongst which the volatile ones (odorous) produce the greatest effects. 

 The changes of excitability are indicated by the motor nerves as a 

 quantitative index of the conductibility of these nerves for percep- 

 tions. Thus we are enabled graphically to illustrate the peculiarity 

 of the emotions by registering an involuntary movement, viz., that of 

 the heart, since every such substance entering the system affects the 

 rhythm of heart and pulse, and may be measured by the sphygmo- 

 graph. Thus what the nerve of smell, smells, nerve of taste, tastes, 

 and nerve of sight, sees, are all registered by the muscle nerve. He 

 then gives diagrams of sphygmographic tracings of curves of joy 

 (Jargonelle pears), of anger (rancid butter), of nausea (bad drinking 

 water, &c. ). Now, allowing that there is a basis of fact underlying 

 what to many may seem fanciful theorizing, we further see how im- 

 pressible is the nervous system, as shown time and again by Charcot's 

 method for ending the hypnotic state by simply a puff of breath 

 upon the face of the patient. 



From these extended remarks, then, it would seem as if we have 

 something like a definite explanation possible of the causation of the 

 hypnotic state, which we may describe as at least a functional patho- 

 logical state, having its near analogue physiologically in sleep, but 

 with several additional phenomena superadded; and of all these the 



