The dosimetric granules are a convenient mode of administering alkaloids, glycosides, and other toxic principles, and I have often been alarmed at the doses which Dr. Z. prescribed. I confess that I was astonished to find that an occult agent who thus claimed to be a bygone Professor should have selected a form of medication on which the Faculty look with no approving eye.

As to Mme. X. 's foot, I have a firm conviction that it was healed by the rhythmical movements imposed, and by the "magnetisation" of the occult agent.

You ask me whether I consider these agents as belonging to the human type. Provisionally, Yes; unless we admit that there exists, superposed upon our world, another world of beings distinct from humanity, but knowing it and studying it as we study the other regions of nature, and assuming for the sake of amusement or for some other motive the role of our departed friends.

Dr. X. concludes with warnings against the dangers of such influence or possession; dangers which he thinks that Mme. X. avoided by her calmness of temperament and resolute maintenance of self-control.

The savant already mentioned as introducing us to this case sends us (May, 1893) the following corroborative statement. He is, it may be observed, himself a physician.

I have frequently seen Mme. X. For the last year or two she has had no more phenomena; but about two years ago she presented some curious symptoms. In the first place, when she conversed with the late Dr. Z., her so-called magnetiser, his replies were made by movements of her head. She would seat herself in an arm-chair, and according as Dr. Z. wished to say yes or no, there were either two or three backward movements of her head. Her head threw itself backwards with force, and gave a vigorous blow to the chair-back. This movement was sometimes so violent that the shock was painful, so that Mme. X. cried out at the sharpness of the blows. Long sentences could thus be given, for when the alphabet was spelt out there were movements and blows given with the head, just as in ordinary Spiritistic conversations there are tilts of the table. Often, also, while one was talking with Mme. X., there were movements of her head, indicating that the so-called Dr. Z. was taking part in the discussion, and approving or disapproving such and such a phrase.

More rarely, Mme. X. would unconsciously articulate a few words with her lips, and these words were professedly dictated by Dr. Z. As to the other phenomena, I have twice been present at the ample, semi-ecstatic movements of salutation and prayer which Mme. X. made against her will. It was a curious scene; for Mme. X. preserved her consciousness all the time and continued to talk to us while executing this strange and complicated mimicry. It is to be observed that Mme. X. is a person of calm nature, and rather apathetic than vol. II. I nervous. She has strong common-sense, is healthy, and reasonable in character. It seems that she never had any previous hallucination. She is an excellent mother of a family, and deservedly enjoys general confidence and esteem.

Dr. X. sent us two of the prescriptions written by Mme. X.'s hand. We compared them with British Pharmacopoeal prescriptions, by the aid of Burggraeve's Guide de Medecine Dosimetrique (Paris, 1872). Both prescriptions are in fair accord with English practice; the doses of arsenic in the one case, of strychnia in the other, being rather stronger than usually given. Each prescription contains several ingredients, in what seems reasonable proportion.

Finally, we learn that Dr. Z. in life was gay and fond of practical jokes.

834. These last cases have become increasingly complex. One wonders to what extent this strange manufacture of inward romances can be carried. There is, I may say, a great deal more of it in the world than is commonly suspected. I have myself received so many cases of these dramatised utterances - as though a number of different spirits were writing in turn through some automatist's hand - that I have come to recognise the operation of some law of dreams, so to call it, as yet but obscurely understood. The alleged personalities are for the most part not only unidentified, but purposely unidentifiable; they give themselves romantic or ludicrous names, and they are produced and disappear as lightly as puppets on a mimic stage. The main curiosity of such cases lies in their very persistence and complexity; it would be a waste of space to quote any of the longer ones in such a way as to do them justice. And, fortunately, there is no need for me to give any of my own cases; since a specially good case has been specially well observed and reported in a book with which many of my readers are probably already acquainted, - Professor Flournoy's Des Indes a la planete Mars: Etude sur un cas de Somnambulisme avec Glossolalie (Paris and Geneva, 1900). I shall here make some comments on that striking record, which all students of these subjects ought to study in detail.

835. It happens, no doubt, to any group which pursues for many years a somewhat unfamiliar line of inquiry that those of their points which are first assailed get gradually admitted, so that as they become interested in new points they may scarcely observe what change has taken place in the reception of the old. The reader of early volumes of the Proceedings S.P.R. will often observe this kind of progress of opinion. And now Professor Flournoy's book indicates in a remarkable way how things have moved in the psychology of the last twenty years. The book - a model of fairness throughout - is indeed, for the most part, critically destructive in its treatment of the quasi-supernormal phenomena with which it deals. But what a mass of conceptions a competent psychologist now takes for granted in this realm, which the official science of twenty years ago would scarcely stomach our hinting at!

One important point may be noticed at once as decisively corroborating a contention of my own made long ago, and at a time when it probably seemed fantastic to many readers. Arguing for the potential continuity of subliminal mentation (as against those who urged that there were only occasional flashes of submerged thought, like scattered dreams), I said that it would soon be found needful to press this notion of a continuous subliminal self to the utmost, if we were not prepared to admit a continuous spiritual guidance or possession. Now, in fact, with Professor Flournoy's subject the whole discussion turns on this very point. There is unquestionably a continuous and complex series of thoughts and feelings going on beneath the threshold of consciousness of Mlle "Helene Smith." Is this submerged mentation due in any degree or in any manner to the operation of spirits other than Mlle Smith's own? That is the broad question; but it is complicated here by a subsidiary question: whether, namely, any previous incarnations of Mlle Smith's - other phases of her own spiritual history, now involving complex relationship with the past - have any part in the crowd of personalities which seem struggling to express themselves through her quite healthy organism.