thrown out. Its warmest supporters were far from sanguine. It is obvious that no measures of the kind can be expected to pass until a change comes over the ideas of the American people as to rights of foreign authors."

MR. JOSEPH HATTON, the English novelist, writes to the Athenæum complaining of Mr. Lovell's publication in America of the novel, "By Order of the Czar," without his authorization, and stating that this piracy had prevented him from selling to another American publisher. Whereupon a Mr. Balestier, speaking for Mr. Lovell, reminds the irate novelist that the latter had granted to Mr. Tillotson, of Bolton (presumably for pounds, shillings and pence), several years since full authority to negotiate the American sale of his novels in book form. Lovell & Co., it seems, purchased of Mr. Bolton. It would be curious to discover, if possible, how many of the English complaints of a similar sort would simmer down into just such causeless vaporing, if fully investigated.

MISCELLANY.

HYPNOTISM AS AN ANÆSTHETIC.-The Brilish Medical Journal prints a long account of proceedings the other day at the rooms of Messrs. Carter Brothers & Turner, dental surgeons, Leeds, where upward of sixty of the leading medical men and dentists of the district witnessed a series of surgical and dental operations performed under hypnotic influence induced by Dr. Milne Bramwell, of Goole, Yorkshire, who is described as quite a master of the art of hypnotism as applied to medicine and surgery, and is shortly to publish a work of considerable importance on the subject. The object of the meeting (says a local correspondent of our contemporary) was to show the power of hypnotism to produce absolute anesthesia in very painful and severe operations. A woman, aged twenty-five, was hypnotized at a word by Dr. Bramwell. She was told she was to submit to three teeth being extracted, without pain, at the hands of Mr. Thomas Carter; and further, that she was to do anything that Mr. Carter asked her to do. This was perfectly successful. There was no expression of pain in the face, no cry, and when told to awake she said she had not the least pain in the gums, nor had she felt the operation. Dr. Bramwell then hypnotized her, and ordered her to leave the room and go upstairs to the waiting-room. This she did as

The next case was

a complete somnambulist. that of a servant-girl, M. A. W., aged nineteen, on whom, under the hypnotic influence induced by Dr. Bramwell, Mr. Hewetson had a fortnight previously opened and scraped freely, without knowledge or pain, a large lachrymal abscess extending into the cheek. Furthermore, the dressing had been daily performed and the cavity freely syringed under hypnotic anæsthesia, the "healing suggestions" being daily given to the patient, to which Dr. Bramwell in a great measure attributes the very rapid healing, which took place in ten days--a remarkably short space of time in a girl by no means in a good state of health. She was put to sleep by the following letter from Dr. Bramwell addressed to Mr. Turner: -"Burlington Crescent, Goole, Yorks. -Dear Mr. Turner, I send you a patient with enclosed order. When you give it her she will fall asleep at once and obey your commands. -J. MILNE BRAMWELL." "Order. -Go to sleep at once, by order of Dr. Bramwell, and obey Mr. Turner's commands.-J. MILNE BRAMWELL." This experiment answered perfectly. Sleep was induced at once by reading the note, and was so profound that, at the end of a lengthy operation in which sixteen stumps were removed, she awoke smiling, and insisted that she had felt no pain, and, what was remarkable, there was no pain in her mouth. She was found after some time, when unobserved, reading the Graphic in the waitingroom as if nothing had happened. During the whole time she did everything which Mr. Turner suggested, but it was observed that there was a diminished flow of saliva, and that the corneal reflexes were absent, the breathing more noisy than ordinarily, and the pulse slower. Dr. Bramwell took occasion to explain that the next case, a boy aged eight, was a severe test, and would probably not succeed, partly because the patient was so young, and chiefly because he had not attempted to produce hypnotic anesthesia earlier than two days before. He also explained that patients require training in this form of anesthesia, the time of training, or preparation, varying with each individual. However, he was so far hypnotized that he allowed Mr. Mavo Robson to operate on the great toe, removing a bony growth and part of the first phalanx with no more than a few cries toward the close of the operation, and with the result that, when questioned afterward, he apppeared to know very little of what had been done.

