s at the Salpetriere a young woman of
a deplorable type, Jeanne S----, who was a criminal lunatic, filthy,
violent, and with a life history of impurity and crime. M. Auguste
Voisin, one of the physicians of the staff, undertook to hypnotize
her, May 31. At that time she was so violent that she could only be
kept quiet by a straight-jacket and the constant cold douche to her
head. She would not look at M. Voisin, but raved and spat at him. He
persisted, kept his face near and opposite to hers, and his eyes
following hers constantly. In ten minutes she was in a sound sleep,
and soon passed into a somnambulistic condition. The process was
repeated many days, and she gradually became sane while in the
hypnotic condition, but still raved when she woke.

"Gradually then she began to accept hypnotic suggestion, and would
obey trivial orders given her while asleep, such as to sweep her room,
then suggestions regarding her general behavior; then, in her hypnotic
condition, she began to express regret for her past life, and form
resolutions of amendment to which she finally adhered when she awoke.
Two years later she was a nurse in one of the Paris hospitals, and her
conduct was irreproachable. M. Voisin has followed up this case by
others equally striking."

This is not only an unusually well authenticated instance, but one
which seems to carry conviction from the manner of narration. Yet it
would be absurd to declare that the subject neither deceived herself
nor others, or that the doctor made no mistakes either in fact or
involuntarily. The whole is, however, extremely valuable from its
_probability_, and still more from its suggesting experiment in a much
more useful direction than that followed in the majority of cases
recorded in most books, which, especially in France, seem chiefly to
have been conducted from a melodramatic or merely medical point of
view. Very few indeed seem to have ever dreamed that a hypnotized
subject was anything but a being to be cured of some disorder,
operated on without pain, or made to undergo and perform various
tricks, often extremely cruel, silly, and wicked--the main object of
all being to advertise the skill of the operator. In fact, if it were
to be accepted that the main object of hypnotism is to repeat such
experiments as are described in most of the French works on the
subject, humanity and decency would join in prohibiting the practice
of the art altogether. These books point out and