It is difficult to understand those cases in which the hysteric inflicts injuries upon him or herself; the individual who thrusts needles into his body and comes to hospital again and again to have them removed is a curious but not very uncommon object. An ophthalmic surgeon of my acquaintance had a patient who placed irritants under the lid of one eye till the sight was lost and the organ was removed, and the process was begun on the remaining eye before the trick was discovered. Such things occur in the history of malingering, and what the consciousness can do the dissociated stream is equally capable of doing: the only difficulty is the very practical one of believing that the patient can carry out the necessary action without being fully aware of what is happening, unless we assume an abrupt dissociation with the main personality temporarily abolished. Certain hypnotic experiments throw light upon this difficulty, which also occurs in connection with some spiritualist phenomena. It has for long been disputed whether mental processes can produce bleeding into the skin or blisters upon it. Such bleedings were the 'stigmata' representing the marks of the Crucifixion, that have been described as appearing upon the bodies of religious devotees, and they have been thought to be real and due in some way to auto-suggestion. Hysterical subjects often show the production of raised wheals if the skin is lightly stroked with the finger-nail or the head of a needle; one can write a word upon the skin and watch it become visible. This is purely a circulatory phenomenon, but experiments have been made under hypnosis in which the skin is touched with a pencil and the subject is told that he is being burnt and that a blister will follow. Success has been claimed for this experiment, but one source of error is hard to exclude. If a blister appears the next day, and the subject is known to be an honest man with no end to gain by cooking the experiment, an observer might be inclined to accept the result as due to the direct influence of suggestion; but the subject is, by the terms of the experiment, in a state of dissociation, and in the dissociated personality exists the suggestion that a blister should appear. In addition there exists the desire to carry out the wishes of the hypnotist, and since this is out of the control of the main personality whose honesty is accepted as sufficient guarantee against fraud he must nevertheless be regarded as willing and eager to produce a blister.