The actual method of experiment was as follows: Mrs. Piper would sit in a room partially darkened, holding the hands of the sitter, whilst some other person (generally Mr. Myers, Dr. Leaf, Professor Lodge, or a shorthand writer) would be present to take notes. Mrs. Piper would presently go off into a trance, attended at its outset by slight convulsive movements resembling those of an epileptic attack, and would after a brief interval assume the voice, gestures, and phraseology of a man. In this guise she gave herself out as one "Dr. Phinuit," a medical man who had studied medicine in Paris in the first quarter of the present century. In the impersonation of this character Mrs. Piper used occasionally broken English, pronounced some words, proper names especially, with a French accent, and was admittedly sometimes very successful in diagnosing and prescribing for the complaints of her sitters and their friends. "Dr. Phinuit" would then pour out a more or less coherent flood of conversation, questions, and remarks about the relatives and friends of those present, their past history and personal affairs generally, some of which was apparently mere padding, some obviously chance shots, or "fishing" for further information; whilst, in the midst of all the irrelevancy and incoherence, there would occasionally be clear, detailed statements on intimate matters of which it is inconceivable that Mrs. Piper could have attained any knowledge by normal means; just as, to quote the apt metaphor of Professor Lodge, in listening at a telephone "you hear the dim and meaningless fragments of a city's gossip, till back again comes the voice obviously addressed to you, and speaking with firmness and decision." In regard to the trance itself, it has no doubt close analogy with the hypnotic trance, though Mrs. Piper is not readily amenable to hypnotism by ordinary means, and when hypnotised her condition is described by Professor James as very different from that of the "medium trance." (_Proc._, vol. vi. p. 653; viii. p. 56.) In the latter state Mrs. Piper is, occasionally at least, anæsthetic in certain senses, and analgesic in various parts of the body (viii. pp. 4-6), and her eyes are closed, with the eyeballs turned upwards.