208 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



described and the phenomena produced, and to an endeavor to 

 find out how they were produced, and, as is always important in 

 an inquiry of the sort, in what sort of people they took place. 

 As a result I was able briefly to affirm in the columns of the Times 

 that I found the whole series of performances to be based upon 

 fraud, and that I had succeeded in reproducing the phenomena 

 without employing any occult means or invoking any new powers 

 of mind or body. This statement was welcomed by persons whose 

 opinion I value, and by many of whom the articles in question 

 had been read, as Prof. Tyndall writes, with " disfavor and indeed 

 dismay." I am urged to lose no time in sweeping away this mass 

 of rubbish, and " the disgusting superstitions " which these letters 

 and publications have tended to promote. This I will attempt to do 

 by stating in some detail precisely what the performances at the 

 Charite" are, and removing from them the halo of false science 

 which has rendered them attractive and credible, and has to some 

 extent obscured their demoralizing character. The business of 

 demonstrating the marvels of the new hypnotism has been going 

 on now for upward of twenty years, with very mischievous effects. 

 It has culminated in performances of the patients of Dr. Luys in 

 the wards of one of the greatest and most historically celebrated 

 of the Paris hospitals. The Hospital of La Charite" is a hospital 

 with great traditions, dignified by great names, and still the seat 

 of sound and able clinical instruction by a staff who must, I am 

 sure, feel humiliated at finding the name of the great institution 

 to which they belong becoming thus notorious throughout Europe 

 for its connection with proceedings which they can but view with 

 extreme disfavor. 



In the first place, two patients were presented (who must be 

 among the patients referred to), for they are and have been for 

 some time the main subjects for demonstration at La Charite*. 

 One of these is a man named Mervel, an unhappy being of whom 

 Dr. Luys promised to give me the clinical history, and of whom, 

 briefly, it may be said that he has been all his life a wretched hys- 

 teric, subject to fits, to sleep-walking, and to catalepsy. He has 

 passed through all the phases of this form of extreme nerve dis- 

 order. If he had been let alone, as he would have been in this 

 country, or treated to a sound course of tonics, cold water (inter- 

 nally and externally), and field labor, he might have lived a more 

 healthy life. He is now a miserable object, trained to all the 

 tricks and the pathological aptitudes for simulation of a highly 

 trained hypnotic, and on him were demonstrated phenomena 

 which might indeed be " marvels " if they were not almost wholly 

 frauds. I will run rapidly over a series of this man's perform- 

 ances as they were shown to me in the wards by Dr. Luys in the 

 presence of observers, and I will presently add some of the other 



