is also not,
perhaps, impossible that hypnotic treatment may occasionally have
been of some real service.

Turning to British Guiana, where, as elsewhere, hysterical and
epileptic people make the best mediums, or 'Peay-men,' we are
fortunate in finding an educated observer who submitted to be
peaied. Mr. Im Thurn, in the interests of science, endured a savage
form of cure for headache. The remedy was much worse than the
disease. In a hammock in the dark, attended by a peay-man armed
with several bunches of green boughs, Mr. Im Thurn lay, under a vow
not to touch whatever might touch him. The peay-men kept howling
questions to the kenaimas, or spirits, who answered. 'It was a
clever piece of ventriloquism and acting.'

'Every now and then, through the mad din, there was a sound, at
first low and indistinct, and then gathering in volume, as if some
big, winged thing came from far towards the house, passed through
the roof, and then settled heavily on the floor; and again, after an
interval, as if the same winged thing rose and passed away as it had
come,' while the air was sensibly stirred. A noise of lapping up
some tobacco-water set out for the kenaimas was also audible. The
rustling of wings, and the thud, 'were imitated, as I afterwards
found, by skilfully shaking the leafy boughs, and then dashing them
suddenly against the ground'. Mr. Im Thurn bit one of the boughs
which came close to his face, and caught leaves in his teeth. As a
rule he lay in a condition scarcely conscious: 'It seems to me that
my spirit was as nearly separated from my body as is possible in any
circumstances short of death. Thus it appears that the efforts of
the peay-man were directed partly to the separation of his own
spirit from his body, and partly to the separation of the spirit
from the body of his patient, and that in this way spirit holds
communion with spirit.' But Mr. Im Thurn's headache was not
alleviated! The whirring noise occurs in the case of the Cock Lane
Ghost (1762), in Iamblichus, in some 'haunted houses,' and is
reported by a modern lady spiritualist in a book which provokes
sceptical comments. Now, had the peay tradition reached Cock Lane,
or was the peay-man counterfeiting, very cleverly, some real
phenomenon? {40}

We may next examine cases in which, the savage medium being
entranced, spirits come to him and answer questions. Australia is
so remote, and it is so unlikely that European or American
spi