THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT. 209 



performances of other patients and trained subjects of Dr. Lnys 

 who have differing aptitudes and a various repertoire. The man 

 was brought in from the waiting-room and put in an arm-chair ; a 

 finger held up before his eyes sufficed to plunge him into induced 

 sleep. This was clearly not simulated, and in a highly trained 

 subject is exceedingly common. The eyelids were then lifted, and 

 a little performance was gone through, which is described in the 

 programme set out in Dr. Luys's Legons Cliniques as the prise 

 du regard. A finger is held before him ; he gazes at it, sits bolt 

 upright, and follows it as though fascinated around the room. 

 This is, of course, a very ordinary performance, and is only, so to 

 speak, the lever de rideau. He is taken back to his chair, and 

 then begins the second performance. He is shown a magnetic 

 bar, and here the true stage play begins, as it does in so many of 

 these mesmeric performances, with the utterly irrelevant introduc- 

 tion of the apparatus of magnetism. He sees now from one pole 

 of the magnet the " odic " effluvia, the blue flames, which are famil- 

 iar to the readers of Reichenbach. He is delighted with them ; 

 he caresses the bar like a child with a toy ; he follows it all over 

 the place, and when the opposite pole of the magnet is presented 

 to him, he is struck with horror at the red flames which issue 

 from it, and shows every sign of fear and disgust. There are in- 

 finite variations of this marvel. Thus, a photograph of the poles 

 of a magnet affects him in a similar way, no matter how old the 

 photograph. On the face of Dr. Luys he sees red flames proceeding 

 from the eyes and nostrils on one side of the face and blue flames 

 on the other, which is supposed to coincide with the duality of 

 the nerve-centers of the brain and the opposite polarity of the two 

 sides of the body — puerile deductions which bear upon their face 

 ignorant credulity, but which are supposed to derive evidential 

 strength from these heightenings of the visual perception of this 

 individual and the other performers of the same school. For 

 these subjects quickly learn how to pretend to see the same thing ; 

 and Colonel de Rochas d'Aiglun, the administrateur of the Poly- 

 technic School in Paris, whom Dr. Luys was good enough to in- 

 troduce to me, has subjects who have made for him also a con- 

 siderable series of drawings showing these flames playing about 

 magnets and parts of magnets, surrounding crystals, and irradiat- 

 ing the features of himself and others. One patient has done me 

 the honor of making my portrait with all its magnetic accompani- 

 ments. To the heightened visual perception of these ladies and 

 gentlemen it seems that from one side of my face issues a sheet of 

 lambent blue flame, and my eyes dart rays of blue fire ; the other 

 side is equally luminous with red flame, while down the middle 

 of my face is a bright streak of yellow. Mervel drew this inter- 

 esting picture, and the others confirmed it ; and as this was done 



TOL. XLIII. 15 