THE PRESENT STATE OF THE SUBJECT.

I.

THE history of hypnotism forms part of the history of the marvellous in human existence. Any one may satisfy himself of this by reading the special books on the subject; the scope of this article does not allow me to lay any further stress upon it. In reality, hypnotism is found under different names at all periods of his tory, from the incantations of the ancient Egyptian magicians down to the fascinations of Mesmer and the investigations of Braid. These two persons began to separate the wheat from the chaff, and went. far to show what there was that was real and truly scientific in that series of fanciful practices, bordering on witchcraft, which, under the most varied aspects,

NEW SERIES.-VOL. LII., No. 2.

have troubled the minds of the credulous who are always prone to swallow marvels.

Modern hypnotism owes its name and its appearance in the realm of science to the investigations made by Braid. He is its true creator; he made it what it is; and above all, he gave emphasis to the experimental truth by means of which he proved that, when hypnotic phenomena are called into play, they are wholly independent of any supposed influence of the hypnotist upon the hypnotized, and that the hypnotized person simply reacts upon himself by reason of latent capacities in him which are artificially developed.

Braid demonstrated that, in this series of remarkable phenomena, hypnotism, acting upon a human subject as upon a fallow field, merely set in motion a string of silent faculties which only needed its assistance to reach their development.

Here we obviously have a new idea and a phenomenon of the first importance, which constitutes one of the most interesting axioms of the question.

In this field of new research Braid had further the opportunity of evincing his clear-sightedness in many other particulars, and it may be said of him that from the outset he foresaw the different stages of hypnotism, just as they have been since defined in France. He perceived their different manifestations, and he thus laid the first foundation of the structure which has been so fortunately developed by workers in different countries, and which for the future constitutes an entirely new chapter in general neurology.

In order to produce these new conditions which have attracted attention in so unexpected a manner, Braid conceived the idea of physical action upon the eye, producing, by the use of some bright material held at a distance of ten to sixteen inches off, a definite condition of fatigue in the retina and the ocular muscles; and this fatigue of itself induces a kind of pseudosleep, marked by peculiar characteristics which make up the different phases of hypnotism. By the help of this simple process, applied to suitable persons, Braid managed to evolve a series of nerve pheno nena which, though isolated and disconnected, nevertheless constitute the fundamental types, so admirably arranged and thoroughly understood, which we now have. Moreover, he had a vague conception that they had something to do with an evolutionary process. "Hypnotism," he says, "does not comprise only one condition, it is rather a series of different points, capable of infinite variety, extending from the lightest dreams, in which the natural functions are intensified, to the profoundest state of coma, from which the conscience and the will are completely absent." In another place he speaks with more detail about hypnotic coma. We are right, therefore, in saying that he foresaw and described the different phases of hypnotic phenomena, both the lethargy, which he calls coma, and the state of catalepsy and of somnambulism, which he has described in very clear language. He also perceived the infinitesimal effect of a current of air passed over the surface of the skin of persons experimented upon during the period of catalepsy, and their gradual passage from a state of somnambulism to

a state of awakening. Moreover he points. out that by tickling the subject-the equivalent in his mind of passing a current of air over the skin-he succeeded in causing the underlying muscles to move, and that by this means he could make a person bend his hand or lift his arm; and then, by influencing the opposite muscles, make him stretch out his hand and fingers and drop his arm. He also made the discovery of the remarkable fact, that when one set of muscles has been set in motion by a given influence, and has remained for some lapse of time in the same posture, the application of apparently the same exciting cause will produce the opposite result. "If a muscle is at rest, it moves; if it is moving, it becomes inactive, and that, too, when the same cause is applied." This is a fact which is well known to any one of us in daily practice, when, for instance, by a slight touch applied to the surface of the forearm, and the help of a gleam of light from a piece of gold or silver, we cause the subjacent primary muscles of a hypnotized patient to contract. Thus, too, as experience increases, we find out that a contraction caused by a piece of gold is not destroyed by the presentation of a piece of silver to the opposite muscles, and that the exciting cause which acts specifically in producing the contraction must be of the same nature in order to release it.

