This illustrates the fact, which cannot be too cogently impressed on the reader, that hypnotism does not induce a new condition, nor work on perfectly novel lines to the extent which is often supposed, but that its effects have analogies in nearly all the waking conditions of life, and that it acts by intensifying and utilizing mental states which are abnormal in degree, but not unnatural in kind.

Such phenomena throw a strong light on many stories of supernatural apparitions, and show how useful hypnotism may prove in the hands of competent observers as a key to psychical problems. Here we find an idea impressed on the ' unconscious mind,' and lying dormant for months, brought into action by the simple efflux of time, as certainly as a piece of clockwork can be set to run down at a fixed hour. I need hardly add that such experiments as the foregoing are successful only in a very small proportion of cases, and probably only in 'educated ' subjects.

Fulfilment of a suggestion, the prompting of which has either not been consciously heard, or has been instantly forgotten, is not without its analogy in ordinary life. We must all acknowledge that we occasionally think, speak, and act in what seems a motiveless manner, and yet, by careful introspection or tracing back, we shall probably find that our thought, word, or action has its source in some forgotten or apparently unnoticed incident, which has left its impression upon our brain cells. The brain cells, once stimulated, may under certain conditions, as in delirium, prompt the utterance of sounds apparently forgotten or unrecorded. Thus, we find persons on their death-bed, or in fever, speaking a language which they had forgotten since childhood; like an elderly Scotch physician, a friend of mine, who for an hour before his death talked only in Gaelic, the language of his childhood, which he had not spoken for fifty years.* There is a well-known story of a servant-girl, who, in the delirium of fever, continually repeated passages from the Greek Testament, which her ears had unconsciously taken in years before, when she had been in the service of a clergyman.

And all persons entrusted with the care of lunatics must know what unseemly and even vile expressions may, in the paroxysms of insanity, be uttered by young, refined and virtuous women, whose lives have been carefully guarded from evil influences. The vicious word or phrase heard by them long ago, perhaps in early childhood, while passing along a street, or standing at a window, though uncomprehended at the time, and apparently unremem-bered, was nevertheless recorded in the brain cells.*

* Some persons are, as Bernheim points out, ' suggestible' to an extraordinary degree, independently of hypnotism. This, he finds, is especially marked in children and in persons affected with phthisis. He relates how he has frequently suggested imaginary actions, and even crimes, to such subjects, with the result that the ideas have been accepted as true, and have become as actual truths to them. This increase in the normal suggestibility may perhaps serve to explain the extravagant stories invented by some children. Such untruthfulness may not depend upon viciousness, but on excessive imagination, which has been set in action by some outside suggestion. Professor Dejerine, speaking of suggestibility without hypnosis, cites the case of two young countrymen under his treatment in the hospital. They were both fresh from military service when he first saw them, and neither of them had ever been hypnotized; yet he was at once able by simple suggestion to evoke in them sensory hallucinations, changes of personality, and all the other psychical phenomena which one is accustomed to associate with the most advanced stages of hypnosis {Revue de l'Hypn-otisme, January, 1891).

Anaesthesia by suggestion may be sometimes induced quite independently of hypnotism. For instance, Dr. Robinson, of the Mile End Infirmary, found that he could induce complete anaesthesia and analgesia in a hystero-epileptic girl, who had never been hypnotized, by telling her she was to feel nothing. The girl had confidence in the physician, and his suggestion was in some way able to produce a condition resembling hysterical anaesthesia, probably by inhibition of the sensory centres.

It will thus be seen that suggestion is an exceedingly powerful agent - effective in the hands of the experimentalist, and efficacious also in those of the physician.

Most of the Continental practitioners of the system use it chiefly at consultations in their own rooms, where, of course, sufferers from acute diseases are not likely to present themselves. It is frequently used in childbirth with beneficial result, and in surgery it is often employed. No doubt most susceptible persons might be painlessly operated upon while under its influence, but, as a rule, the natural agitation of a patient before an operation would so distract his attention as to render hypnotism impossible at the moment. A course of training would be necessary, involving much time and trouble; whereas chloroform and other anaesthetics are easily administered, and are commonly certain in their effect. Bernheim uses suggestion

* Dr. Felkin, in his very excellent resume of the progress of hypnotism, gives an interesting experience of his own with a hypnotized subject. She was a woman of fifty, who could not in her waking state speak English, yet when hypnotized she begun to talk fluently in English. It appears that she had known the language as a girl, but had entirely forgotten it, and that hypnotism brought back the girlish memory (op. cit., p. 50).

A case reported by the Society for Psychical Research shows the extreme importance of very early impressions which may not have been registered in ordinary memory, and yet cause after-effects. A lady of early middle age was invariably haunted by a certain nightmare. This always took the form of being attacked and bitten by a great white dog.