A correspondent of the Times of Thursday, writing from Paris,
gives a very curious account of experiments made in what is now called " hypnotism " at the Salpetriere Hospital, under the direction of Dr. Charcot. A patient of this class, —and we are thankful to hear that, in Dr. Charcot's opinion, only one person in 100,000 is subject to the hypnotic influence, —was made first quite insensible to pain, next perfectly cata- leptic, and finally perfectly receptive of any fictitious im- pression which the operator chose to suggest to her. "A. file was bitten and pronounced to be good chocolate. On a suggestion from Dr. Guinn, a supposititious bird perched on her finger. She spoke of its coral beak, its bright eyes. It was a parognet. It flew away, and its flight was followed with a mournful glance. My friend, an English Member of Parliament, was converted into a Chinaman. His robes, his chaussure, his pigtail, his slit eyes, were all described with microscopic exactness She poisoned the Chinaman with arsenic, and wept bitterly at her crime. In giving him the phantom cup she gasped : Drink it not ; the cup is poisoned I,'" It seems to us that phenomena of this kind might suggest a philosophy according to which the whole human race might be treated as the mere subject of hypnotic illusion under the influence of some potent external mind. But, of course, there would be the usual unreality in all subjective and illusive theories,—namely, that the subjective and illusive hypothesis itself might be equally illusive.
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