y when she brought them back upon
her breast, did she begin to speak. (Kerner mentions that her child,
too, slept with its hands and feet crossed.) In this state her eyes were
shut, her face calm and bright. As she fell asleep, the first night
after her arrival, she asked for me, but I bade them tell her that I
now, and in future, should speak to her only when awake.

After she awoke, I went to her and declared, in brief and earnest terms,
that I should pay no attention to what she said in sleep, and that her
somnambulic state, which had lasted so long to the grief and trouble of
her family, must now come to an end. This declaration I accompanied by
an earnest appeal, designed to awaken a firm will in her to put down the
excessive activity of brain that disordered her whole system.
Afterwards, no address was made to her on any subject when in her
sleep-waking state. She was left to lie unheeded. I pursued a
homoeopathic treatment of her case. But the medicines constantly
produced effects opposite to what I expected. She now suffered less from
spasm and somnambulism, but with increasing marks of weakness and
decay. All seemed as if the end of her sufferings drew near. It was too
late for the means I wished to use. Affected so variously and powerfully
by magnetic means in the first years of her illness, she had now no life
more, so thoroughly was the force of her own organization exhausted, but
what she borrowed from others. In her now more infrequent magnetic
trance, she was always seeking the true means of her cure. It was
touching to see how, retiring within herself, she sought for help. The
physician who had aided her so little with his drugs, must often stand
abashed before this inner physician, perceiving it to be far better
skilled than himself."

After some weeks forbearance, Kerner did ask her in her sleep what he
should do for her. She prescribed a magnetic treatment, which was found
of use. Afterwards, she described a machine, of which there is a drawing
in this book, which she wished to have made for her use; it was so, and
she derived benefit from it. She had indicated such a machine in the
early stages of her disease, but at that time no one attended to her. By
degrees she grew better under this treatment, and lived at Weinsberg,
nearly two years, though in a state of great weakness, and more in the
magnetic and clairvoyant than in the natural human state.

How his acquaintance with her affected the physic