12 
TRANSACTIONS OF THE TEXAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
ensue when the apparatus was applied. He who can thus obtain power¬ 
ful physiological effects by the application of an appliance utterly devoid 
of energy is a hypnotist who masquerades as a great discoverer. Charcot, 
doubtless very innocently, did the same when by the use of magnets, he 
transferred paralysis from one part to another of certain hysterical 
patients. Such therapeutics is by no means equal to that of the “ illust¬ 
rious Boerhave” who once stayed an epidemic of spasms in a boarding 
school by the threat that he would apply a red hot iron to the one next 
seized. It is not even equal to the practice in Calabar of divining dis¬ 
eases into wooden puppets, nor to that of the Indians of the Antilles, who 
in the days of Columbus drew diseases from the body and blew them 
away. Such jugglery now-a-days is given the more dignified titles, “ Faith 
Cure,” “Magnetic Healing,” and “Christian Science.” 
Fully recognizing the power of belief to produce such phenomena as 
found in hypnotism and these kindred arts, there are those who still de¬ 
clare that the fundamental problem is to show how the operator produces, 
or gains control over, his subject’s beliefs. 
The case of the boy upon whom I operated as already described can not 
be explained by any purely physiological theory such as that of Braid or 
Heidenhain. There was no contact to produce a “ stimulus.” The brief 
moment during which I demanded his attention could scarcely have been 
sufficient to produce “ weariness in a sensory organ,” “ nerve strain,” 
nor what Stanley Hall calls “ chronic cramp of the attention.” Still less 
would this have been possible in the case of the gentleman sitting in the 
audience, of whom nothing was demanded save that he should go behind 
the boy and attempt to lift him. 
It is hoped that the account already given of my own experience is 
sufficient to illustrate how under peculiar circumstances one may, by the 
normal process of thought, arrive at the conclusion that he is under the 
control of the operator. Before any hypnotic phenomena arose I had 
been convinced that I had been already hypnotised. Such is doubtless 
the case with every subject. Reversing the phraseology of certain mem¬ 
bers of the Society for Psychical Research, we may say of hypnotism—it 
is an aftergrowth of genuine phenomena that ingrafts itself upon a fraud. 
This is not an accusation that the hypnotist is an impostor, but a declar¬ 
ation that the phenomena are the results of self-deception on the part of 
his subjects. 
It is difficult to formulate a law for the production of this belief that 
shall accord with well recognized mental processes, and be applicable to 
the many different methods of manipulation that have been employed. 
The following is offered as a suggestion of what are the successive steps 
under the most usual methods. The subject must be in an excited state 
of mind. The idea that the attempt is about to be made to hypnotize 
