In the Dublin Journal of Medical Science, May, 1891, Sir F. Cruise relates how he saw Dr. Bernheim endeavour to extract a man's political opinions while in a state of profound hypnosis. The patient declined to tell them, and, folding his arms, said, ' C'est mon affaire.' ' What a remarkable contrast to the awkward confessions occasionally volunteered under the influence of chloroform or ether !' is Dr. Cruise's comment on this incident. On the other hand, Liebeault records how, by telling a young girl that he was her father confessor, he succeeded in obtaining her confession. The result must depend upon the patient's disposition and character. For instance, I told one hypnotic patient that she was to resist my suggestions, and yet she was unable to do so, whereas another patient not only resisted my suggestions, but awoke when I insisted upon them. In the debate on hypnotism at the Edinburgh meeting of the British Medical Association, 1898, Dr. Mercier asked if a hypnotized butcher might not be made to murder a man by being told that the victim was a sheep, and that he had to cut its throat in the ordinary exercise of his trade. I think the answer is in the affirmative. Bernheim made an experiment of this nature when he made an honest woman steal another patient's watch.

At first she indignantly refused, saying she was not a thief; but when Bernheim assured her it was her own watch which the other woman had purloined, and that she was, therefore, only regaining her own property, she took it without further scruple. It seems to me better to face a danger and take steps to combat it than to deny or ignore it.

might as well forbid the surgeon to use a knife because criminals sometimes murder people with knives.

It is my opinion, and also my experience, that the power in us for good is more potent than that for evil, and that it would be very much harder to make the good man do wrong than to influence the bad man for good. But hypnotism acts by increasing the normal impressionability to suggestion; and as a moral person of unstable character may be corrupted in time by vicious surroundings and evil influences, so, I believe, the same person could be more quickly and surely corrupted by evil suggestions made to him while in the hypnotic state. I have no doubt that many of the subjects taken about with them by travelling showmen have entirely lost all individuality, and have become passive instruments in the hands of their employers. To reduce a fellow-creature to such a condition is, I hold, one of the greatest offences which can be committed against the dignity of humanity; for the position of the unfortunate victim is worse a hundredfold than that of the captive who has only to submit to material slavery. It is witnessing degrading performances, and confusing the travesty with rational hypnotic treatment, which makes many well-meaning people look with horror on the present spread of the knowledge of hypnotism.

There is a simple means of doing away with much of the danger which may attend its popularization. Let it be regarded as a medical procedure, to be had recourse to only for definite therapeutic purposes by qualified medical men, or as a method of real scientific research in the hands of savants. Let the public be made acquainted with the dangers which attend its use by improper persons, and let its employment in public for purposes of gain or mere amusement be sternly forbidden in England, as it is in other countries.

I do not think the ordinary criminal will ever make use of hypnotism; it is too tedious and uncertain a process. There have been accounts in the papers of various crimes alleged to have been committed by its means. Some boys in Pesth were a little time ago stated to have robbed their masters' till in obedience to hypnotic suggestion, and an ingenious newspaper correspondent was quite sure that the Whitechapel murders were the work of someone acting under hypnotic influence! My opinion is that the malefactor, unfortunately, finds plenty of material ready to his hand without hypnotism, and that the weak and criminal actions of bad men and women are capable of a much simpler explanation.

Supposing that a hypnotizer got absolute control over a subject, and rendered him so sensitive to his suggestions that he could induce him to commit thefts and other crimes, and at the same time be unconscious of the prompting which had impelled him, could the subject be hypnotized by another person, and made to give up the secret? I believe he could after a longer or shorter period, and that the real criminal would then be discovered. Moreover, the person acting under controlling suggestion would almost certainly perform the action in a manner different to his ordinary behaviour. He would appear more or less dazed, and would probably make either no effort, or only a very inadequate one, to escape capture.