Although Embacher, Meschede, and Weinbaum, the experts called in, came to the conclusion, with which the Court concurred unconditionally, that there was a causal connection between the experiments and the subsequent mental derangement, the defendant was acquitted, because it could not be proved that he had been guilty of negligence. Special attention was drawn to the fact that the President of the Local Government and the police authorities had sanctioned the performance, and that the defendant, therefore, had a right to consider himself justified in undertaking such experiments. On the other hand, a hypnotizer and professional healer, who used to give "suggestion-parties" at his house in Hanover, in 1905, was condemned for causing one of his subjects bodily injury through neglect. At these entertainments he had performed most unwarrantable experiments on a work-girl, suggesting among other things that a man would undress in front of her to bathe, then jump into the water and be drowned. As the girl was taken seriously ill after the experiments, the experimenter was charged and convicted.

The quack use of hypnotism also may possibly lead to injury to health. Hirschlaff has communicated numerous observations he has made in this respect. I was called as an expert witness in a criminal case in which a former railwayman who had taken to hypnotizing had apparently brought on an attack of acute mental disease in a patient whom he had hypnotized. Although there was much in favour of the view that the mental disorder was produced by hypnotizing, I was unable to state so with absolute certainty. On the strength of my report the case was not proceeded with.

It is still doubtful whether hypnotic suggestion can be used to procure abortion. Although Liebeault's experiences in this respect were negative, Laurent has reported a case in which a student hypnotized his cousin whom he had got into trouble, and succeeded in procuring abortion by suggestion.

It has also been asked (Roux-Freissineng) whether suicide might not be caused by suggestion; on theoretical grounds and from practical experience I agree with Krafft-Ebing that it would be possible provided the suggestion were adroitly made. There was a case reported from Russia a short time ago of a young married woman who had admitted to her doctor while she was in the hypnotic state that her husband had suggested to her that she should commit suicide on a certain day, and it was, moreover, to take place after her husband had heavily insured her life in his favour. Of course we need not believe this or any other story that is not properly substantiated, but at the same time we must admit that there is nothing to preclude the possibility of such a suggestion being made. A case described by Nacke under the heading "Suicide by Suggestion" was obviously somewhat different. A Parisian student fell in love with a married woman and his love was returned. He received a letter from the woman telling him to commit suicide, and he did so.

Nacke has properly criticized this case, which was very imperfectly reported, and I think it very doubtful whether any suggestion was the essential cause of the suicide.

The question has also been frequently discussed whether a person might not be murdered by means of hypnosis. In one experiment Bramwell observed the pulse-rate drop to 40 beats and then rise to 150. He thinks that these limits might have been exceeded, only he was afraid of endangering the subject's life. The possibility of death being produced by hypnosis was specially discussed in connection with the case of Fraulein Ella v. Salamon, who died during hypnosis. Fraulein v. Salamon was employed by a layman named Neukomm for clairvoyant experiments in the hypnotic condition. She was to diagnose symptoms of disease, and as is well known, people hypnotized for this purpose often feel the symptoms they diagnose in others. In this case Fraulein v. Salamon had to describe the disease of a man who in her opinion was dying, and this produced a strong emotional effect on her, which, by its influence on the vasomotors and the heart, caused the brain to be emptied of its blood and death ensued. "Ella v.

Salamon was a victim - and certainly neither the first nor the last victim - not of hypnosis itself, but of that truly modern mixture of notoriety-hunting and refinement of nerve-torture, of humbug and mysticism, deceit and self-deception, frivolity and delirium, which seems utterly inseparable from all hypnotic entertainments and experiments" (Eulenburg). Another death supposed to be the result of hypnosis caused great excitement in America in 1897. A nigger boy, Spurgeon Young, died suddenly under circumstances that led the authorities to institute inquiries. It appeared that he had frequently been the subject of hypnotic experiment, and that he had latterly suffered from glycosuria or diabetes. An attempt was apparently made to establish a connection between the hypnotic experiments and the diabetes, so that the lad's death might be ascribed to hypnosis. But in spite of all the exertions of Bowen, who conducted the official inquiry, and in spite of the investigations of Clark Bell, to whom he applied to throw light on the question, the matter was never explained.

No proof could be adduced that the subject's death was even probably due to hypnosis.

In the older literature of animal magnetism we also find mention made of a few cases in which serious injury to health, and even death, was ascribed to magnetizing. I have already mentioned the crises on p. 292. Severe cases of collapse are also frequently mentioned. In the later years of mesmerism Varges published such a case (in 1853) in which the subject suffered severe collapse, pulse imperceptible, etc., during the magnetic sleep. The case presented a certain amount of resemblance to one of Krafft-Ebing's observations in which the patient, who was fully awake, thought she had been poisoned by belladonna. A dangerous collapse resulted from this auto-suggestion and was only cured by hypnotic suggestion. Lafontaine expressly condemns the practice of magnetism by inexperienced persons, as it might lead to the production of insanity, epilepsy, paralysis, idiocy, and even to sudden death.