as the last named turned to go away, Patterson dealt the blow that ended his life. Patterson then said to Sexson: "Now we are in for it. If I am convicted I will be hung on account of my reputation. You say you did it in self-defense. I will swear the same, and get others to do so. Your reputation is good, and we will both get out of it."

Sexson alleges that Patterson exercised some mysterious influence over him, and he found it impossible to resist his commands. When he went before the coroner and the grand jury Sexson says he maintained that he had committed the crime at the peril of his life. When the trial was called a man named O'Rear, in front of whose house Patterson drank the beer, testified that he saw Sexson holding the club.

The medico-legal aspect of hypnotism is interesting in the extreme. Should a confessed murderer go free and a hypnotist be convicted of murder on the testimony alone of the confessed murderer, the case would bring up a very serious question.

The prevalent belief on the subject is: (1) A person may be hypnotized at a distance and against his will; (2) that the hypnotic state renders the subject under the absolute power of the will of the hypnotist, and that he will perform any act however repugnant to his feelings. A few investigators think that both propositions are true, while the majority of scientists agree as to the possibility of the second.

Thomas J. Hudson, in an article published in the New York Medical Journal, January 26, 1895, on Hypnotism in its Relations to Criminal Jurisprudence, deals with the subject in a thoroughly logical manner, and I concur with him in most of the propositions he advances.

Mr. Hudson says: "It must be premised that the science of hypnotism is yet in its infancy. No man can safely predict its future as to either its use or abuses. That it is useful when legitimately employed no one who is acquainted with the facts will deny. That it may be employed to the detriment of its votaries is a proposition equally true of every thing in nature. That when its laws are understood they will be found to be promotive of the highest good to the human race is a proposition sanctioned by every discovery yet made in the domain of nature's laws.

"Little as is known of the ultimate possibilities of hypnotism, there are some things about it that have been definitely ascertained, and are, broadly speaking, as well known now as they can ever be known.

"It is not necessary for one to be able to calculate the eclipses to enable him to know that the earth is round or to grasp the fundamental hypothesis of gravitation. Nor is it necessary for us to know the future

possibilities of hypnotism to enable us to grasp its fundamental laws, since they have been definitely formulated."

Suggestion, so thoroughly studied by Bernheim, is the chief factor we have to consider from a medico-legal aspect. Hudson divides suggestion into three classes, namely: (1) Suggestion by a second person, as by a hypnotist; (2) auto-suggestion. He subdivides the first class again into two classes, viz: (1) Oral suggestion; (2) mental suggestion. The mental suggestion belongs to a higher phase of psychic phenomena than we need consider. Auto-suggestion is subdivided into four classes, viz: (1) Volitional auto-suggestion; (2) suggestion of moral education and fixed principles; (3) instinctive auto-suggestion; (4) suggestion of the environment.

Before elucidating the subdivisions of auto-suggestion, Mr. Hudson brings out a very important point, viz: That, if two contrary suggestions be made at the same time, the subject will have great distress of mind and often come out of the hypnotic state with a severe nervous shock.

1. A volitional auto-suggestion is one which the subject makes to himself before being hypnotized. For instance, if a hypnotist should command a subject to carry out some act repugnant to his sense of propriety, and the subject had anticipated this before being placed in the hypnotic state, he would resist this in exact proportion to his innate sense of dignity or propriety. If this is very strong he will be restored to his normal condition.

2. Suggestions of moral education and fixed principles are probably stronger than the foregoing. If the subject is told to do any thing contrary to the settled principles of his life, he will resist the suggestion with his whole moral nature. This is probably the reason that the older the person the less liable he is to hypnosis. And so when an immoral or criminal suggestion is made, whether it is carried out or not is purely a question of moral character. "Strength of mind" or 'strength of will" has nothing to do with the result. An operator can not have absolute control of a subject against the will of the latter.

3. Instinctive auto-suggestions are those which arise from the natural desire to protect one's own life, or that of his wife or children, and are by far the strongest auto-suggestions a criminal hypnotist would have to encounter.

4. Suggestions of the environment: A subject is well aware, before he is put in the hypnotic state, of the nature of the experiments; and this rules out all laboratory experimentation conducted for the purpose

of ascertaining whether suggestion can be successfully employed to induce an hypnotic subject to perpetrate a crime, and is of no evidential value whatever.

Mr. Hudson concludes his paper by stating that when a man sets up hypnotism as a defense in a criminal trial he proclaims himself a criminal character, and thinks hypnotism has no legitimate place in criminal jurisprudence.

These propositions are certainly true, and all experimenters have noted the auto-suggestion in a great majority of hypnotic subjects. But can we class those exceptional cases of the so-called major hypnotism as being capable of auto-hypnotization? I think not. We know perfectly well in this particular phase there is absolute loss of consciousness, and one can be made to commit acts and even crimes and have no remembrance of what had taken place.

Of course this would still rule out all testimony of the subject in a criminal trial. But should it vindicate the hypnotist of criminal inteut? And would not other testimony from a different source be justifiable? This is a point that in my mind should be governed by the circumstantial evidence in conjunction with the opinion of an expert hypnotist as to the possibility of the subject's being in a state of major hypnosis.

