541 K. Medicamentous substances have also been claimed by many different hypnotists as exerting from a little distance, or when in sealed tubes, specific influences on patients. The phenomenon is of the same nature as the alleged specific influences of metals, - all being very possibly explicable as the mere freak of self-suggestion. This explanation was offered long ago by Braid, and I quote the following account of the experiments with which he supported it from an article by Dr. Bramwell, entitled "James Braid; his Work and Writings," Proceedings S.P.R., vol. xii. p. 127 etseq.

In Braid's time the mesmerists held that magnets, certain metals, crystals, etc, possessed a peculiar power and, with sensitive subjects, were capable of producing attraction and other remarkable phenomena. Some experienced an unpleasant sensation like an aura, others got headache, or attacks of fainting or catalepsy, with spasms so violent that they apparently endangered life. Frequently there was hyperæsthesia of the special senses. Many also fancied they saw fiery bundles of light stream from the poles of the magnet. All this was said to happen even when the subjects did not see the magnets and did not know what was being done. Braid performed many experiments in order to test these statements, with the following results: the phenomena appeared when the patients had preconceived ideas on the subject, or when these were excited by leading questions, but were invariably absent when they were ignorant of what was being done. Pretended magnets also produced the phenomena when the patients knew what was expected to occur. Reichen-bach recorded an instance where, by the mere exposure of a sensitive plate in a box with a magnet, an impression had been made, as if it had been exposed to the full influence of the light.

Braid repeated the experiment, and also had similar ones performed for him by an expert photographer, and, when all sources of fallacy were guarded against, the results were invariably negative. According to Braid, the mind of the patient alone was sufficient to produce the effects attributed to magnetic or odyllic force, and suggested ideas were capable of exciting a great variety of physical sensations and mental conditions.

[Here follows an account of an experiment of Braid's to show that suggestion was the true explanation of the supposed mesmeric powers of magnets and certain metals. A physician having demonstrated to him the effects produced by a magnet on a mesmerised patient, Braid in turn showed that he could produce effects of just the same kind on her by means of a key and ring, - all that was necessary being to mention in her presence that certain specified effects would follow from her holding or touching it in specified ways].

In 1843 Braid referred to Elliotson's belief in the powers of certain metals, and to Wakley's experiments. The latter, operating with a non-mesmerising metal, made the patient believe he was using a mesmerising one, whereupon she fell asleep; and he concluded that all the subjects-were impostors. Braid denied this, asserting that the active agent was simply the imagination, and that the metals were neither mesmeric nor non-mesmeric. In the same way he explained the action of the wooden tractors which Dr. Hayarth, in 1799, successfully substituted for the metal ones of Mr. Perkins. The latter consisted of two pieces of metal, one apparently of iron and the other of brass, about three inches long, blunt at one end and pointed at the other. They were invented by Dr. Elisha Perkins, of Norwich, Connecticut, who in 1796 took out a patent for them, and were applied by drawing them lightly over the part affected for about twenty minutes. This method of treatment, which was very fashionable at one time, was termed Perkinism, in honour of its inventor....

The power of imagination and excited attention in producing a specific influence in a healthy person, was beautifully illustrated, he said, in the following case: [Having read an account of certain medicines which could manifest their influence through glass, the patient simply holding the closed phial in his hand, he took a phial and filled it with coloured water. He then stated in the presence of a lady, who was not hypnotised, that it would act as an emetic through the glass, and asked her to hold it in her hand, and try the effect. Almost at once she felt the appropriate sensations, and vomiting was apparently imminent when Braid stopped it by giving her a second phial, which he said would neutralise the effect of the first].

These views of the specific action of different metals, etc, were revived by the Salpêtriére School and a few other hypnotists; but tests by more careful observers have again practically proved the results obtained to be due to suggestion. It is not enough merely to abstain from mentioning to the hypnotised subject what substance is being used in the experiment; it is necessary also to remember his extraordinary acuteness in picking up hints from the voice, gestures, or facial expression of all the persons present with him, - even when he appears to be in a totally unconscious condition. For this reason no experiment of this kind can be considered evidential if the experimenters themselves know what substance is being employed.

The Committee appointed by the Paris Académie de Médecine to test the experiments of Luys - one of the most notorious exponents of the doctrine of specific influences in the present day - found that when the substances were wrapped up so as to be indistinguishable, and the experimenters did not know which they were using - contrary to Luys' own practice - no specific results followed. The Report of this Committee was presented by Dujardin-Beaumetz in 1888.

The following passage is from Dr. Bramwell's article just quoted (op. cit., p. 156).

Before Braid appreciated the mental influence in hypnosis, he was inclined to believe in phrenology, and the same cause seems to have led the Salpêtrière School into error as to the action of magnets, metals, and medicines in sealed tubes. That all these owed their virtue to suggestion was clearly demonstrated by Braid; yet, despite this fact, the metallo-therapeutics of Burq were revived by Charcot and his disciples, and Dr. Luys still plays with his india-rubber dolls, and Professor Benedikt with his magnets. An account, by Dr. F. Peterson and others, of Professor Benedikt's theory of the action of magnets, and of the experimental exposure of its fallacious nature, read before the New York Academy of Medicine, closely resembles what was said and done by Braid on the same subject. According to Professor Benedikt, "certain forms of hysteria are better treated by the magnet than by electricity, hydropathy, or drugs. When a magnet is applied to the sensitive vertebrae without removal of the dress, the irritable patient soon becomes quiet and even quasi-paralysed, the muscles gradually relax, the respiration becomes sighing, consciousness slowly disappears; the resistance to conduction in motor nerves could easily become absolute.

The two poles have different effects, the magnet must be employed with caution, patients may be injured by it." These statements were tested in America; magnets of enormous power were used, and experiments made on human subjects and lower animals. A young dog was subjected to magnetic influence for five hours; but, instead of being paralysed from "increased resistance to conduction in motor nerves," on being liberated, it was more lively than before. The experimenters conclude "that the human organism is in no wise appreciably affected by the most powerful magnets known to modern science; that neither direct nor reversed magnetism exerts any perceptible influence upon the iron contained in the blood, upon the circulation, upon ciliary or protoplasmic movements, upon sensory or motor nerves, or upon the brain. The ordinary magnets used in medicine," they say, "have a purely suggestive or psychic effect, and would in all probability be quite as useful if made of wood".