513 C. Some experiments on young children, designed to test the reality of the alleged mesmeric effluence, were carried out by Dr. Ltebeault, as described in the chapter on "Zoomagnetism " in his Thérapeutiquc Suggestive, 1891 (pp. 246-68). Having heard in 1882 from a mesmerist - a M. Longpretz - that he had cured a number of maladies in children less than 2½ years old by merely laying his hands on them for a few minutes morning and evening, Ltébeault tried the plan on his own young patients with the most satisfactory results. The children were sometimes asleep at the time; in any case they showed none of the usual symptoms of hypnosis, and gave no indication of understanding his remedial intentions. From these results he maintained in his Etude sur le Zoomagnétisme (1883) the probable existence of a nervous energy, transmissible from one human being to another, the essential characteristic of which was its curative power.

In reply to this paper, Dr. Bernheim argued that the intelligence, comprehension, and will of infants are much more developed than is ordinarily supposed, and that they probably are accessible to mental influence. Ltébeault himself had been inclined to attribute the effects he had found from the use of "mesmerised water " to some form of suggestion, since, - like hypnotism, and unlike therapeutic remedies, - the same remedial agent was used for many different maladies. He therefore carried out a fresh series of control experiments, using ordinary unmesmerised spring water, combined with suggestion, as a means of cure.

He placed a bottle of water in full view in the room where he received his patients. After examining the infants brought to him, he pointed out the bottle to their mothers, announcing that he had there a potent remedy which would certainly cure them. He took care to keep them in the room some time, so as to impress the idea strongly on the children and their parents, and create a general atmosphere of faith in the remedy. Details are given of twenty-six cases of children with various infantile maladies, varying in age from 19 days to 2¾ years, except one of five years old; in these cases there were nineteen cures, six ameliorations, and one failure. In several cases previous treatment of the ordinary medical kind had failed to give relief. In four of the nineteen successful cases he had added the method of laying on of hands to the use of the water, and in three cases of catarrhal ophthalmia the water had been used to bathe the eyelids as well as taken internally, so that the general suggestive effect might be reinforced by the local suggestion.

These results led Dr. Liébeault to abandon his provisional belief in the mesmeric effluence, and to conclude that in all the cases he had studied suggestion alone was at work. The experiments not only proved the potency of mental influence, even in a non-hypnotised condition, but also - by exhibiting this influence in action at a stage apparently so rudimentary - showed how early the intelligence of infants is developed.

518 A. Dr. W. B. Fahnestock, in Statuvolism, or Artificial Somnambulism (Chicago, 1871), maintained (p. 77), "That this state was a peculiar one (somnus a voluntate)... and was entered by the subject at pleasure. That it was a state into which any person could throw themselves and awaken themselves, either in part or the whole body at once, slowly or otherwise, independent of any one else, or subject to any one's control." (P. 78), "I have had over three hundred different individuals to enter this state under my care, and have found by innumerable experiments that they are entirely independent of me.... They can throw the whole or any part of the body into this state at pleasure.... I have had them to throw in a single finger, a hand, an arm, the whole brain, or even a single organ (or portion), and awake them at pleasure.... I have had many to fall into this sleep - and some who were seemingly determined not to do so - by simply stating that at a certain time I would magnetise all in the room, although I was thinking of other things, and did nothing but walk up and down".

See also a case recorded by Delboeuf {Revue de l'Hypnotisme, May 1889, p. 339), where a sufferer from toothache, angry at the dentist's refusal to hypnotise her for a trifling operation, "sends herself off" triumphantly in his chair, and eludes his twinges in spite of him.

518 B. Dr. Milne Bramwell has often taught subjects to hypnotise themselves without his intervention. The following statement is from his paper on "What is Hypnotism?" in the Proceedings S.P.R., vol. xii. pp. 240-41: -

Some six years ago I commenced to instruct patients to hypnotise themselves. This was done by suggesting in hypnosis that they should be able to reinduce the state at a given signal, as for example, by counting " One, two, three." These subjects could afterwards evoke the condition at will. I also found that the use of suggestion during hypnosis was not necessary for the induction of its phenomena. On the contrary, the suggestions could be made equally well beforehand in the waking state. The subject was able to suggest to himself when hypnosis should appear and terminate, and also the phenomena which he wished to obtain during and after it. This training was at first a limited one; the patients, for example, were instructed how to get sleep at night or relief from pain. They did not, however, always confine themselves to my suggestions, but originated others, and widely varying ones, regarding their health, comfort, or work. Some, trained in this way six years ago, still retain the power of hypnotising themselves.

It is true that the same author declares (loc. cit., p. 202) that he has never met with an instance in which a subject had succeeded in hypnotising himself, without having previously been hypnotised by others, and Fahnestock also lays stress upon the practical advisability of preliminary training: "By observing carefully the instructions which I have given, it is possible for any person to throw themselves into this state at pleasure, independent of any one; but it might not always be prudent to do so for the first time." But he insists that the "operator" or "instructor" is merely useful, not essential, in the production of the " state." So of his cataleptic patient Estelle, Dr. Despine writes that during the third period of her cure at Aix-les-Bains, she was able to bring about the crise herself by means of formules magnétiques. In like manner she could make it cease, and at will she could deepen or lighten her sleep. (Observations de Médecine Pratique, pp. 61-2.) Dr. Wingfield's experiments quoted below confirm these results.