Page:The Naturalisation of the Supernatural.pdf/24

6 the S. P. R., precisely because it has been claimed by medical men, who both by their education and their opportunities are better qualified for its prosecution. But in 1882 no English doctor who cared for his reputation had a good word to say for hypnotism; and on the continent its chief, almost its only exponent was Liébeault, an obscure practitioner in a small provincial town. The attitude of the scientific world to the subject may be inferred from the fact that in drafting the Society's prospectus it was thought necessary to class hypnotism amongst "debatable phenomena," and to write, a generation after Esdaile and Braid, of the "alleged insensibility to pain" in the "mesmeric" trance. That within the last decade or so the facts of hypnotism have begun to find acceptance with British medical men is no doubt partly due to the experimental work begun by Edmund Gurney and the writings of Frederic Myers, and later to the adoption of hypnotic suggestion in medical practice by Dr. Milne Bramwell, Dr. Lloyd Tuckey, and other members of the Society.

The investigations under headings 1, 4, and 5 of the prospectus are, as already said, still proceeding. And in the course of its existence the Society has found many subjects to investigate of a cognate character, though not actually included in the original scheme. A committee of the Society, for instance, of which Dr. Hodgson was the leading member, examined and exposed the pretended marvels of Mme. Blavatsky and the early