The question of "suggestions," which, thanks to the labors of Bernheim, has recently played so important a part in France, had also a considerable amount of attention from Braid. He recognized the co-existence of dissimilar conditions in the different states of hypnotism, from complete insensibility and catalepsy up to the most delicate sensitiveness. "Some of these changes," he writes, " may be reproduced by suggestions of sound or of touch, for the patients display an exagger ated sensitiveness or insensibility, an incredible muscular strength or the utter loss of their will, according to the impressions produced upon them at the moment. These impressions are produced as the result of suggestions of sound conveyed through a person's voice. Such patients can be played upon as if they were a musical instrument, and can be made to take the dreams of their imagination for solid reality. They are full of such ideas; they are possessed by them, and act in accord

ance with them, however wild they may be." We shall see how nearly this view of " suggestion" approaches our own conception of it, and how this distinguished man embraced within the circle of his studies the greater part of the phenomena which modern observers have collected, and which they have clothed in their own livery and paraded as their own inventions. There is one more point to which Braid directed his mind in a special degree, namely, the adaptation of his own discoveries in neurology, not only to the healing of nerve diseases, but further of a whole group of different diseases in which the nerves play a more or less visible part, and to which he usefully applied his new processes. This is one of many points of similarity in which I am pleased to find myself at one with him.

I am anxious, therefore, to introduce the English public to the deeply interesting labors of an original thinker whose discoveries have been widely followed up in France and in Europe generally. It is a pleasure to me to pay this tribute to his memory, to point out the part of initiator which Braid took in this new realm of neurology, and to show how large a portion in the general work belongs to him. His sudden death, in 1860, deprived him of the satisfaction of witnessing the triumph of his discoveries. Public opinion in England was ill prepared to receive him; people were indifferent, and even uneasy when they saw the investigations of scientists penetrate into the inmost recesses of personal feeling, and for a time remained silent and sceptical. Yet one ray of light had illumined the field of neurology, and this ray, in its turn, had inspired across the Channel a certain number of chosen spirits who had perceived the truth and the originality of Braid. They, in their turn, were able to keep the spark alive, and to kindle from it, as we shall see further on, a sacred fire which produced many new scientific discoveries. The impetus had been given and, thanks to the combined action of certain curious minds that did not shrink from confronting the scepticism and the dulness of their contemporaries, the domain of hypnotic studies was rapidly enlarged and enriched by theoretical and practical discoveries. Thus, too, in France, the labors of Azam, Broca, Volpeau, Damarquais, and more recently of the Salpetrière school and the

school of Nancy, have contributed to popularize these discoveries. Braid's work was indeed especially prized in France, thanks to the action of Professor Charcot, who made a profound study of these interesting problems. He had the honor of establishing and of defining by indisputable marks the different phases of hypnotism, by assigning to them a special science of their symptoms and distinguishing them sharply from each other. Thanks to his powerful influence investigation has gone on continuously; and when we look at discovery after discovery, when we see the boundaries of hypnotism extended more and more widely in the region of internal pathology properly so called, and the number of subjects subordinate to hypnotism increasing from day to day, we may well wonder at what point the limits of its expanding force will be reached.

All the labors of which I have spoken have combined to make up what is known as the higher hypnotism, such as it is actually described in France and, above all, in Paris. But the matter does not stop there. In this special realm we have seen ideas not yet made public, and new phenomena arise which bear a genuine family likeness to those of the higher hypnotism, but still are distinguished from it by peculiar tokens which show them to be really original. I refer to those mixed or compound conditions known as fascinations which have often been exemplified of late years by the interesting writings of Dr. Brèmand,

THE GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HYPNOTIC PHENOMENA.

