Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/786

766 a subject was hypnotized, the pulse was at first slowed, but afterward accelerated, and he attributed this acceleration to the occurrence of cataleptic rigidity of the muscles. He also observed that the respiration was increased in frequency, and sometimes became difficult. Later observers have made numerous experiments, some of them very carefully conducted, in order to settle these points, and their results in general support Braid's conclusions. These investigators, however, employed Braid's method of hypnotizing, and this fact vitiates their results, because the continued fixation on the glass knob requires a good deal of physical effort, tires the eyes, and gives rise to a certain amount of emotion, particularly in subjects who have not been previously hypnotized. In consequence, there is a physiological increase in the rapidity of the pulse and respiration, not unlike that which some persons experience when being examined by a physician, and which are therefore to be regarded as the effects of emotion and fatigue, rather than of hypnotism. This view receives confirmation from the fact that subjects who are hypnotized by the suggestion-method of Liébault and Bernheim seldom exhibit any alterations in the rhythm and rapidity of the circulation and respiration. I say seldom, because it does sometimes happen that a nervous person experiences an acceleration of these functions when hypnotized for the first time, even when the suggestion-method is employed.

There are also rare cases of somnambulism in which it is possible to modify the pulse-rate by means of suggestion. Thus, Beaunis reports a case in which the pulse registered ninety-eight beats per minute during the sleep and was reduced to ninety-two per minute by a suggestion of decrease. Then the heart, having recovered from the effects of suggestion, returned to its previous rate of pulsation, and a suggestion of increase resulted in an acceleration to one hundred and nineteen beats per minute.

There are exceptional cases of somnambulism in which it is possible to produce the most astonishing effects upon the circulation of the blood at the surface of the skin by suggestion. Nosebleeds have actually been produced in this way, and in several cases real blisters were caused. In one of these cases eight postage-stamps were applied to the shoulder during hypnotic sleep, and the suggestion was given that a blister was being applied. The subject was allowed to sleep all day, and on the following morning the stamps were removed. The skin under the stamps was found to be thick, wrinkled, and yellowish white, over an area of from four to five centimetres in diameter, and around this space there was a zone of intense redness. By four o'clock of the same day, four or five small blisters had appeared, and fifteen days later evidences of inflammation were still present. This case