264 Dr. E. Yung on the Errors 



tiflc work, consequently not much inclined to excessive cre- 

 dulity. Of this number only 11 have refused to indicate a 

 card, saying that, notwithstanding all the attention they could 

 give to it, they felt absolutely nothing at any of the cards of 

 the figure, neither the sensation indicated nor any other sen- 

 sation. These 11 persons were men. All the rest experi- 

 enced a sensation. They may be divided into three groups. 



First Group. — 32 persons forewarned that the card sup- 

 posed to be magnetized would be recognized by the fact that, 

 in passing the hand over it, it would produce a shock of vari- 

 able intensity (sensible sometimes only in the tips of the 

 fingers, sometimes in the whole hand, the arm, &c), actually 

 felt the shock. To the question, " Are you quite certain that 

 you have not been the subject of a hallucination?" they 

 answered that they were quite sure that they had felt some- 

 thing. Usually, however, the sensation is not very intense 

 the first time; but if, as already described, the person is re- 

 quested to repeat the experiment when a first trial has con- 

 vinced him of the possibility of recognizing the magnetized 

 card, it is invariably the case that on the second occasion the 

 shock appears to him to be stronger, and its intensity only 

 increases at each repetition of the experiment. 



I have succeeded in exciting the belief in a shock gene- 

 ralized in the whole body in a young woman of twenty. I 

 had myself, in performing the experiment, indicated the card 

 that she had touched in my absence, by pretending to receive 

 a general shock in the arms and legs and simulating the ges- 

 tures which one makes in such a case. When her turn came 

 she started in passing her hand over a certain card which I 

 had not touched any more than the others, and asserted that 

 she had received the shock announced not only in the limbs, 

 but also in the chest. When I told her that the shock could 

 never affect the chest, she replied " that she was quite sure 

 she was not deceiving herself, for that her chest still pained 

 her a little." 



Nine other persons in this group, two of them men, declared 

 that besides the shock they had experienced " a slight oppres- 

 sion," or various sensations, such, for example, as a certain 

 difficulty in moving the fingers. One of them (a lady) whom 

 I had induced to make the experiment at an evening party, 

 told me the next day that, after my departure, she had tried in 

 vain to play the piano, " because her right hand," the one that 

 had felt the imaginary shock, " was as if paralyzed, and was 

 not even yet completely unstiffened." It is to be remarked 

 that these nine persons, although they had never been mag- 

 netized, had all been present at representations given by 

 mesmerizers. 



