Baillif in his thesis (1878) and Chevillard in his (for spiritualists) very interesting books, tried, by means of various arguments, to uphold the fluidic explanation. Despine also thought that by its help he had been able to explain the phenomena; but it was Barety who, in the year 1881, first turned general attention in this direction. According to him, mankind possesses a nerve force which emanates from him in different kinds of streams. Those coming from the eyes and fingers produce insensibility to pain, while those generated by the breath cause hypnotic conditions. This nerve force goes out into the ether, and there obeys the laws that govern light, being broken into spectra, etc. Claude Perronnet has more lately advanced similar views, and his greatest work is now in press. Frederick W.H. Myers and Edmund Gurney sympathize with these views, and try to unite them with the mesmerist doctrine of personal influence and their theory of telepathy. The third champion in England of hypnotism, Prof. Hack Tuke, on the contrary, sympathizes entirely with the Parisian school, only differing from them in that he has experimented with satisfactory results upon healthy subjects. In France this view has lately been accepted by Dr. Bottey, who recognizes the three hypnotic stages in healthy persons, but has observed other phenomena in them, and vehemently opposes the conception of hypnotism as a malady. His excellently written book is particularly commended to those who wish to experiment in the same manner as the French investigator, without using hysterical subjects.