Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/379

Rh nervous impressibility, and of the power which imagination exercises over their minds. Others seem to be rebellious against it, and it is necessary to prepare them for it. The contemplation of the glass button exacted by M. Hansen (the magnetizer at Breslau) is intended solely to promote this excitability. Dr. Braid, of Manchester, first demonstrated that the fixed view of inanimate objects provoked a condition akin to the cataleptic sleep. Persons put to this sleep by him became insensible to pain. Some retained a feeling of what passed; others lost it. Fixing the sight upon bright objects is attended by peculiar phenomena. The dazzling effect, the flow of tears, and the fatigue of the retina cause the images on the edges of the field of vision to disappear. The hand that holds the button becomes indistinct and the button fades away. Phenomena of contrasts are produced, and posterior images appear during the involuntary movements of the eyes. Certain feeble and monotonous sounds act in a similar manner to produce stupefaction. If we cause a person to sit with his back against a table on which a watch has been put, and tell him to listen to its ticking, he will in a few minutes fall into the hypnotic sleep, and will then imitate unconsciously the motions of the operator. The effect is especially prompt if the eyes are kept shut. Light and continuous excitations on the surface of the skin exert a similar effect. This is the property on which depend the manipulations of touch and the passes which the magnetizer makes along the face of the person whom he wishes to put to sleep. These passes produce peculiar sensations, partly of contact and partly of heat. The sensations of contact at a distance are produced by the oscillations of the air, which is disturbed by the hand of the magnetizer. These currents occasion an almost imperceptible feeling of prickling, of shuddering. The sensation of heat is provoked by the difference in the temperature of the hand, which has been warmed by exercise, and of the motionless face of the patient.

The reactions to the different excitations vary according to the individual. Some persons are more sensitive to an excitation of the skin; others to that of the hearing or sight. The organs in which stupefaction is first felt are also the first to return to consciousness if they are subjected to an energetic shock. The touch of a cold hand on the face, a word spoken aloud at the ear, a light brought suddenly before the eyes, are enough to break the charm. After the waking, the disposition to hypnotism persists in a latent form. One who has been put to sleep many times has only to imagine he is going to fall into that condition, to go to sleep really. He has only to sit down, shut his eyes, and think, to the exclusion of every other idea, of the torpor which is about to overtake him, for the phenomenon to have its full effect. There is needed, in a word, to produce this effect, an exclusion of all change of thought and images. Having become acquainted with this disposition, we can produce effects which will be really inexplicable to