394 Notices of Books. [July, 
to such as (like Mr. A. R. Wallace, who has recently expressed 
his full faith in Mr. Lewis’s self asserted powers) are ready to 
accent without question the slenderest evidence of the greatest 
marvels.” (“ Mesmerism, .Spiritualism, &c.,” p. 24.) Now will 
it be believed that this statement, that I “ place full faith in Mr. 
Lewis’s self -asserted powers ,” has not even the shadow of a 
foundation. I know nothing of Mr. Lewis or of his powers, 
self-asserted or otherwise, but what I gain from Prof. Gregory’s 
account of them ; and in my letter to the “ Daily News,” im- 
mediately after the delivery of Dr. Carpenter’s lectures, I referred 
to this account. I certainly have “ full faith ” in Professor 
Gregory’s very careful narrative of a fa eft entirely within his own 
knowledge. This may be “ the slenderest evidence” to Dr. 
Carpenter, but slender or not he chooses to evade it, and endea- 
vours to make the public believe that I and others accept the 
unsupported assertions of an unknown man. It is impossible 
adequately to characterise such reckless accusations as this 
without using language which I should not wish to use. Let us 
pass on, therefore, to the evidence which Dr. Carpenter declares 
to be fitly described as “ the slenderest.” M. Dupotet, at the 
Hotel de Dieu, in Paris, put a patient to sleep when behind a 
partition, in the presence of M. Husson and M. Recamier, the 
latter a complete sceptic. M. Recamier expressed a doubt that 
the circumstances might produce expectation in the patient, and 
himself proposed an experiment the next day, in which all the 
same conditions should be observed, except that M. Dupotpt 
should not come at all till half an hour later. He anticipated 
that the “ expectation ” would be still stronger the second time 
than at first, and that the patient would be mesmerised. But 
the result was quite the reverse. Notwithstanding every minute 
detail was repeated as on the previous day when the operator 
was in the next room, the patient showed no signs whatever of 
sleep either natural or somnambulic (Teste’s “Animal Mag- 
netism,” Spillan’s Translation, p. 159). The Commission 
appointed by the Academie Royale de Medicine in 1826 sat for 
five years and investigated the whole subject of animal mag- 
netism. It was wholly composed of medical men, and in their 
elaborate report, after giving numerous cases, the following is 
one of their conclusions : — 
“ 14. We are satisfied that it (magnetic sleep) has been excited 
under circumstances where those magnetised could not see, and 
were entirely ignorant of the means employed to occasion it.” 
These were surely “ trained experts yet they declare them- 
selves satisfied of that, the evidence for which, Dr. Carpenter 
says, has always broken down when tested. 
Baron Reichenbach’s researches are next discussed, and are 
coolly dismissed with the remark that “ it at once became ap- 
parent to experienced physicians, that the whole phenomena 
were subjective, and that ‘ sensitives ’ like Von Reichenbach’s can 
