n to reach such a
result, and the same is the case with those who are interred up to the
neck, the will alone sufficing. Fakirs probably pass through the same
phases that invalids do who are forced to keep perfectly quiet through a
fracture or dislocation. During the first days the organism revolts
against such inaction, the constraint is great, the muscles contract by
starts, and then the patient gets used to it; the constraint becomes
less and less, the revolt of the muscles becomes less frequent, and the
patient becomes reconciled to his immobility. It is probable that after
passing several months or years in a state of immobility fakirs no
longer experience any desire to change their position, and even did they
so desire, it would be impossible owing to the atrophy of their muscles
and the anchylosis of their joints.

Those fakirs who remain with one or several limbs immovable and in an
abnormal position have to undergo a sort of preparation, a special
treatment; they have to enter and remain two or three mouths in a sort
of cage or frame of bamboo, the object of which is to keep the limb that
is to be immobilized in the position that it is to preserve. This
treatment, which is identical with the one employed by surgeons for
curing affections of the joints, has the effect of soldering or
anchylosing the articulation. When such a result is reached, the fakir
remains, in spite of himself and without fatigue, with outstretched
arms, and, in order to cause them to drop, he would have to undergo a
surgical operation.

As for those voluntary tortures that cause an effusion of blood, the
insensibility of those who are the victims of it is explainable when we
reflect that _India_ is _the_ country _par excellence_ of anaesthetic
plants. It produces, notably, Indian hemp and poppy, the first of which
yields hashish and the other opium. Now it is owing to these two
narcotics, taken in a proper dose, either alone or combined according to
a formula known to Hindoo fakirs and jugglers, but ignored by the lower
class, that the former are able to become absolutely insensible
themselves or make their adepts so.

[Illustration: INDIAN FAKIRS IN VARIOUS POSITIONS.]

There is, especially, a liquor known in the Indian pharmacopoeia under
the name of _bang_, that produces an exciting intoxication accompanied
with complete insensibility. Now the active part of bang consists of a
mixture of opium and hashish. It was an analogous liquor