imaginary mound of them formed she placed, with deep-drawn sighs
and tears and genuflections, a cross above them. Under the
influence of haschish everything looked rosy and gayety
prevailed. The subject was a young girl, very fond of the drama.
She fancied herself on the stage and playing a part which suited
her to perfection. It was in a bouffe opera and she sang her
score admirably. The sentiments were expressed with delicate
feeling. Dr. Luys can, according to the substances he uses, run
through the whole gamut of human passions and emotions.

What is most strange is that no trace of the fictitious world in
which the hypnotized subject has been wandering, remains when
real consciousness is restored. It is very rare for even the
idea of having been in dreamland to survive the awakening from
the hypnotic trance. Dr. Luys says that hypnotic suggestion
sometimes has periods of incubation more or less long. The
subject is at first gently drawn to do a certain thing or
things, and then the drawing becomes an irresistible impulse.
They are first as if tempted and then as if possessed. They can
no more help themselves than a man who had got to the verge of
Niagara Falls in a boat could help going over.

Dr. Roger moved that the Academy name a Commission to inquire
into hypnotic suggestion, near and at a distance. Dr. Bronardel
supported him. He said, "All that Dr. Luys has alleged and shown
cannot fail to make a noise throughout the world. Nobody save
MM. Burot and Bourru have gone so far as Dr. Luys. He not only
forces on the attention of the Academy the question of
hypnotism, but of persons being affected by poisonous substances
which do not penetrate, or it may be even touch, their bodies.
This is from a legal point of view a great danger. A great
social responsibility is involved in the matter. It is the duty
of the Academy to have the experiments of Dr. Luys repeated,
with others that bear upon them."

Hypnotism, or animal magnetism, has been a little more than a
hundred years despised and rejected by the doctors. It was
discovered by a Viennese, Mesmer, who belonged to that curious
branch of the Freemasons, the Illuminati. When he told Stoerck,
the head of the Faculty of Medicine at Vienna, of his discovery,
that learned owl begged him not to discredit that body by