Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 49.djvu/365

Rh 'Why, Maria, what is the matter with your arm? Have you hurt it? What mark is this? Let me see; pull up your sleeve.' She did so with a slightly sulky, ashamed air. 'Why, it looks like a cross; where did you get this?' 'I don't know, sir.' 'How long has this been on your arm?' 'More than a month, sir.' 'Have you felt anything?' 'No, sir; only at one time I had a great deal of itching and burning, and a few days afterward this mark came out on my arm.' After this we frequently spoke to Maria about the cross, and when requested to she would roll up her sleeve and show it to visitors, although she always seemed reluctant to do so. Many months afterward she left our service, and in about two weeks she made her appearance at my office in town, asking me to remove the cross from her arm, as it attracted the notice of the family with whom she was now living, and she was much annoyed by the many questions asked her. I magnetized her, and then told her that the cross would disappear in a few days, and she would be no more troubled with it. I saw her a few days afterward at Salto; the cross had disappeared."

In another case Dr. Biggs caused a cross to appear every Friday on the chest for a period of nearly six months. These cases are not sufficiently well authenticated to make them of much value taken by themselves, but, in conjunction with the results got by other experimenters, they are worthy of consideration.

For example, Prof. Pierre Janet suggested to his hysterical patient Rose that he would put a mustard plaster upon her abdomen to relieve hysterical contractures of the stomach. "I found, some hours later," he says, "a swollen mark, dark red in color, in the form of an elongated rectangle, but—odd detail—none of its angles were clearly marked, for they seemed neatly cut off. I remarked that the burn had an odd shape. 'Don't you know,' said she, 'that the corners of the Rigollot plasters are always cut off so that they won't hurt?' "Following up this hint. Prof. Janet suggested putting on a plaster shaped like a six-pointed star, and he got the corresponding burn. On the chest of another patient he produced an S in the same way. Prof, von Krafft-Ebing has done the same with his famous patient Ilma Szandor.

Prof. Charcot's case of suggested œdema is even more curious, as it involved not merely vasomotor changes, but also a fall of temperature, and probably modified nutrition as well. It is reported by Dr. Levaillain. M. Charcot had presented two cases