Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/77

Rh is further calloused to something not unlike leather by constant exposed use. This leaves the distance to be traversed between the natural sensitiveness and the induced insensitiveness considerably less than it would be with us. The intervening step is the result of exaltation. By first firmly believing that no pain will be felt and then inducing a state of ecstasy whose preoccupation the afferent sensation fails to pierce, no pain is perceived.

More than this, the burn is probably not followed by the same after-effects. For there is a more or less complete absence of blisters. The part burnt is burnt like cloth, and that is the end of it. No inconvenience whatever follows the act among the truly good. In less devout folk small blisters are raised, but without noticeable annoyance. The fact is that in burns generally it is the cure that constitutes the complaint. It is the body's feverish anxiety to repair the damage that causes all the trouble. Even in the severest burns very little of us is ever burnt up, but our own alarm that it may be induces our consequent inflammation. Delbœuf showed this conclusively upon one of his hypnotized patients.