Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 Volume 1, Number 5

For several years past a number of French physicians have been experimenting on hypnotised or mesmeric subjects and on hysterical patients, with results of the most extraordinary character. It is our purpose to very briefly describe some of these remarkable experiments, from which, we may say, the standing of the doctors engaged in them, and the critical care with which they were conducted, seem to remove all questions of fraud or inaccuracy.

In these hypnotic experiments as practised by Dr. Charcot, of the Salpetriere; by Dr. Bernheim, Professors Beaunis and Liegeois and other persons of high professional standing, the most striking feature is that the influence exerted upon the patient does not vanish with the conclusion of the experiment, but may produce its effects days, weeks or even months afterwards, when the patient is seemingly in a normal state and controlled solely by his own thoughts. For instance, a sensitive person may be hypnotised, or mesmerized, to use the better known word, and it be suggested to him by the experimenter to go at a certain hour of the next or some succeeding day and shoot some person and then deliver himself up to justice. On being brought back to the normal state no recollection of this suggestion is present in his mind. And yet, if the experiment work as truly as it often seemingly has worked, he will endeavor at the time fixed to perform the action indicated, with the full belief that the impulse to do so is his own. We may quote some instances in corroboration of this seemingly improbable statement.

CASES OF HYPNOTIC SUGGESTION.--Among minor instances of this result, Frederick Myers relates that he suggested to a hypnotised subject, who was engaged in coloring a sketch, that it would be a good idea to paint the bricks blue. He repeated his suggestion several times, and then brought the subject to the normal state. She had no recollection of what had passed, yet on resuming her painting some time afterwards she hesitated, and then said to a lady companion, "I suppose it would never do to paint these bricks blue." "Why blue?" "Oh, it only occurred to me that it would look rather nice." She acknowledged that the idea of blue bricks had been persistently in her mind, with the notion that the color would look well.

In another instance, Dr. Bernheim, of Nancy, suggested to a hypnotised person to take Dr. X.'s umbrella when awake, open it, and walk twice up and down the gallery. On being awakened he did so, but with the umbrella shut. When asked why he acted so, he replied: "It is an idea. I take a walk sometimes." "But why have you taken Dr. X.'s umbrella?" "Oh, I thought it was my own. I will replace it."

These are harmless instances of this strange power. There are others the reverse of harmless in this significance. One or two of these we may quote: Prof. Liegeois, in his recently published pamphlet, "Of Hypnotism in its relations to Civil and Criminal Law," describes experiments with the subjects of M. Liebault, a well-known hypnotiser. In these experiments he took pains to induce the patients to commit crimes. As he relates, Mdlle. A. E. (a very amiable young lady) was made to fire at her own mother with a pistol, which she had no means of knowing was unloaded. The same lady was made to accuse herself before a judge of having assassinated an intimate friend with a knife. Yet in both these instances she was wide awake at the time and supposed that she was acting from her own impulse.

Many other instances might be given, but these will suffice for illustration. As to the length of time in which such a suggestion may remain operative, Prof. Beaunis relates a case in which he suggested to a hypnotised subject that he would call on her on the next New Year's day (172 days after the date of the experiment). On that date, being perfectly conscious, she seemed to see him walk into the room where she was, pay his compliments, and retire. She insisted that this had really happened, and could not be convinced to the contrary. A striking feature of this incident was that he seemed to be dressed in summer attire (as at the date of experiment), though it was now the dead of winter.

A natural conclusion from the facts above detailed is, that the strange power here indicated might prove a very dangerous weapon in the hands of an unscrupulous man. If a person can suggest to a subject in the hypnotic sleep that, at a certain future day, he or she shall kill a person obnoxious to the experimenter, or perform some other criminal act, and if the act be duly performed, the subject being in a seemingly normal state, and fully convinced that he acted solely through an impulse originating in his own mind, it might appear as if there was little safety left for honest people, and that a villain might carry out his murderous schemes with perfect impunity. In such a case as we have said, the mind of the patient would cease to be his own, but would partly belong to the person whose deadly thoughts it contained, and whose involuntary agent it had become. Will the jurisprudence of the future have to take account of such possibilities as this? Yet it must be remembered that the great majority of people are not susceptible to hypnotic influence, and that those whose will can be so completely subjected to that of another are comparatively few. Very few such have yet been found in France. In America, the realm of a less excitable people, still fewer could be found.