Great surprise is caused in the study of the phenomena of hypnotism, on the one hand by the rapidity of its manifestations and on the other by the sudden disturbances which supervene on many activities of the nervous system, by reason of which we see them fade away before our eyes, disappear, and rise again elsewhere. Thus, if we remark that sensitiveness disappears at a given moment-in the lethargic stage

from the surface of the skin and the mucous membranes, we see that by a sort of compensation the optic nerves become extremely sensitive, while muscular development presents phenomena of extraordinary hyper-excitability. In the region of psychical action properly so called, if

the operations of conscious activity are annihilated, the manifestations on the other hand of the emotional region rise to a pitch of marvellous intensity. We say then that the chief characteristic of a state of hypnotism is that the nerve currents lose their normal equilibrium. Just when the nervous forces appear to be extinct they spring up elsewhere with an extraphysiological intensity, and the experimentalist develops thereby new conditions and unwonted relations between the different regions of the nervous system, and reduces the patient to a condition which is known as the extra-physiologically morbid.

:

With regard to the instantaneousness of hypnotic manifestations nothing is more striking than that which occurs daily in our hospitals when the patients are sufficiently overcome. A patient arrives full of life, in complete contact with the external world he talks and laughs gaily; but if we only make him fix his eye on a definite object, lay our fingers lightly on the balls of his eyes, gently press the lobe of his ear, and make him hear a slight noise, we at once bring him to a state of utter annihilation both as regards his faculties and his motive power. He falls on the floor in a state of coma, thunderstruck, so to speak, and simply lies there like an inert, flabby, senseless mass, utterly dead to the touch of the external world. He is no longer his own master and is at the mercy of the hypnotizer who controls him. This is perhaps the most striking picture which comes across us in these studies and which proves the genuineness of the manifestations.

To proceed let me now point out how the nerve currents lose their equilibrium. What will happen to this patient whom we have just seen stricken down in an utter lethargy? We open his eyelids, we cause a flashing light to penetrate right into his eyes; the light passes into his brain and proceeds to cause special kinds of activity and to illuminate certain special departments of the brain. A new condition is now produced, the condition of catalepsy. This condition is marked by the pre-eminence of optical impressions which exercise absolute sway over all those activities of the nervous system which are aroused. The patient's eyes are wide open, fixed and motionless; the pupil is especially affected. His excessive power

a

of sight reaches such an extraordinary pitch of acuteness that if we cover his eyelids with a layer of cotton wool and then put a newspaper in front of his eyes, we are amazed to see that he can read it, no doubt through some tiny cracks imperceptible to us. Suppose we show to him, behind a wooden screen one-fifth of an inch thick, balls of colored glass, calculated by their colors to arouse in him different emotions; the usual faculty is so super-perceptive that the patient feels through the screen the different vibrations of light and reacts correlatively. Show him, for example, behind this screen blue ball, he will exhibit signs of sadness show him a yellow one, and he will be all gayety and hilarity, and so on. And at the same time with this extra-physiological development of his optic nerves, we remark that the movements of the cuta neous teguments and of the mucous membranes are utterly paralyzed. On the one side we have riches, on the other poverty and complete loss of balance, experimentally produced in the distribution of sensi. tive nerve currents under the influence of hypnotization. If we carry our investigations into the region of psychical action we find again disturbances of the same kind, the exaltation of certain faculties on the one side, and their extinction on the other. The same laws of repression and expansion which govern the evolution of these phenomena are to be found everywhere. In the period of catalepsy which follows the foregoing stage, if the sensitive nerves of the skin are in a state of absolute anesthesia, on the other hand the emotional regions are proportionately liable to extraordinary excitement under the influence of various causes. If the patient sees a sketch of a merry face, he assumes a look of merriment, his features expand and he laughs heartily. If he sees a gloomy picture, he becomes gloomy and sullen and even bursts into tears. Colored rays of light produce different kinds of feelings; so too do different substances when brought into contact with certain superficial nerves and by this we recognize that some persons, endowed with a peculiar sensitiveness, are liable to develop in the sensorium emotional activities of a special kind, the principal types of which I have already reproduced by the help of photographs, in one of my works.

The somnambulist phase which follows