Page:Malay Sketches.pdf/82



, xvii. 14

N the spring of 1892 I was privileged, by the kindness of a friend and the courtesy of Dr. Luys, to visit the Hospital de la Charité in Paris, where I witnessed some very remarkable and interesting experiments in suggestion. There were patients undergoing successful treatment for nervous disorders where the disease was in process of gradual relief by passing from the afflicted person to a medium without injury to the latter; there was the strange power of hypnotising, influencing and awakening certain sujets whose nervous organisations seem to be specially susceptible, and there was the astonishing influence of the magnet over these same sujets when already hypnotised. There is something more than usually uncanny in the sight of a