THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT. 213 



the patients of Dr. Luys tallies with the negative results of Peter- 

 son and Kennelly, but it is perhaps too much to hope that it will 

 put an end to the habitual exploitation of magnetic superstitions 

 in this connection. 



I come now to another series of phenomena which various emi- 

 nent journalists have noted as illustrations of what the Times cor- 

 respondent described as a perfectly genuine exhibition, and one 

 which, as he said, in concluding his description of it, " proved that 

 suggestions and impressions can be conveyed from one person to 

 another by mere contact, and even across an intervening space." 

 As he professes to be an impartial and guarded observer, I will 

 quote his report, which, so far as some obvious occurrences are 

 concerned, describes accurately what appears to go on in the ex- 

 travagant folly which they have described so seriously, known as 

 " l'envoutement." This is a title taken from the practices of the 

 middle ages, when the magicians of France and Italy exercised 

 (as the magicians of the far East do now) their powers of sorcery 

 upon a wax image, which, being duly endowed with mystical rela- 

 tionship to a human subject, was pinched, tortured, wasted, or de- 

 stroyed, with corresponding results to the unhappy individual in 

 whose effigy it was made. Here is the modern counterpart in the 

 new mesmerism of which the modern historian gives the explana- 

 tion which I have just quoted : 



There remains, however, one set of recent experiments, which, from their 

 novel and startling character, deserve special attention. I refer to the transfer- 

 ence of sensibility from a hypnotic subject to inanimate objects. I have been for- 

 tunate enough to witness some of these experiments, and will describe what I 

 saw. They were not carried out by Dr. Luys, but by an amateur who attends his 

 clinique. This gentleman had a roughly constructed figure, about a foot high, 

 resembling the human form, and made of gutta percha or some such material, and 

 he experimented with it on a hysterical young woman, one of the hospital pa- 

 tients, and an extremely sensitive subject. She was placed in an arm-chair and 

 hypnotized, and he seated himself immediately opposite in close contact with her, 

 their legs touching, and her hands upon his knees. After some preliminary busi- 

 ness of stroking her arms and so forth, he produced the figure and held it up in 

 front of her, presumably to be charged with her magnetism, for these experiments 

 rest on the magnetic theory. Then he placed it out of her sight and pinched it. 

 Sometimes she appeared to feel it and sometimes she did not, but he was all the 

 time in actual contact with her. Then he held it where she could see it, and this 

 time she obviously suffered acutely whenever he touched the figure and in the 

 place where he touched it, although she did not look at it or seem to observe it. 

 Especially when he touched the sole of the foot, it evidently tickled her oeyond 

 endurance. Then the figure was placed aside on a table out of the sight both of 

 the girl and of the operator, while another put one hand on the operator's back 

 and the other on the image. I was in such a position as to see them all, and 

 whenever the second gentleman touched the figure the girl felt it. Then she was 

 told that she was to feel it just the same after being woke up, and an attempt was 

 made to wake her, bat she was by this time very profoundly affected, and the 



