From an Easy Chair

by Sir E. Ray Lankester

Thirty years ago some of the doctors in Paris believed that a small disc of gold, or copper, or of silver, laid flat on the arm could produce an absence of sensation in the arm, and that whilst one person could be thus affected by one metal another person would respond only to another metal, according to a supposed “sympathy” or special affinity of the nervous system for this or that metal. This astonishing doctrine was thought to be proved by certain experiments made with the curiously “nervous” (hysterical) women who frequent the Salpêtrière Hospital as out-patients. That the loss of sensation, which was real enough, was due to what is called “suggestion”—that is to say, a belief on the part of the patient that such would be the case, because the doctor said it would—and had nothing to do with one metal or another, was subsequently proved by making use of wooden discs in place of metallic ones, the patient being led to suppose that a disc of metal of the kind with which she believed herself “sympathetic” was being applied. Sensation disappeared just as readily as when a special metallic disc was used.

The old hypothesis of the influence of a magnet on the human body was at this time revived, and Charcot’s pupils found that when a susceptible female patient held in the hand a bar of iron surrounded by a coil of copper wire leading to a chemical electric cell or battery nothing happened so long as the connection was broken. But as soon as the wire was connected so as to set up an electric current and to make the bar of iron into a magnet, the hand and arm (up to the shoulder) of the young woman holding the bar, lost all sensation. She was not allowed to see her hand and arm, and was apparently quite unconscious of the thrusting of large carpet-needles into, and even through, them, though as long as the bar of iron was not magnetised she shrunk from a pin-prick applied to the same part. I saw this experiment with Charcot and some others present, and I noticed that the order to an assistant to “make contact,” that is to say, to convert the bar of iron into a magnet, was given very emphatically by Charcot, and that there was an attitude of expectation on the part of all present—which was followed by the demonstration by means of needle-pricking that the young woman’s arm had lost sensation, or, as they say, “was in a state of anæsthesia.”

Charcot went away saying he should repeat the experiment before some medical friends in an hour or two. In the meantime, being left alone in the laboratory with my companion as witness, I emptied the chemical fluid (potassium bichromate) from the electric battery and substituted pure water. It was now incapable of setting up an electric current and converting the bar into a magnet. When Charcot returned with his visitors, the patient was brought in, and the whole ritual repeated. There was no effect on sensation when the bar was held in the hand so long as the order to set the current going, and so magnetise the bar, had not been given. At last the word was given, “Make!” and at once the patient’s arm became anæsthetised, as earlier in the day. We ran large carpet-needles into the hand without the smallest evidence of the patient’s knowledge. The order was given to break the current (that is, to cease magnetising the bar), and at once the young woman exhibited signs of discomfort, and remonstrated with Charcot for allowing such big needles to be thrust into her hand when she was devoid of sensation! My experiment had succeeded perfectly.

It would not have done to let Charcot, or anyone else (except my witness) know that when the order “Make” was given, there was no “making,” but that the bar remained as before un-magnetised. The conviction of everyone, including Charcot himself, that the bar became a magnet, and that loss of sensation would follow, was a necessary condition of the “suggestion” or control of the patient. It was thus demonstrated that the state of the iron bar as magnet or not magnet had nothing to do with the result, but that the important thing was that the patient should believe that the bar became a magnet, and that she should be influenced by her expectation, and that of all those around her, that the bar, being now a magnet, sensation would disappear from her arm. With appropriate apologies I explained to Charcot that the electric battery had been emptied by me, and that no current had been produced. The assistants rushed to verify the fact, and I was expecting that I should be frigidly requested to take my leave, when my hand was grasped, and my shoulder held by the great physician, who said, “Mais que vous avez bien fait, mon cher Monsieur!” I had many delightful hours with him in after years, both at the Salpêtrière and in his beautiful old house and garden in the Boulevard St. Germain.

There are few “subjects” in this country for the student of hypnotism to equal the patients of the Salpêtrière and other hospitals in France—and very few amongst those who read, and even write, about “occultism” and “super-normal phenomena” know the leading facts which have been established in regard to this important branch of psychology. The study of the natural history of the mind, its modes of activity, and its defects and diseases is of fundamental importance—but its results are often either unknown or greatly misunderstood by those who have most need of such knowledge, namely those who, mistaking the attitude of an ignorant child for that of “a candid inquirer,” try to form a judgment as to the truth or untruth of stories of ghosts, thought-transference, spirit-controls, crystal-gazing, divining-rods, amulets, and the evil eye.

