At this stage of my career I was house surgeon to a metropolitan hospital, and I had rather a sharp reminder of the danger of meddling with a subject of this nature. Two friends- one of whom, I may say parenthetically, is a member of the present Government - were spending the evening in my rooms at the hospital, and with them was a lady who professed the customary incredulity as to my powers of inducing sleep. She submitted herself as subject, and was very soon mesmerised; and so prolonged and complete was her slumber, that she was with difficulty aroused; and when she left, her gait was tottering and she had to be supported on either side by her Mends. This occurrence was reported to the hospital authorities by an unfriendly official, with very hostile suggestions. I was summoned before the board, I gave my explanation, and the matter was referred to the Medical Committee. I escaped with a solemn and incredulous admonition - chiefly, I think, because I was rather a favourite pupil, with a good record in the school - the sort of verdict being 'not guilty, but don't do it again,' pronounced with a dubious smile and a severe shake of the head, which clearly conveyed that my censors were very for from accepting the scientific explanation of the facts.

I could recount a long series of what might sound like strange stories of my various experiences. They were enough to show that the condition induced partook of the character, sometimes of ordinary sleep, sometimes of cataleptic trance, sometimes of waking somnambulism. The persons acted on were very much under the influence of suggestion, and could be made to say and do all sorts of strange and ridiculous things - to reply to questions in which they revealed various secrets, to obey commands which at any other time and under any other circumstances they would be very unwilling to obey, to perform acts which were senseless, and even dangerous, unless I had exercised special precautions; as to jump from heights, to dive off a table on to the floor as if swimming, to attack with a dagger an imaginary enemy, to flee from supposititious serpents or stinging insects in an agony of fear, to listen to imaginary nightingales in an ecstasy of pleasure, and all these performances took place without consciousness at the time or memory afterwards. The subjects were reduced, in fact, to the condition of human automata, capable of being acted upon by an external will which they were unable to resist.

But at a very early stage I asked myself what was the real meaning of all this, and how far it was possible to analyse the origin and to define the sphere of these phenomena; and I instituted for myself a series of control-experiments, I will briefly explain what is meant by oontrol-experiments; for if all who investigate or make any sort of research into what are called psychical phenomena, would carefully consider what are the kinds of control-experiments necessary to verify the true causation of the results of their research, the lamentable confusion, the tissue of errors, and the foggy mysticism with which this subject is still surrounded would be in large part dispelled. The attractiveness of the pursuit for many minds would, no doubt, also be proportionately diminished; and it may, indeed, be doubted whether, under a system of rigid control-tests, such a Society as the Society for Psychical Research would find material sufficiently diverting to the many to enable it to continue long to exist. The control-experiments 'which I instituted consisted in eliminating precisely those elements which were supposed to be the efficient causes of the phenomena produced.

Thus, the first and most efficient of the causes of this mesmeric, hypnotic, magnetic, or electro-biological condition of the subject was generally assumed to be either the will-power of the operator or some fluid, magnetic, electrical, psychical or other, emanating from the operator, or from some object which he had touched, or other-' wise impregnated or invested with an influence, a fluid, or a power proceeding from himself. The mesmeric state wad supposed by Mesmer himself to be due to something which he called a magnetic fluid. At the time when all Paris rang with the wonders of his power, and when his antechambers were filled with princes of the blood royal, with the halt, the lame and the blind, with mystics, monks, and religieuses, with ladies of fashion, and the heterogeneous multitude who 'love the marvellous; he had constructed huge and com!-plex tubs filled with bottles of fluid erroneously called electrical fluid, such as Count Mattei now dispenses, and connected by a complicated system of wires with handles, to be held by his subjects. Mesmer received 16,0002. for telling his secrets, which, of course, turned out to be no secrets at all, and it was found there was no electricity in the bottles or the tubs.

Presently he retired across the Rhine enriched by his dupes, who ceased to be cured as the fashion died away and as their faith waned. In all these so-called magnetic cores, faith-cures, and Mattei specifics, Perkins tractors and electric belts, you must make haste to be cured while the faith or the fashion lasts; as it fades, they cease to cure. But Mesmer left a doctrine, a principle, and a nomenclature which has served the purpose of succeeding generations of quacks and gobemauckes. The first thing I did, then, was to ascertain whether there was anything electrical or magnetic in the phenomena. This was very soon answered in the negative. The most delicate electrical instruments failed to detect any •difference whatever either in my own electrical state or in that of the persons operated on, at any stage of the proceedings. The ordinary methods of conducting or of cutting off magnetic or electric currents neither favoured nor interfered with the results. The interposition of silk or of glass, the insulation of the subject or of myself, did not in any way modify the phenomena, which were evidently entirely independent of the magnetic or electric fluid.