Volume 2

Hypnotism and the doctors / [Richard Harte].

  • Harte, Richard.
Date:
1902-1903
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Hypnotism and the doctors / [Richard Harte]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    induced; and Fahnstock himself was not of a quarrelsome disposition. Of the state of Trance, Sunderland says:— “This term is used to signify a state of the nervous system in which the mind is said to pass beyond the use of the external senses; a condition in which the mind is more or less active without the normal consciousness of the external world. It is so much like dreaming that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish one of these states from the other. And a similar remark may be made of reverie and cases of mild insanity. The principal characteristics in a real state of trance are as follows :— 1. “ Insensibility to the external world. The senses of hearing, seeing, and feeling, are suspended. Sometimes one of these senses seems to be transferred to different parts of the body; so that the patient has the sense of sight in the coronal region, the occiput, or the epigastrium. 2. “ The mind is active, similiarly as in dreaming and somnambulism. The patient moves about, talks, writes, and adapts appropriate means to ends, even beyond his capacity when in the normal state. There are other traits ; but in different cases they vary in temperature, rigidity of muscles, state of pulse, and activity of the mental functions. “ Ecstacy may be said to be the highest state of trance, when the mind is exalted to its utmost capacity in its emotions of joy. This state is rare and occurs very seldom, being mostly confined to religious exercises. “ The immediate cause of the trance, whether spontaneous or artificially produced, is always in the mind, or in the nervous system of the patient. The suggestion may come from what we see in others, or from a thought which, so to speak, sets the nerves in motion which brings on the trance. Or those motions may be excited by the state of the stomach, the health, or by the state of the patient’s own mind. But, whatever outside influences may be attempted, they produce no effects, except as they find the mind, or the nervous system of the patient in a suitable condition. “ Among the multitudes I have entranced I have noticed invariably an incapacity in the subjects to judge accurately as to the rationale of the processes by which that state was induced. The erroneous notion taught under the name of Mesmerism in respect to the human will has misled people, as may easily be N