Complete Hypnotism, Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism: How to Hypnotize: Being an Exhaustive and Practical System of Method, Application, and UseAlpheus, A.
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Complete Hypnotism, Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism: How to Hypnotize: Being an Exhaustive and Practical System of Method, Application, and Use
Alpheus, A.
Hypnotism; Mesmerism; Spiritualism; Telepathy
Yet even here we can by no means feel certain. Physicians have invented
various ingenious pieces of apparatus for testing the circulation and
other physiological conditions; but even these things are not sure
tests. The writer knows of the case of a man who has such control over
his heart and lungs that he can actually throw himself into a profound
sleep in which the breathing is so absolutely stopped for an hour that
a mirror is not moistened in the least by the breath, nor can the
pulses be felt. To all intents and purposes the man appears to be dead;
but in due time he comes to life again, apparently no whit the worse
for his experiment.
If an ordinary person were asked to hold out his arms at full length
for five minutes he would soon become exhausted, his breathing would
quicken, his pulse-rate increase. It might be supposed that if these
conditions did not follow the subject was in a hypnotic trance; but it
is well known that persons may easily train themselves to hold out the
arms for any length of time without increasing the respiration by one
breath or raising the pulse rate at all. We all remember Montaigne’s
famous illustration in which he said that if a woman began by carrying
a calf about every day she would still be able to carry it when it
became an ox.
In the Paris hospitals, where the greater number of regular scientific
experiments have been conducted, it is found that “trained subjects”
are required for all of the more difficult demonstrations. That some of
these famous scientists have been deceived, there is no doubt. They
know it themselves. A case which will serve as an illustration is that
of Dr. Luys, some of whose operations were “exposed” by Dr. Ernest
Hart, an English student of hypnotism of a skeptical turn of mind. One
of Dr. Luys’s pupils in a book he has published makes the following
statement, which helps to explain the circumstances which we will give
a little later. Says he:
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