The mirror designed by Dr. Luys, of La Charite, is used in dispensaries and hospitals when it is desired to hypnotize a large number of persons in a short space of time. It consists of a rapidly-revolving mirror mounted on a stand, and it is found that gazing at this quickly dazzles the sight and produces hypnosis in susceptible subjects. By its means a roomful of people may sometimes be hypnotized at once, and the suggestions can be applied at leisure. There is a large sale of these instruments in Paris, but in private practice I think they would not be found very effectual. Liebeault and others frequently operated on thirty or forty patients in a forenoon by the ordinary method without fatigue, so I fail to see the object of this plan of hypnotizing people wholesale.

* Braid died in 1860, the year in which Dr. Liebeault opened his dispensary at Nancy. So, though unrepresented in England, he found a follower abroad who was possessed of a ' double portion of his spirit.'

Considerable experience with Luys' mirror has not altered my opinion as to its utility. In one instance, an hysterical young woman, whom I cured of very obstinate hiccough (it had been almost incessant for seven years) by suggestion, was hypnotized by gazing for twenty minutes at the mirror after other methods had failed; but her case is almost an isolated one in my experience. Though Dr. Luys stated that everyone goes to sleep after looking at the mirror for half an hour at the longest, I have seen several patients, who wished to be influenced, gaze at it steadily for nearly an hour without any result except a headache. I have seen it produce most violent palpitation, and altogether should advise caution in the use of the instrument.

Dr. Ochorowicz, late Professor of Physiology at Lem-burg, has devised an instrument for testing hypnotic susceptibility, which he calls the hypnoscope. It consists of a steel magnet bent in the form of a ring, which is placed on the patient's finger. He finds susceptible persons experience a sensation of numbness and stiffness in the part after wearing the instrument for a short time, and the finger is often rendered rigid and immovable. Ochorowicz himself seems to think this effect is the result of suggestion, and no doubt a patient who is so easily influenced by the imagination would be a good subject for the treatment. But I feel sure that many persons who are sufficiently susceptible to hypnotism to benefit from suggestion would be quite insensitive to such action. Readers of Braid's ' Neurypnology ' will remember how he paid a visit to a lady who announced herself as so affected by a magnet that she knew at once when there was one anywhere near her. Braid sat close to her for an hour with a most powerful magnet in his pocket within a few inches of her, but she experienced no discomfort, because she did not know it was there.

I have frequently produced many curious local subjective symptoms in impressionable persons by passing a magnet over a limb, but always of the nature I had previously suggested.