210 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in the wards of a hospital and by a patient in a state of "lucid 

 somnambulism/' and of good faith, I suppose I ought to have as- 

 sumed that " there was no room for fraud or imposture." I ven- 

 tured, however, to think otherwise. I took with me on the third 

 occasion a magnet lent me by Dr. Johnson, of London, which had 

 been thoroughly demagnetized by being thrust into the fire, and a 

 series of steel pins which had been variously magnetized in in- 

 verse senses, and I found that the heightened senses of Mervel 

 were quite incapable of distinguishing between the inert magnet, 

 the variously magnetized needles, and the true magnet. I even 

 placed the needles and the magnet in the hands of Dr. Luys and 

 asked him to determine what Mervel saw. He saw always, in reply 

 to Dr. Luys's questions, the orthodox thing. I then gently sug- 

 gested to Dr. Luys that he should try some test experiments and 

 use an electro-magnet, in which he could at will put on and take 

 off the current and try for himself whether the patient did or did 

 not really perceive what he described. I ventured to repeat the 

 same suggestion when Mervel was describing the colored lights he 

 saw around the poles of a f aradic machine. My suggestions, how- 

 ever, were not favorably received ; and Dr. Luys observed that he 

 must be allowed to make his experiments in his own way. At 

 these sittings Dr. Sajous, Dr. Lutaud, M. Cremiere, of St. Peters- 

 burg, and others, were present. To end this part of the matter, I 

 should state that I took successively three other subjects of dem- 

 onstration whom Dr. Luys has presented to his classes, and tested 

 still more decisively their pretended powers of distinguishing 

 emanations from the north and south poles of the magnet and see- 

 ing the colored flames of Reichenbach. These subjects were a 

 person named Jeanne, an accomplished impostor, and the most 

 distinguished and highly trained of M. Luys's subjects, whose 

 portrait occurs repeatedly in the illustrations of his lectures, and 

 who describes herself as his 'premier sujet ; a person named 

 Clarice, whose marvelous powers are also much described in the 

 publications of Dr. Luys ; and a patient now in the wards named 

 Marguerite. I tested these subjects repeatedly in the presence 

 sometimes of the gentlemen above named, sometimes of Dr. Oli- 

 vier, of Dr. Meurice, and of others whom I need not at present 

 name. The results were that Mervel, whether sent to sleep by Dr. 

 Luys, or by myself, or by the wardsman, was never really asleep 

 to the extent of not being able to gather verbal and visual sugges- 

 tions as to his course of action, as to what he ought to do and 

 what he ought to see, and that his hysterical or hypnotic slumber 

 did not prevent him from simultaneously carrying on a course 

 of elaborate imposture. When I rapidly displaced the magnetic 

 photographs of Dr. Luys or my own, he blundered over them, but 

 immediately he understood that he was blundering he corrected 