27. Luminous Owls and Other Luminous Animals and Plants

A correspondent lately described in a letter to a London newspaper what he believed to have been “a luminous owl,” which was seen flying about at night in Norfolk. He mentioned the well-known fact that the dense greasy patch of feathers on the breast of the heron is said to be luminous by many trustworthy observers. It is very probable that it was some carnivorous or fish-eating bird, which was thus seen in a luminous condition at night. The occurrence is much more in accordance with known facts than most people would suppose to be the case. Light, even strong light, is produced by many natural objects without the accompaniment of heat. We usually expect not merely fire where there is smoke, but heat—in fact, great heat, where there is light or flame. Yet there are many instances to the contrary, and the word “phosphorescence” is used to indicate a production of light without heat in reference to the fact that phosphorus is luminous, even when covered with water, although no appreciable heat accompanies the light such as we are accustomed to observe in ordinary “combustion” or burning.

There is more than one kind of phosphorescence. We separate the phosphorescence which is due to the oxidation of peculiar fatty matters in the bodies of plants and of animals (such as glow-worms) from that which is caused by the breaking or heating of crystals (white arsenic and apatite), or by longer or shorter exposure to the sun’s rays (luminous paint), or by radio-activity, or by electrical discharges in vacuum tubes.

The “luminous owl” of the above-mentioned correspondent and the luminous breast of the heron probably owe their strange appearance to the birds having smeared themselves with phosphorescent carrion or dead fish, the luminosity of which is due to bacteria. The simplest case of phosphorescence in living things is that of the almost ubiquitous phosphorescent bacteria, minute microbes like those which cause putrefaction. They can be obtained and cultivated from almost any sample of sea water. A thin slice of meat placed in a shallow dish of salt water, so as to be barely covered by the liquid, will in cool, damp weather, almost certainly become covered with the growth of this phosphorescent germ and appear brilliantly luminous. The populations of seaside towns have often been terrified by all the meat in the butchers’ shops suddenly becoming thus phosphorescent. The growth may be cultivated in flasks of salt broth. I have prepared such flasks, which, when shaken so as to introduce oxygen, give out a heatless blaze of light of a greenish colour, brilliant enough to light up a room. I once found a bone in a dog’s kennel which was brilliantly phosphorescent owing to this bacterium. I kept it for several days and showed it to Huxley as well as to other friends. A certain kind of phosphorescent bacteria are parasitic in the blood of sandhoppers, causing a disease which kills them. The diseased sandhoppers shine like glow-worms. I have found them abundantly on the sea shore near Boulogne and near Trouville, but not yet on the English coast. The bacteria can be seen with the microscope and inoculated from diseased luminous sandhoppers into healthy ones by using a needle to prick first the diseased and then the healthy creature.

The animals of the sea are often provided with secreting organs, producing a fatty body which can be oxidised and made luminous at the pleasure of the animal. Thus many marine worms and minute sea-shrimps give out brilliant flashes of light. Jelly-fish of many kinds, and the minute noctiluca, no bigger than a pin’s head, and the three-horned animalcule Ceratium tripos are the usual cause of the phosphorescence of the sea on our own coast. Deep-sea fishes are provided with large phosphorescent discs or plates on the surface of the body, which are sometimes furnished with lenses like a bull’s-eye lantern. Glow-worms and fire-flies and some tropical beetles are examples of insects which have fatty phosphorescent organs which they can illuminate (oxidise) at pleasure, under the control of the nervous system. Some of the West Indian phosphorescent beetles are remarkable for having “lights” of two different colours. In the marshes around Mantua the fire-flies are so abundant at the end of June that the air for miles is full of them, and the sight so extraordinary and beautiful as to be worth a long journey to see. I have seen fire-flies as far north as Bonn on the Rhine. Once I was nearly upset by a horse shying at a glow-worm on a bank in Worcestershire. Some moulds and well-grown toadstools are phosphorescent, and a phosphorescent earthworm, a peculiar species, now well known, was first of all discovered in the South of Ireland by the late Professor Allman. In the autumn I have often picked up the phosphorescent centipede, which is remarkable for the fact that the phosphorescent material is a kind of slime which exudes from the body—the creature leaving thus a luminous trail behind it as it crawls. The piddock, or pholas—a boring sort of mussel—has brilliant phosphorescent glands, and the boys at Naples love to munch these shell-fish at night, and then to alarm the passer-by by opening their mouths, and showing a brilliant green light within. Cases are recorded, but not recently, of persons suffering from tuberculosis becoming phosphorescent; a possible, but certainly a rare, occurrence. Animal and vegetable phosphorescence is varied in colour. The light emitted is blue-green, green, yellow, orange, and even red in different cases. It is always due to the oxidation of a separate fatty chemical body, which can in many instances be extracted, then dried, and subsequently made luminous by moistening with ether, in consequence of which oxidation by the oxygen of the atmosphere is facilitated.