Binet and Fere think they have discovered laws governing the course of the transference in each particular hypnotic state. When lethargy on one side of the body and catalepsy on the other have been induced by closing one eye, the approach of a magnet causes catalepsy on the lethargic side, and on the cataleptic side lethargy. In the same way, when the state is somnambulic on one side and cataleptic or lethargic on the other, the magnet causes transference. But also, in each particular hypnotic state, symptoms can be transferred from one side to the other - e.g., contractures in lethargy, particular postures of the limbs in catalepsy, hallucinations of one side, and hemi-anaesthesias in the somnambulic state, etc., etc. Binet and Fere" say that when hypnotic subjects write with the right hand, they write with the left hand under the influence of the magnet, and at the same time reverse the direction of the writing.

Another method of influencing hypnotic subjects with the magnet is called polarization. It is a reversal of a functional state (Belfiore). Binet and Fere* are the authors of the experiments on polarization, which are confirmed by Bianchi and Sommer. It is probable that these are all cases of unintentional suggestion. It is said that in some cases the magnet resolves a contracture induced by suggestion (motor polarization). It can banish a suggested hallucination, and can change the mental pictures of colours into their complementaries; if a subject believes he sees blue, he thinks he sees yellow (sensory polarization). Sometimes there is an arbitrary change in the colour-sensation - for example, yellow changes into red; this is called dispolarization (Lombroso Ottolenghi). The magnet is also said to change a happy frame of mind into a sad one (mental polarization). A committee of the Medical Congress at Padua was unable to confirm these phenomena. Tanzi was quite right in referring them all to unintentional suggestion. The same may be said of analogous assertions concerning matters which partially belong to the domain of therapeutics.

Venturi and Ventra used mental polarization therapeutically, and they say they conquered a fixed idea, an auto-suggestion, by applying the magnet in the waking state. The reverse of this has been observed. Raggi thinks that the approach of a magnet in hypnosis often causes subjective discomfort. In other cases the magnet is said to have put an end to the hypnosis.

Tamburini and Seppilli state that when a magnet is brought close to the pit of the stomach it influences respiratory movements in hypnosis. Later on, Tamburini and Righi found that other metallic bodies produced the same effect; the strength of the effect, however, depended on the size of the piece of metal. The electro-magnet is said to have the same effect whether the current is open or closed. For this reason Tamburini supposed later that it is only the temperature of the metal which has the effect, and that the magnetic force may have no influence.

Lastly, I must mention Babinski's and Luys' experiments. If a hypnotized subject and a sick person are set back to back, a magnet put between them will cause the sick person's symptoms to pass over to the hypnotized subject. Hysterical contractures and dumbness have been thus transferred, as also the symptoms of organic disease - e.g., multiple sclerosis. The transference is said to take place even when the hypnotic has no notion what the sick person's symptoms are - i.e., when suggestion is excluded. Luys went even farther. When he places a magnet first on a sick person's head and then on a hypnotic's, the morbid symptoms of the first person are supposed to appear in the hypnotized person.

In these experiments of Babinski and Luys we have an obvious combination of the phenomena of mineral and animal magnetism. It is a significant fact that such assumptions as these have hardly ever been made in recent times by men who must be taken seriously. We are, therefore, justified in now assuming that the results obtained by Babinski and Luys in those experiments were due to suggestion - i.e., that there was self-deception on the part of the experimenters, who at the time were not so well acquainted with suggestion as a source of error as we are to-day. Of course, all this does not prove that it is impossible for the magnet to influence human beings. Obersteiner supposes that there may possibly be a special magnetic sense, which may come into activity with many people during hypnosis, and which is, perhaps, localized in some terminal organs whose functions are still unknown.

I have hitherto discussed the influence of the magnet on human beings, and vice versa. I have mentioned cases in which the magnet is said to have influenced human beings, and others in which human beings are said to have influenced the magnet and also steel. To make this summary complete, I may further mention that there are said to be persons who can not only attract or repel the magnetic needle, but other bodies as well, even such as are made of wood. This at once leads us into the domain of spiritism, whose adherents may be divided into two groups: (1) spiritists in the narrower sense, persons who trace all the supposed phenomena to spirits; (2) the animists or psychicists, who assume that a force which emanates from the psyche of certain persons, the mediums, is able to make objects move, and the like. Innumerable cases of this kind are to be found in the literature of the subject. But I have never seen anything of the sort happen when the strictest conditions were enforced. Everything that I have seen in this domain - e.g., in the case of Eusapia Palla-dino, was undoubtedly the result of purely mechanical action, and, therefore, I can only deeply regret that a man of science like Lombroso should have let himself be victimized by the frauds which such persons perpetrate.

The following was recently told me of a medium in Berlin, a youth of sixteen, who is supposed to possess special magnetic powers: - Objects hang on to his fingers when he has magnetized them; sticks and other objects remain in an oblique position in spite of gravity, because of his magnetism. I was allowed to take this medium in hand, and the results were very different. It is quite true that plates and ash-trays stuck to his fingers, and that sticks apparently disobeyed the laws of gravity. But nothing of the kind happened when I took the precaution of dressing the young man in a long coat and covering the objects with a cloth so as to cut off all connection with them. The medium certainly stated he was not accustomed to that sort of thing, and that his magnetism did not suffice to overcome such obstacles. But the magnetizer was unable to sustain his explanation when I produced the string that ran from the leg of one of his stockings to the other. He admitted the fraud, said it was the first time he had been caught, and left our "circle."