We are told that in this case the power of sight was restored by indirect and not direct suggestion, the sense of feeling being first of all rendered normal by suggestion. The whole process was probably one of indirect suggestion such as I have described on p. 67. It is possible that in a case of Krafft-Ebing's, objective symptoms were produced by suggesting mental paralysis. Such cases have been described by Charcot's pupils. When the subject is told that his arm is paralyzed, vasomotor disturbances set in, which we may consider objecthat all the suspected persons should devote themselves to the thankless part of fraud, when with such talents for acting a very different career would be open to them. The expression of pain, the smiles, the chattering of the teeth and shivering at different suggestions of pain, pleasure, cold, etc., would be no easy task to the supposed impostor. The waking in many cases is just as characteristic: the astonished face with which the subject looks round as if to find out where he is. His behaviour in post-hypnotic suggestion is likewise important. The impostor generally exaggerates like a person feigning madness. In spite of the variability of all the symptoms of hypnosis, there is a certain conformity to rule in its development.

The impostor usually accepts all suggestions very quickly, while the experienced experimenter knows that susceptibility to suggestion increases with a certain uniformity. Analgesia to slight feelings of pain is a favourite form of fraud; and although an unexpected pain causes the usual reflexes in the face and eyes, the impostor will declare that he felt no pain. It is the same with sense-delusions, where the suggestion generally requires to be emphasized before it takes effect. The impostor usually exaggerates here also.

But, apart from the symptoms of Charcot's stages, certain abnormalities of the muscular system have been utilized in judging of fraud. On the face of it, it would hardly be expected that abnormalities which are supposed to exclude fraud should be capable of being induced by suggestion. If we consider that an idea suggested to a hypnotic differs in no respect from a voluntary idea of a person who is awake, it should be difficult to conceive that the idea in the first case should produce objective changes which do not appear in the second. And yet that is the case. Even in waking life an idea awakened by another person has by no means the same effect as one voluntarily produced. The difference is probably most perceptible in pathological cases. A patient suffering from the fixed idea that he is insane can generally be pacified if the doctor assures him that he is not insane. In such a case it is not merely the doctor's dictum which prevails, because it happens often enough that the patient is fully aware that his own idea is erroneous, and that the doctor in assuring him of his sanity is only repeating a statement which he has already made on previous occasions. Nevertheless, the repetition of the assurance again pacifies the patient.

The case of blushing which I mentioned on page 64 is to the point. When A. told B. he had got to blush, the latter frequently did so, although the voluntary idea of blushing did not cause B. to do so. Tickling, also, is a well-known example of the difference in the results produced when a simple stimulus is self-applied or applied by somebody else. Let somebody else tickle you, and you laugh; tickle yourself, and you do not. A number of other examples could be cited, and all tend to show that when another person calls up an idea in my mind the result is different from that which would be produced by the self-same idea voluntarily induced by myself. Experience shows the same to hold good in hypnosis. Superficial observation led to the conclusion that objective changes could not be brought about by suggestion, but a closer study has now shown that conclusion to be erroneous. But, as I have already shown, there may be other processes at work in hypnosis besides suggestion. It is possible that the physical symptoms which are sometimes associated with suggested paralyses, and which I have dealt with in page 72, belong here.

At all events, experience teaches us that suggestion in hypnosis can bring about muscular phenomena which cannot be produced voluntarily. For example, the cessation of the staggering gait in locomotor ataxy, which Berger described, and I also have observed, and other like phenomena. All other abnormalities of the muscular system may be used as arguments against simulation. If a person holds out his arm for a long time without trembling to any extent, this may be held to exclude fraud to a certain extent. It is also possible to produce such abnormalities at times by special methods. A heavy weight placed in a hypnotic's hand will often be held longer and more steadily than it would be possible for a waking man to. As Wilkinson and Braid have pointed out, directly the hypnotic shows signs of giving way, any tremors can be suppressed for some time by suggesting that he has only bits of cork in his hand. Similarly, I have seen a hypnotized person, whose arm was beginning to get tired and trembled, hold it out quite still directly it was suggested that his arm was resting on a cushion or some other support.

All these points must be considered when judging of fraud.

Binet, Fere, Parinaud, and others have made particular investigations on the sense-delusions of sight. They say that a prism doubles the hallucinatory object as it would a real one; and in hallucinations of colour, the complementary colour is said to be seen afterwards, just as in a normal act of vision. But Charpentier and Bernheim have very properly submitted these statements to. criticism. They have shown that the hallucinatory object was only apparently doubled. The subject first saw some real object doubled by the prism, and concluded from this that the suggested hallucination should be doubled also. Such a conclusion can, of course, be drawn unconsciously. For this reason, it may also happen that the doubling of the sense-delusion is secondary. In any case, the great point is that the prism only produces a doubling when a real object is seen through it. If this is not the case - if, for example, the experimenter is in a dark room, or if he shows the subject a perfectly blank white screen - the doubling does not occur.