To The Editor Of The 'Times.'

Sir, - Having been invited by the committee of the Institut de France to attend the Pasteur Jubilee, I found myself in Paris at the moment when the first communication of your correspondent on * The New Mesmerism' was published. In view of the importance attaching to statements published so prominently and with so much detail in the columns of 'The Times,' I took the opportunity of communicating through a medical friend with Dr. Luys, and was invited by him to witness the demonstrations which your correspondent so picturesquely describes, and which carried such firm conviction to his mind. The whole phenomena which he witnessed were actually reproduced before me, and many more, still more startling and dramatic, of which he makes no mention. Being deeply interested in performances which were, prima facie, so astounding, and which, if verified, would carry us back to some of the old practices and conclusions of the mystics and sorcerers of the middle ages, I thought it worth while to spend a fortnight in the closest investigation of the facts, and in attempting to arrive at correct conclusions as to their causation.

With this object I made repeated visits to La Charite Hospital, and I visited the Ecole Polyteohnique by the invitation of Colonel Rochas d'Aiglun, the head of the school, who reproduced before me there, as he had already done in the presence of Dr. Luys at La Charite Hospital, the performances described as 'externalisation of the sensations' and 'transference of sensibility to inanimate objects.' I was able to carry out at La Charite itself some very simple test experiments, which, at the outset, convinced me that Dr. Luys was the victim, to some extent, of trickery and imposture, and that he did not take even the elementary precautions neoessary to protect him-self from fraud on the part of his subjects, and from self-deception. I suggested to him at once one or two simple tests of the good faith of his patients, such as the use of an etactro-magnet, in which the magnetic current could easily be extinguished without the patient's knowledge; and again, in his experiments on the influence or alleged influence of medicinal substances in sealed tubes placed in contact with the skin, I suggested that substances other than those which the patient had reason to believe were in use should actually be applied.

Both of these precautions, however, he declined to take at the time, alleging either that he had done so in the past or would do so in the future. He could only show me, he said, his experiments in his own way, and, if I were not cenvinced, he could only regret it. On each of the cocasions of my visits I was accompanied by independent and competent witnesses, who observed with me that in two instances in which I employed very simple magnetic tests of control, the patients were utterly at fault, giving false answers, and seeing blue flames and red flames issue from a small pocket simili-magnet, which was no magnet at all, and making other blunders which equally gave reason to suspect imposture.

Subsequently to this I secured the attendance at my apartments of five of the persons on whom Dr. Luys had been and is still accustomed to give his demonstrations in the wards, and who have been the chief subjects of his 'Lecons Cliniques,' of which I have before me the printed volumes, containing reports of the marvellous phenomena produoed, with photographic representations of many of them. I had in all nearly twelve sittings with these five subjects, among them being the persons shown to your correspondent and going through the performances which he describes. At all these sittings there were present medical and scientific witnesses and independent observers of undoubted competency. Among those who were present at one or other of the sittings were Dr. Louis Olivier, Docteur-es-Sciences, Directeur de la 'Revue Generate des Sciences'; Dr. Lutaud, editor of the 'Journal de Medecine de Paris'; Dr. Sajous, editor of the American 'Annual of Medicine'; M. Cremiere, of St. Petersburg; Mr. B. F. C. Costello, of London, and others whose names I need not at present mention. They have signed the notes of the various test experiments.

These notes are too numerous and too detailed to permit me to venture to burden your columns with them; I shall shortly publish them in detail I noed only say here that the whole of the phenomena were produced with sham magnets, with substituted figures, with misnamed medicinal substances, and with distilled water, and with sham 'suggestion,' opposite suggestion, or none at all. Everyone was able to convince himself that all the results so shown were, without exception, simulated, fictitious, and fraudulent. That some of the patients were hypnotic and hysterical in a high degree does not alter the fact that from beginning to end they all showed themselves to be tricksters of the most barefaced kind; some of them very clever actors, possessing dramatic powers which might have been turned to better purposes, most of them utterly venal, and some of them confessing that they played upon the credulity of Dr. Luys for their own purposes.

I do not of course ask your readers to accept this statement as final evidence, but the protocols of the sittings, signed by the witnesses present at each of them, and the detail of the methods employed will, I think, convince even the most credulous apostles of the new mesmerism that we have here to deal only with another chapter of human folly, misled by fraud; a reproduction of the old frauds of Mesmer, of the self-deceptions of Reichenbach, and the malpractices of sham magicians of the middle ages who have still their ingenious imitators. These impostures and this self-deception now mask themselves under a new nomenclature, and avail themselves of recent developments of psychological investigation in order to [assume more plausible shapes and a pseudo-scieiitific character. But when the authentic details of their separate and combined simulations are read, it will only remain to regret that so much prominence has been given to so sad a page in human wickedness and folly, and that men of distinguished position, and good faith have allowed themselves, by carelessness and persistent credulity, to be made use of as propagators and apostles of wild follies and vulgar deceptions.