In order to give an idea of the practices in vogue in the so-called hypno-therapeutic department of La Charit6 Hospital, under the direction of Dr. Luys, and of the principal performances which are given there, I will briefly summarise the leading features of some of those shown to me by M. Luys during several of my visits to his clinic. I may mention that both Dr. Lutaud, who accompanied me on one or two of these visits, and who had in the first instance communicated with Dr.

Luys on my behalf, and Dr. Sajous, the editor of the 'American Annual of Medical Sciences,' who was Also present on several occasions with me at La Charite, explained to Dr. Luys, at the outset, as I took occasion to do myself, that I was of a sceptical, as well as of an inquiring turn of mind, with some experience in these matters, and that it was desirable only to show me phenomena which he could rely upon as genuine, and which would bear investigation.

The subjects on whom Dr. Luys demonstrated were chiefly two patients in the hospital, (1) a man named Mervel, whom I shall have occasion to mention frequently, and (2) a young woman, Marguerite. There were also (3) a girl named Clarice, a former patient, who arrived at the wards on New Year's day as a visitor, and who had for a long time previously been a patient and the subject of lectures and demonstrations by Dr. Luys, but who has since, and does now, largely make her living out of her accomplishments, infirmities (and, I must at once add, her tricks), as a trained subject; (4) a woman, whom I shall speak of as Madame V., who was present at my first visit, having been brought there by Colonel Rochas d'Aiglun, and on whom were displayed all the phenomena known under the mystical and pseudo-scientific names of profound hypnosis, externalisation of sensation, transference of sensibility to inanimate objects, sensitivisation of the atmosphere, Ac.; (5) a subject, Jeanne, longan inmate of the hospital and still a subject of demonstration there, who has set up for herself, and is a thriving practitioner as well as a subject in hypnotism.

There was some monotony in the repetition of these performances from day to day, so that for the purposes of condensation and classification I shall name them in their generic order, rather than in the precise succession of daily dates in which they occur in my note book.

First, as to the general character of the preliminary phenomena, Dr. Luys professes to base himself on precise experiments demonstrating the principal phenomena of what he calls ' great hypnotism,' as described for the first time in France in masterly fashion by his eminent colleague of the Salpdtriere, Professor Charcot, who would, however, be far from endorsing either the experiments or the conclusions of Dr. Luys. But he adds to those special researches a series of documents personal to himself collected in the Charit6 Hospital, where he finds a younger, neuropathic population 'nearer the initial period of these maladies, and even on the borderland of the physiological condition.' I may say that I found no physiologically sound persons at the Charit6 under experiment, but those on whom he demonstrated were profoundly neuropathic, with the exception of Madame V. (Colonel Rochas d'Aiglun's subject), and ' Jeanne,' of whom I shall have much to say later on, both of whom appeared to be as perfect in health at the present time as they are in imposture.

Dr. Lays reproaches the Nancy school with having only studied certain sides of 'minor hypnotism,' and with having put forward only the phenomena of lucid somnambulism with concomitant catalepsy and suggestibility, mixed conditions which he considers as intermediate phases and incomplete sketches of the 'greater hypnotism' imperfectly developed. To these phenomena of the 'minor hypnotism' he attaches the investigation of manifestations of 'fascination' as graphically described by Bremaud. 1

Hypnotism Dr. Luys defines as an extra-physiological experimental state of the nervous system, an artificial neurosis which one develops in a predisposed subject, a pseudo-sleep which is imposed and during which the subject under experiment loses the notion of his or her own existence and of the external world. The definition is sufficiently risky and, as will be seen in the sequel, does not apply in its main features to any of the subjects whom he showed me, and who have so often afforded during a series of years the material of his lectures and demonstrations. He recognises, however, very clearly that what he supposes himself to excite experimentally is a true though temporary condition of mental alienation; the hypnotised individual, he says, having become unconscious of his acts and words and isolated from his surroundings, is reduced to the state of a true transitory lunatic (aliene). He professed to create experimentally many of the disorders of mental pathology in certain stages of hypnotism, and thus to give the factitious but integral representation of some of the disorders of madness.

Moreover, he does not conceal from himself the dangers attending these conditions of rapid, almost instantaneous unconsciousness, in which the truly hypnotised subject becomes an inert being, 'a helpless victim to assaults from without.' In the passive state of lethargy or of catalepsy, he says, the subject is absolutely defenceless, exposed to the criminal outrages of those around him or her. A man may be poisoned or mutilated, a woman may be violated and made a mother, or even (as Dr. Luys has known to be the case) infected with syphilis without there existing any trace of the manner in which the outrage was committed, and without the patient preserving the slightest recollection of what has happened. These views and conclusions afford much material for reflection as to possible evils in connection with the general performances at La Charite and with others carried on in private life by persons who have been initiated, apprenticed, and trained there, some of whom still frequent the wards as exhibited subjects, and who carry on hypnotic practices and performances in the outer world with additions, and with all the eclat derived from their having been, as they are fond of describing themselves, 'principal subjects' at La Charite.

1 Bremaud, 'Sur la Production de l'Hypnotisme chez les Sujets Sains de Differents Ages,' Comptes Rendus de la Societe de Biclogie, 1863.