728 
From the Dehateahle Land. 
[December, 
fancy is due to a rational conviction, whilst in most, if not 
all cases, it is an influence not depending upon reason but 
upon emotion. To give instances would be out of the ques- 
tion in an organ like the “ Journal of Science,” which has 
nothing to do with seCts and parties. 
« Charcot s hypnotism differs from the primitive 
eleCtro-biology ” in that the subject executes the com- 
mands or suggestions of the operator, not during trance, but 
in what he supposes to be a normal state. It agrees with 
hypnotism in the control of the operator over the subject, 
and in the circumstance that out of a number of persons 
experimented upon but few are found distinctly susceptible, 
those most susceptible are generally more or less of a hys- 
terical temperament. 
This circumstance links the above-mentioned phenomena 
to a class of results obtained by Drs. Bourru and Burot, of 
the Naval Medical College of Rochefort, and recently 
descnbed by them at the Grenoble meeting of the French 
Association for the Advancement of Science. They have 
ound that, upon hysterical subjects at least, various medi- 
cines aCt not only without being swallowed, but even with- 
out being touched. We are thus reminded of some of the 
most ridiculed results of the late Baron Reichenbach. One 
oi the subjects ot these experiments was a young man, of 
feeble constitution, admitted at the Rochefort Hospital on 
March 27th, and who has since been attacked with a series 
o hystero-epileptic crises, upon which he became paralysed 
and insensible on the whole right side of the body. 
In presence of this paralysis, the hysterical character of 
which was not doubtful, the first care of the observers was 
to try the action of metals. Zinc, copper, platinum, and 
iron were distinctly active, though in unequal degrees. The 
effects of gold were particularly striking. Not oply did any 
aiticle of gold, on contact with the skin, produce an into- 
lerable burning, but even at a distance of 10 or 15 centimetres 
the burning was felt, through the clothing and through the 
closed hand of the operator. The mercury in the bulb of a 
thermometer, if brought near his skin, but without contact 
occasioned burnings, convulsions, and attracted the nearest 
limb. Chloride of gold, in a stoppered bottle, if brought 
within a few centimetres of the man’s body, produced 
effects very hke those of metallic gold. On bringing near 
the subject a crystal of potassium iodide, there resulted 
yawning and repeated sneezing. There was thus the well- 
known physiological aCtion of this salt in irritating the 
mucous membrane of the nose. The observers were still 