It may be said, moreover, that this influence in several cases has been exerted for the good of the patient. One instance is given in which the patient was a great smoker and drinker, and voluntarily gave up both under the influence of hypnotic suggestion. Several other cases of the same kind are related, while a humorous instance is given of an idle school boy who, impelled by a hypnotic suggestion, became a very ardent student. After working off that spell, however, he obstinately refused to be hypnotised again, apparently with the impression that there was something uncanny in his unusual fit of devotion to study.

THE GRAND SYMPOSIUM OF THE WISE MEN OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

The question of our future destiny is paramount to all others in dignity and importance. Upon this subject all wise men must have clear and positive views. The editor of the Christian Register of Boston, according to the very common idea that men in prominent positions as professors and decorated with college honors must be the wisest, thought it well to ask them if science could take cognizance of the question of immortality, and if its verdict was for or against a future life. Such questions he addressed to twenty-three professors, presidents, doctors of laws, etc. But he did not reflect that there were several hundred gentlemen in Boston who had more knowledge on this subject, and who could give him positive and reliable information, and he entirely forgot that the only scientist who has examined this question from the physiological standpoint resides in Boston.

The editor did not obtain what he was ostensibly seeking, but he did obtain an amount of evidence of ignorance, in high places, which I should be happy to record, but for the fact that it would occupy more than half of one number of the JOURNAL OF MAN. Nevertheless, I cannot deprive my readers of the pleasure and amusement derived from this correspondence. I have condensed the responses into a readable compass leaving out their useless verbiage, and putting them in a poetic form, as poetry best expresses the essence and spirit of an author's thought. I think the learned gentlemen, if they could peruse these doggerel rhymes, would acknowledge that their meaning has been expressed even more plainly and forcibly than in their own prose. The reader will observe that of the whole twenty-three only two appear to have any knowledge on the subject, the famous A. R. Wallace and the brilliant Dr. Coues. The following is the essence or rather quintessence of the voluminous responses in the order in which they were published. The learned gentlemen ought to feel grateful for the increased candor, brevity and explicitness of their replies, when boiled down into the rhyming form, bringing out new beauties which were not apparent in the original nebulous condition of vagueness in which some of them disclaim opposition to immortality, while their only immortality is that of atoms and force.

While there is something amusing in these responses (which I shall carefully file away for the future), which may furnish matter for surprise and laughter in a more enlightened age, and which may cause the writers, if they live long enough, to realize a feeling of shame for the wilful ignorance or affectation of ignorance displayed, we cannot overlook the very serious fact that the educational leadership of our country is in the hands of men of whom a large proportion are destitute of the very foundation of the sentiment of religion, while another large portion are so utterly regardless of scientific truth as to ignore the best attested facts, which are continually in progress within their reach--a degree of bigotry which is not surpassed in the history of the "Dark Ages." Verily the shadow of those ages rests upon the leading institutions of to-day.

1. Response of PROF. CHARLES A. YOUNG, LL.D., of Princeton College.

I must confess this creed of Immortality Hath not in the light of science much reality; But all such questions are beyond our science, And revelation is our sole reliance.

2. PROF. JAMES D. DANA, LL.D., of Yale College.

Though very much hurried--not to say flurried, I will venture to say, as my answer to-day, There is nothing in science to prevent our reliance On the solemn reality of life's immortality.

3. PROF. ASA GRAY, LL.D., Harvard University.

Were the gospel light out, we should all be in doubt, For science looks on, astride of the fence, And never can tell us the whither or whence; But I shrewdly suspect it is slightly inclined To harmonize now with the Orthodox mind.

4. PROF. JOSEPH LEIDY, M.D., LL.D., University of Pennsylvania.

Your doctrine of life eternal And everything else supernal Might well he pronounced an infernal; Delusion! For Solomon said at an ancient date That everything dieth early or late, And man or beast, or small or great, Hath but one fate. Your future life is an awful bore; I've tried life once, and I want it no more. You may guess and imagine o'er and o'er, But where's the proof? Yet nevertheless, I won't deny You may live without brains in realms on high, But as for myself I'd rather not try, I'd rather die.

5. SIMON NEWCOMB, LL.D., F.R.A.S., etc.

Science deals only with matters of sense, It has nothing to do with a mere pretence. 'Tis one thing to say, that the soul survives, And another to say that a cat has nine lives; But I do not say the one or the other, Nor affirm nor deny that the monkey's my brother. I've nothing to say of angels or sprites, Or the spooks that appear in the darkest of nights. For if we can't see them, nor chase them nor tree them, They can't be detected, nor caught and dissected, So science must be mum--and I, too, am dumb.