HYPNOTIC DIAGNOSIS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8154, 8 June 1906, Page 3

HYPNOTIC DIAGNOSIS.

EXTRAORDINARY INVESTIGATION.

Speoial importance attaches to a report which has just been drawn np by a doctor of the 1 aris Faculty of Medicine, who is o professor at the School or Psychology, on a very peculiar case. A young woman dwelling in a provincial town bad (writes the Paiis correspondent of the Daily Telegraph), after having been hypnotised by her father and her brother, rooeived patients, diagnosed their raladies, and dictated prescriptions which had boon signed by a physician. The local doctors, having taken

LEGAL PROCEEDINGS against the whole party on the ground that it was going in for illicit practice of medicine, the expert referred to was deputed by the magistrate who is investigating the affair to> examine the professing somnambulist, and this is the gist of the opinitm at whioh he arrived. He saw the young woman in the magistrate's office, several authorities being present, as well as other persons, and he states that there was uo sham as regards the hypnotic slumber. She was put into that condition by her father and by himself, bat ho adds that there was nothing extraordinary in this, as she is a hysterical subject. When, however, the claim is brought forward that she can do WHILE IN THIS STATE what she could not accomplish unnormal circumstances, this is a very different matter. A hypnotised person does not acquire tnrough the mere faot that he eleepg the talent of producing a portrait if he does not know how to draw or paint; in a word, he will not through the fact of slumber be able to execute an act whioh be would uot do capable of realising when awake. He could not acquire the power of making diagnostics or of instituting reasoned treatments things which are all very difficult to undertake even after protracted theoretical and practical study. Tbisis clear, and to the pjint. As for the prescriptions, the expert considered that they were harmless, that they could not complicate illness, or, again, affect an healthy individual. They did not appear to show that any case been completely diagnosed, but WHERE THE MISOHIEP came in was in their preventing a treatment whioh might be of extreme importance if the patient required to be seriously taken in hand. This high authority had been asked to be i present at some of lie consultations but he had de

olined from motives of delicacy, which he enumerated, besides which, as he explained, the somnambulist might, once iu a way, have made a successful guess; or, again, have known something of the cases beforehand, it having been proposed that the experiments, should take plr.ee in a Jocal hospiAn other, very interesting question was asked. As soience stands now, could it bo admitted that a

SOMNAMBULIST MIGHT KNOW

the conditions of a sick person whom she had not beheld, and prescribe the correct remedies without bavins.' had any medical training? Quite iscnossible, the expert replied, and ho added that neither Charcot nor. Brouardol nor Dumontpullior, who had observed.a great number of sotnuamhulists and hysterical subjects, had evor noticed anything which could lead them to in tbe reality of the phenomena which wore represented as existing in the young woman. "Ou the other bund, this beliof in the lucidity of somnambulists is accepted as an article of faith by a great number of persous who, moreover, are quite incompetent to pronounce on the question. Whoever ia aware ofj-the big part played by the imagination perceives absolutely nothing of an extraordinary character in the cures or appearances of cures nbtaiued by somnambulists. It is the eternal story of the faith that heals."