HYPNOTISED WIFE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2130, 20 May 1920, Page 4

HYPNOTISED WIFE.

SUBTLE CRUELTY. ’ The question what is legal cruelty has been brought to the front by several recent cases in the English courts. A remarkable case of cruelty by hypnotism is related by Mrs M. L. Seaton Tiedeman, of the Divorce Law Reform Union. “The following case of submission and terror in the wife brought about by the hypnotic inllnonce of the husband, related to me by a doctor, is by no means uncommon, and emphasises all too clearly the need for reform in our Divorce and .Marriage Laws. “Some years ago an eminently sane and normal woman was slowly but surely losing her reason. She gradually wilted in the most inexplicable manner until one day, when attending her, the doctor discovered the cause. “He was as'king in the presence of her husband whether she had a secret worry, because he couhl not otherwise explain her condition. “By ehanee he was seated opposite a mirror which relied ed the husband standing lielnml his chair, ami saw him making the most horrible grimaces, with a fiendish lonic; the eyes were fixed on the Avife, who was gradually being hypnotised. “Suddenly she fainted, and it was some time before the doctor could bring her round. “It was only on his threatening to throw up the ease that he got the truth from his patient, and she refitted how, for more than three years, her husband had terrified her in this way, whenever she failed to please him, and how she had been too afraid to tell anyone because she felt that no one would believe her story. “We have-innumerable . eases in which the cruelty is so subtle that only the declining health of the wife, and medical evidence, could establish it. “Notwithstanding facts like these, opponents of divorce lav\ reform .still contend that such marriages arc sanctified, and must not bo dissolved.”