e stomach, laying the hands upon
the shoulders, and slowly moving them on the arms down to the hands, the
whole with the utmost quietude and composure on the part of the
operator, will dispel the oppression.

And the interest of the first sitting is confined to the process of
awakening the patient, which is one of the most marvellous phenomena of
the whole. The operator lays his two thumbs on the space between the
eyebrows, and as it were vigorously smooths or irons his eyebrows,
rubbing them from within, outwards seven or eight times. Upon this, the
patient probably raises his head and his eyebrows, and draws a deeper
breath as if he would yawn; he is half awake, and blowing upon the
eyelids, or the repetition of the previous operation, or dusting the
forehead by smart transverse wavings of the hand, or blowing upon it,
causes the patient's countenance to become animated; the eyelids open,
he looks about him, recognises you, and begins to speak. If any feeling
of heaviness remains, any weight or pain of the forehead, another
repetition of the same manipulations sets all right. And yet this
patient would not have been awakened, if a gun had been fired at his
ear, or his arm had been cut off.

At the next sitting, or the next to that, the living statue begins to
wake in its tranced life. The operator holds one hand over the opposite
hand of his patient, and makes as if he would draw the patient's hand
upwards, raising his own with short successive jerks, yet not too
abrupt. Then the patient's hand begins to follow his; and often having
ascended some inches, stops in the air cataleptic. This fixed state is
always relieved by transverse brushings with the hand, or by breathing
in addition, on the rigid limb. And it is most curious to see the whole
bodily frame, over which spasmodic rigidness may have crept, thus thawed
joint by joint. Then the first effect shown commonly is this motion, the
patient's hand following the operator's. At the same sitting, he begins
to hear, and there is intelligence in his countenance, when the operator
pronounces his name: perhaps his lips move, and he begins to answer
pertinently as in ordinary sleep-walking. But he hears the operator
alone best, and him even in a whisper. _Your_ voice, if you shout, he
does not hear: unless you take the operator's hand, and then he hears
_you_ too. In general, however, now the proximity of others seems in
some way to be sensible to him; and he appears unea