524 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



From the social point of view these- new states of instantaneous loss of con- 

 sciousness into which hypnotic or merely fascinated subjects may be made to pass 

 deserve to be considered with lively interest. As I shall have to explain to you 

 later, the individual in these novel conditions no longer belongs to himself; he is 

 surrendered, an inert being, to the enterprise of those who surround him. Atone 

 moment, in the passive stage in this condition of lethargy or of catalepsy, he is ab- 

 solutely defenseless and exposed to any criminal attempt on the part of those who 

 surround him. He can be poisoned and mutilated. Where a woman is concerned, 

 she may be violated and even infected with syphilis, of which I have recently ob- 

 served a painful example in my practice. She may become a mother without any 

 trace existing of a criminal assault, and without the patient having the smallest 

 recollection of what has passed after she has awakened. Sometimes, in the active 

 condition, the state of lucid somnambulism, and even in the condition of simple 

 fascination, the subject may be exposed to the influence of suggestions of the most 

 varied kind on the part of the person directing his actions. He may be induced 

 to become a homicide, an incendiary, or suicide, and all these impulses deposited 

 in his brain during sleep become forces stored up silently, which will burst forth 

 at a given moment with the precision, accnracy of performance, and automatic 

 impetuosity of acts performed by the really insane. GentlemeD, bear this well in 

 mind; all these acts, all these phenomena unconsciously accomplished are no mere 

 vague apprehensions and vain suppositions; they are real facts which you may 

 meet with this very day in ordinary life. They are apt to develop, and to appear 

 around you and before you in the most inexplicable manner. 



Of course the question will be asked, Are the practical uses or 

 the applications of the artificial sleep (the induction of which is 

 the residuum of this psychological puddle) of such value as to 

 counterbalance its evils ? As to its surgical uses, which at first 

 sight are the most obvious, Luys himself says : 



At the fir.^t appearance of hypnotism, when Braid had shown that hypnotized 

 subjects are insensitive to external stimuli, surgeons conceived the idea of using 

 this method for the performance of certain operations. In fact, some among 

 them had the opportunity of testing it with a certain amount of advantage. But 

 since the wonderful discovery of chloroform (and, it might be added, of local 

 anaesthesia by cocaine, the vaporization of ether, etc.) these attempts, so far as 

 concern surgical anaesthesia, have been justly abandoned. At the present time 

 the application of hypnotism to surgical therapeutics is of absolutely no account, 

 since it concerns only a small number of persons — namely, the class of hypnotiz- 

 able subjects.* 



In the domain of medicine M. Luys is naturally more hopeful 

 and more affirmative ; but obviously inspires less confidence 

 than his calmer and more critical colleagues at the Salpetriere, 

 who have abstained from following him in these new develop- 

 ments and who regard them with disfavor and distrust. To me, 

 the so-called medical cures by hypnotism seem to rank in pre- 

 cisely the same class as those of the faith-curer. 



* Applications therapeutiques de PHypnotisme. Par le Dr. J. Luys. Paris : Imprime- 

 rie F. Leve, 17 Rue Cassette, 1889. 



