HYPNOTISM IN ANIMALS. 81 



sleep. Even more ; three persons of the audience fell asleep without 

 Braid's knowledge, after following the given direction of fixing their 

 eyes steadily on some point. 



Braid's experiments, which are designated as the beginning of a 

 scientific investigation of extremely complicated nervous phenomena, 

 did not find at first the esteem and homage due to them, and grad- 

 ually sank into oblivion. This is explained by the fact that they were 

 associated with mesmerism ; and Lafontaine, whose " magnetic " exhi- 

 bitions were the first cause of Braid's investigations, protested, not 

 without some animosity, that " hypnotism," or " Braidism," was iden- 

 tical with his " mesmerism." Braid himself, in the course of his ex- 

 periments, seems to have lost his former scientific force as an investi- 

 gator. Then, in 1848, Mr. Grimes, the American, with his "Electro- 

 Biology," appeared, and took up the intellectual epidemic of mediums 

 and spiritual apparitions, which we witnessed in astonishment, and 

 saw the whole world more or less impressed by it. It was, naturally, 

 then, not at all surprising that hypnotism, or Braidism, remained al- 

 most unknown to science. Only once it attracted scientific attention 

 and interest, and then only for a short time. This was in 1859, in 

 December, after Yelpeau and Broca, two well-known French surgeons 

 of La Societe de Chirurgie, in Paris, caused the most immense sensa- 

 tion by placing twenty-four women in a sleeping condition by Braid's 

 method, and then performing surgical operations without causing them 

 the slightest pain. 



Then much was said in the journals about "hypnotism" in hens, 

 the description of which had already been found in one of Father 

 Kircher's works. Although characteristic enough for those days, yet, 

 to my knowledge, no one has been much impressed by the investiga- 

 tion of Kircher's experimentum mirabile, for it treats of a real state 

 of hypnotism ; and, with animals, every one feels safe from all thoughts 

 of deception, but yet can bring into application all physiological means 

 of investigation, in order to penetrate the mysteries of the phenomena. 

 This proof of the actual appearance of hypnotism in animals is the 

 scientific result of my above-communicated observations and experi- 

 ments, which I intend to continue upon mammals, on which I have 

 not yet experimented. 



These, however, have still another interest for us. They have 

 strikingly demonstrated how difficult it is to obtain actual facts from 

 " events viewed unequally." They have still further shown us what 

 insight, what strength of demonstration, and sharpness of criticism, 

 scientific investigations demand ; and, finally, they have made known 

 to every discerning person how little weight should be attached to the 

 reports of the most honorable and upright people, when these people 

 are not entirely penetrated with the idea of the exact nature of the 

 investigation. 



This never-to-be-neglected foresight, in the estimation of reports 

 VOL. iv. — 6 



