EFFORTS OF SCIENTISTS.
Many of the most eminent scientists of Europe are now devoting themselves assiduously to these researches. Periodicals making a specialty of the subject are now published in France, Germany, and England. A catalogue of the recent literature of hypnotism and related phenomena, compiled by Max Dessoir, was printed in the number of the German magazine called the Sphinx for February of this year, and this catalogue occupied nine pages. The list is limited to those works written on the lines laid under the methods of the modern school, all books being excluded whose authors hold to “mesmeric” theories, or who are even professional magnetizers. The catalogue is, therefore, as strictly scientific as possible, and, being classified with German thoroughness under the different branches of the subject, such as “hystero-hypnotism,” “suggestion,” “fascination,” etc., it will prove a valuable assistance to the student.
In this country the interest of scientists has not yet been aroused to an extent comparable with that of European investigators. Old prejudices have not entirely lost their potency. One of the most eminent professors of a leading university is said to have been subjected to ridicule from his colleagues because of a marked interest shown in the subject, and a Boston physician of high standing within a few months confided to the writer that he had made use of hypnotic methods, with gratifying success, in the case of a patient where ordinary remedies had proven unavailing, but he did not venture to make the results public, since his fellow doctors might be inclined to condemn his action as “irregular.”
A work embracing the whole subject has lately appeared in Paris, and, as it is to form a volume of the valuable International Scientific series, published in English, French, German, and Italian, it can hardly fail to diffuse a correct popular understanding of the results thus far attained. The book is called “Le Magnetism Animal” (Animal Magnetism), and its authors are Messrs. Alfred Binet and Charles Féré of the medical staff of the Salpètrière Hospital for Nervous Disorders in Paris. It gives a history of the patient researches conducted at that institution by the medical staff under the celebrated Prof. Charcot during the past nine years. These experiments have been prosecuted according to the most exact scientific methods, and with the most extreme caution. The endeavor has been to obtain, first of all, the most elementary psychic phenomena, and to test every step in the investigations by separate experiment, specially devised to prove the good faith of the subject and the reality of his hallucination, to eliminate the possibility of unconscious suggestion, to establish relations with similar phenomena of disease or health in the domain of physiology and psychology, and to note the modifications which can be brought about by altering the conditions of the experiments. The authors possess the great scientific virtue of never dogmatising. In the entire book not a single law is laid down, not a single hypothesis is advanced, which is not reached by the most approved inductive processes. A great service of the book lies in its enunciation of new and trustworthy methods for studying the physiology of the brain in health and disease, while it brings into the realm of physical experiment vexed questions of psychology heretofore given over to metaphysical methods exclusively.