MESMERISM.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2596, 2 March 1889, Page 1 (Supplement)

MESMERISM.

I have boon three times lately (says an English correspondent of the Dunedin Star) to witness the experiments of the French magnetist of whom I wrote you, and on eacli occasion my surprise and amazement have increased. A friend who accompanied me on the last ttvo occasions insisted upon going on the stage and offering himself as a subjeet. He was to my surprise successfully hypnotised, though not without a struggle, in which the mesmerist was only partially dominant. Thus it took a long time to convince my friend he was a dentist, and even then, as he told ine afterwards, he knew it wasn't so; just as when De Mayer pointed to a rigid body on the stage and said it was his brother lying dead, reason rebelled. But on the occa- [ sion of my friends second visit the state of affairs was widely different. This time De Meyer had merely to catch his eye as he sat amongst the audience an:l he could do with him what he willed. My friend says the conviction of absolute helplessness and of being wholly at the magnetist's mercy for ever made him feel more miserable than he coidd have conceived possible. Between the first and second part of the entertainment, my friend told me he didn't want to 20 on to the stage again. I said: "Send De Meyer a message, and it will be all right.'' But he didn't do so, and he told me afterwards it was bncause he couldn't. Throughout the evening this young mail's mind obediently followed the magnetist's faintest suggestion. Ho made him hot or cold, tearful or merry, sleepy or wakeful, merely by telling him lie was so. My friend says he never in his life felt so cold as when De Meyer touched him arul told him he was freezing. His head was like a lump of lead, his extremities iey, anil he thought he should never be warm again. When told to sleep, or rather willed (for the Professor was oIF the stage), he at my suggestion stood np and we slapped his hands and did all we could to keep him awake, but unsuccessfully. This subjeet, like all the rest, was quite powerless, and fell back sound asleep at once. Finally, the supposed death of a brother reduced hiiu to the condition of mitigated grief one would expect under the circumstances from a man richly blest with fraternal relatives. The result of this semi-eonseious afternoon of varied emotions was a bad headache, which kept my friend in bed next day. The conclusion I came to was that the man who tampers with mesmerism out of curiosity is a fool. 01100 magnetised you are the operator's slave whenever and wherever he meets you for the rest of your life. De Meyer boasts that he could mesmerise a subject and order him to commit some felony, say a murder, six months hence. The subject would wake up unconscious of the doom banging over him, but when the time came he would commit the crime. After 300 days, however, experiments of this class are not successful—at least have not been so yet. "It is, "I said to my friend, "rather a gruesome thought that, if De Meyer were so disposed, ho could perfectly safely convert you into an iuvoluutary Jack-the-Rippor." The openings for crime which mesmerism provides are indeed, it seems to me, practically unlimited, especially for those sort of villanios where women are concerned. The chief safeguard of course is that De Meyer has 110 influence in ninety cases out of 100.