I am informed on the best authority that in the initiatory rites of several secret societies the candidate is submitted to a somewhat similar ordeal. He is told that he must submit to be bled. His eyes are blindfolded, his arm is pricked, and a stream of warm water is allowed to trickle down it.

The surroundings at the same time being mysterious and awe-inspiring, a very great effect is produced on nervous and sensitive subjects. Syncope and nervous exhaustion not uncommonly follow the ceremony, and the new member may be made ill for days.

The rite is, no doubt, an example of the survival of the form after the unpleasant reality has, in deference to civilization, been allowed to fall into disuse.

An amusing experiment is described by Dr. Yung, privat docent of Geneva, which forcibly displays the power of suggestion without hypnotism. He calls it ' the experiment with magnetized cards,' and he carries it out as follows: With a grave face and serious manner he proceeds to give a short account of 'animal magnetism,' and to explain how the 'subtle fluid' can be made to affect even inert substances. Having thus aroused 'expectant attention,' he carefully arranges a few cards on the table and makes 'magnetic' passes over them. This process, he assures his audience, charges the cards with his magnetism, and makes them different to any other cards, so that if a person touches one of them he will change its polarity, and it will thus be distinguishable to his touch from the others. He then leaves the room, and a bystander touches one of the cards. Dr. Yung, on his return, makes a few passes over them, and finally picks out the card which has been touched, saying that he feels contact with it sends a nervous thrill up his arm like an electric shock.

But he adds there is nothing wonderful in this, as anyone will experience the same thing. The challenge is accepted, and probably the most sceptical person in the room goes through the same pantomime of magnetizing the cards with a look of scornful contempt on his face. No card is touched, and he is told on his return not to make a guess, but to really try if he can detect a difference between one card and another. In nearly every instance Dr. Yung found a difference was said to be felt, and whatever card was indicated was declared to be the right one. The experimenter is shut out of the room a second and a third time, and it is nearly always found that by the third time the subject will declare he undoubtedly feels a very strong nervous shock of the kind described by Dr. Yung. Of course, Dr. Yung had a confederate, who, by an agreed-upon signal, informed him of the card which had been touched. He has tried this experiment on about 800 persons, many of whom were medical men and scientific students, and in nine cases out of ten he has elicited by pure suggestion the sensations he described.

I have repeated the experiment in about a score of cases, and in nearly every instance have obtained a like result. One subject, a particularly wide-awake American, assured me at the third trial that the shock was quite as strong as that received from a powerful static battery which he had just been testing.

Hilger describes the following experiment as showing the involuntary action of attention on the voluntary muscles:

A watch is laid face upwards on the table, and a small ring or ball is held over it, suspended by a fine thread from the fingers held above it. Determine that the object shall swing in a line between the figures 12 and 6, and keep the gaze and attention fixed on these figures. In a short time the ring will actually move in the direction thought of. This form of experiment can be repeated in many different ways, and explains most of the phenomena of thought-reading, table-turning, etc. Passes made over a person's hand, placed limply on the table, will often cause it to rise and follow the operator's movements, and I sometimes use this action to test a patient's suggestibility. No suggestion of the expected result is made, but the action seems to afford an indication, and the patient often describes all kinds of subjective sensations, such as pricking, burning, drawing.