A bystander pointing simultaneously at another finger, never made that insensible or rigid.Of course the elective rapport with their operator had been developed in these trained subjects during the hypnotic state, but the phenomenon then occurred in some of them during the waking state, even when their consciousness was absorbed in animated conversation with a fourth party. I confess that when I saw these experiments I
was impressed with the necessity for admitting between the emanations from different people differences for which we have no name, and a discriminative sensibility for them of the nature of which we can form no clear conception, but which seems to be developed in certain subjects by the hypnotic trance.
-- The enigmatic reports of the effect of magnets and metals, even if they be due, as many contend, to unintentional suggestion on the operator's part, certainly involve hypersthetic perception, for the operator seeks as well as possible to conceal the moment when the magnet is brought into play, and yet the subject not only finds it out that moment in away difficult to understand, but may develop effects which (in the first instance certainly)
the operator did not expect to find.Unilateral contractures, movements, paralyses, hallucinations, etc., are made to pass to tile other side of the body, hallucinations to disappear, or to change to the complementary color, suggested emotions to pass into their opposites, etc.Many Italian observations agree with the French ones, and the upshot is that if unconscious suggestion lie at the bottom of this matter, the patients show an enormously exalted power of divining what it is they are expected to do.This hypersthetic perception is what concerns us now. Its modus cannot yet be said to be defined.
Changes in the nutrition of the tissues may be produced by suggestion.
These effects lead into therapeutics -- a subject which I do not propose to treat of here.But I may say that there seems no reasonable ground for doubting that in certain chosen subjects the suggestion of a congestion, a burn, a blister, a raised papule, or a bleeding from the nose or skin, may produce the effect.Messrs, Beaunis, Berjon, Bernheim, Bourru, Buret, Charcot, Delboeuf, Dumontpalier, Focachon, Forel, Jendrássik, Krafft-Ebing, Liébault, Liégeois, Lipp, Mabille, and others have recently vouched for one or other of these effects.Messrs.Delboeuf and Liégeois have annulled by suggestion, one the effects of a burn, the other of a blister.Delboeuf was led to his experiments after seeing a burn on the skill produced by suggestion, at the Saléptrière, by reasoning that if the idea of a pain could produce inflammation it must be because pain was itself an inflammatory irritant, and that the abolition of it from a real burn ought therefore to entail the absence of inflammation.
He applied the actual cautery (as well as vesicants) to symmetrical places on the skin, affirming that no pain should be felt on one of the sides.
The result was a dry scorch on that side, with (as he assures me) no after-mark, but on the other side a regular blister with suppuration and a subsequent scar.This explains the innocuity of certain assaults made on subjects during trance.To test stimulation, recourse is often had to sticking pills under their finger-nails or through their tongue, to inhalations of strong ammonia, and the like.These irritations, when not felt by the subject, seem to leave no after-consequences.One is reminded of the reported non-inflammatory character of the wounds made on themselves by dervishes in their pious orgies.On the other hand, the reddenings and bleedings of the skin along certain lines, suggested by tracing lines or pressing objects thereupon, put the accounts handed down to us of the stigmata of the cross appearing oil the hands, feet, sides, and forehead of certain Catholic mystics in a new light.As so often happens, a fact is denied until a welcome interpretation comes with it.Then it is admitted readily enough; and evidence judged quite insufficient to back a claim, so long as the church had an interest in ****** it, proves to be quite sufficient for modern scientific enlightenment, the moment it appears that a reputed saint can thereby be classed as 'a case of hystero-epilepsy.'
There remain two other topics, vis., post-hypnotic effects of suggestion, and effects of suggestion in the waking state.
Post-hypnotic, or deferred, suggestions are such as are given to the patients during trance, to take effect after waking.They succeed with a certain number of patients even when the execution is named for a remote period -- months or even a year, in one case reported by M.Liégeois.
In this way one can make the patient feel a pain, or be paralyzed, or be hungry or thirsty, or have an hallucination, positive or negative, or perform some fantastic action after emerging from his trance.The effect in question may be ordered to take place not immediately, but after an interval of time has elapsed, and the interval may be left to the subject to measure, or may be marked by a certain signal.The moment the signal occurs, or the time is run out, the subject, who until then seems in a perfectly normal waking condition, will experience the suggested effect.In many instances, whilst thus obedient to the suggestion, he seems to fall into the hypnotic condition again.This is proved by the fact that the moment the hallucination or suggested performance is over he forgets it, denies all knowledge of it, and so forth; and by the further fact that he is 'suggestable' during its performance, that is, will receive new hallucinations, etc., at command.
