Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/721

Rh When hypnotized, he passes into a light sleep, remains vaguely conscious of his surroundings, and remembers all that happens. The smaller muscles, as those of the eyelids, lips, and fingers, are entirely under my control, but the larger groups only in part. I can affect all his senses to some degree except that of hearing. The sense of sight is also refractory, and, although I can obliterate it, it is only for a few moments. I lean over him, look him in the eyes, and say, "I am getting dim—you can not see me clearly—now I am fading out altogether—I am gone—you are blind." "No," he says, "I see you still." He tells me afterward that I did grow faint and for a moment vanished, but almost instantly reappeared in brighter colors than before. I put a chair before him and say: "There is Mr. S. You see him clearly—he is looking at you." "No," is the reply, "I do not see him; he is not there." I repeat it over and over again, but without effect. I try again. We are in Prof. F's lecture room, and R is sitting in the large chair on the platform. "There," I say, "in front of you, is Prof. F." R denies it, denies it several times, and then suddenly admits it. When I press him to tell me exactly what he sees, I find that he fancies himself sitting in the body of the room where he usually sits during lectures, and sees Prof. F standing on the platform in an attitude he frequently adopts. In other words, R is dreaming with his eyes open, and his dream is determined by my command, he himself supplying for the dream of Prof. F a suitable associative setting. At another time I told R to reflect upon the name "Henry Jones," and put in his hand a pencil. After some time the hand fell to twitching and then swiftly wrote "Henry." "What are you doing?" I ask. "Thinking of that name." "What is your hand doing?" "Nothing." "What did it do a moment ago?" "It moved." "Did you move it?" "No." "What did it move for?" "I don't know." No questioning on my part could elicit any consciousness of the writing. In other words, the touch suggestion given by contact with the pencil had re-enforced the motor tendencies of the thought, and the thought had literally written itself.

I have not myself seen any cases of toxæmic suggestibility, but many are reported in the literature of the subject. For example. Dr. Janet describes a patient suffering from alcoholic delirium who was suggestible in the highest degree. Dr. Carpenter quotes from Dr. Moreau a description of the effects of hasheesh, than which nothing could better describe the augmentation in the developmental and associative tendencies of the suggested states. "We become the sport of impressions of the most opposite kind; the continuity of our ideas may be broken by the slightest cause. We are turned, to use a common expression, by every wind. By a word or gesture our thoughts may be