Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/401

 ALCOHOLIC HYPNOTISM 387

questioned, having returned to his senses, he did not vary in his statements.

As to other places where they accused him of having been and left without paying what he owed, he invariably aiifirmed that he had no remembrance of any such thing. " I do not deny it," said he, "since the justice says so; but I do not recollect it at all."

It was impossible for him to recall how he got to a place. He found himself in prison, and from that moment his memory was a little better.

His previous life he related quite well. Persons who had seen him during the period when the incriminating acts had taken place had noticed no sign of mental trouble. During his sojourn at the asylum there was evidence of special hallu- cinations of a terrifying nature, and ideas of grandeur and wealth.

According to Lentz, epileptics, after violent fits, talk in a coherent way, conducting themselves with every appearance of reason, and yet there exists at the time absolutely no inward conscious'ness. Their conduct is only a succession of actions entirely automatic, in which consciousness has no part, but which, as in somnambulism, still preserves some connections and seems at first the result of determinate intellectual combinations.

As an example we give H., a case of Lentz, aged twenty- three years.

The father of H. almost constantly drank ; his mother was irritable and violent.

With a companion he spent the whole night going from saloon to saloon. The next day they went to the country. They met a woman seated on the roadside. He drew a knife which he had been using to clean his pipe: "Woman," he cried, "I'll kill you ; save yourself, woman, or I will kill you!" The woman was saved ; but at the same moment three workmen appeared at the turn of the way. Henry threw himself on them and struck them successively with the greatest rapidity. After this murder Henry was calm. He walked on, and turning to his companion said to him: "Are you going ?" But upon cries