Another class of sensitives, which in my opinion should be recognized in criminal jurisprudence, is children between the ages of seven and sixteen, or even older. In the first place they are more sensitive. to hypnotism than adults, and much less capable of auto-suggestion directly in proportion to their age. From my own observation I am led to believe that very few hypnotic subjects can be compelled to commit acts by a criminal hypnotist that would be contrary to their moral

nature.

Even if hypnotism can be used for criminal purposes, why should it be contra-indicated as a therapeutic measure when employed intelligently by capable men?

When employed in the treatment of disease, one of the first questions to arise is as to its dangers. Death has occurred during hypnosis. I quote the following from an editorial in The Physician and Surgeon, November, 1894:

There is no good reason for believing that hypnotized persons should not be as subject to causes of sudden death as the rest of mankind. That no death has occurred in hypnosis until the present time is in fact far more remarkable than that a person should have succumbed. The case of Ella

Salamon, who recently died in Hungary while in a condition of hypnosis at the hands of an operator named Neukomm, is interesting in more ways than one. Mr. Neukomm hypnotized Ella, and then suggested that she give a clairvoyant description of her brother's illness and present condition. This was done very satisfactorily, the lesions in the lungs were described with accuracy, the subject meanwhile displaying great emotion. The operator then asked for the prognosis, and Ella fell to the floor and died. The autopsy revealed acute anemia of the brain, and death was considered due to syncope and heart failure.

This is the first report of a case of death under hypnosis. There seems little in the account of it that can lead us to attribute the result to hypnosis or any direct suggestion of the hypnotist. That the subject should have proved herself subjective to the emotion of fright is not astonishing; that fright should have had a fatal termination in one unusually debilitated is not surprising. Neither is there any thing in this to contra-indicate the legitimate use of hypnotism for therapeutical purposes. It does, however, show the dangers that may pertain to hypnotists and fakirs who give improper suggestions. It was not long since in a stage performance that an operator gave a suggestion to his subject that he was in hell. It needs no death from hypnotism to assure us that such cruel and inhuman conduct should be visited with every penalty that can be imposed.

Dr. James R. Cocke, in his recent work on hypnotism (which is one of the best in a general way ever written on the subject), cites only one case on this point. "The question is often asked, if ever one becomes hypnotized and remains so for an indefinite period. I think not. I have recently heard of a case in Louisville, Ky., in which a young lady lay in a trance for several days, and was subsequently buried, this condition being the result of an attempt which her lover had made to hypnotize her. I know nothing, however, of the authenticity of the story." Of course this is simply a sensational fabrication, originating in all probability in the imagination of some aspiring newspaper correspondent. I can not on careful inquiry hear of such an occurrence in the history of Louisville. I have never read or heard of an hypnotic subject remaining in the cataleptic state for any length of time.

The local newspapers some two weeks ago published an account of a man in Indiana who had become insane on the subject of hypnotism; but then our insane asylums are full of maniacs crazed on the subject of religion; and cases have been reported in which insanity followed the use of chloroform and ether.

Persons of a badly balanced nervous temperament may become insane from any profound impression made upon them.

Kraft-Ebing reports a case in which hypnotism proved injurious owing to the fact that the subject had been severely strained by too frequent and too prolonged hypnosis.

From the results of all investigators the conclusion is bound to be drawn that the practice of hypnotism intelligently used is more devoid of danger than any therapeutic method known to science. Mental therapeutics is well established, and Cocke exclaims, "Hypnotism has nothing to fear from the senseless skepticism and contempt of those who have no knowledge of the subject."

We are not living in the seventeenth century, nor do we now burn at the stake poor hysterical females for practicing witchcraft. One man can not exert a magical power over another and rob him of his wealth. And let me doubly assure all such foolish women as I mentioned in the first part of this paper, that no woman can be robbed of her virtue through the influence of hypnotism, and that such a woman had better go under treatment for nervous symptoms due in all likelihood to the menopause. Miracles, magical cures, casting out devils, and the like, are not attributed now to the intervention of some supreme being, though equally as many wonderful cures are effected in this latter half of the nineteenth century as in A. D. I. Praise be to Liebault, Bernhiem, Charcot, Voisin, Moll, Luys, Braid, Cocke, and the others who have brought to light these wonderful phenomena, and have performed more miracles, so to speak, than all the disciples of every religious sect that ever existed. Scientists are fearless, and phenomena that mystify and terrify the ignorant only spur them on to a more thorough investigation.

Hypnotism in the functional insanities finds its greatest scope. In children whose moral natures are unbalanced, in the adult who is weak and vacillating, it will often succeed when other means fail. The church sometimes benefits these conditions through fear. In children, who have fear of the dark, fear of ghosts, erroneous ideas, night terrors, when physical causes are removed, hypnotism is indicated. Masturbation, vicious tendencies, and even kleptomania are indications for its use. For these and kindred troubles, simple suggestion, hypnotic suggestion, and post-hypnotic suggestion should be tried in the order named.

I have now a very interesting case. The patient, a little girl, six years of age, who has been a constant masturbator for the last seven months, severe nervous symptoms resulting, puzzling both the parents and physicians. Dr. Bullock examined her genitals and found an hypertrophied clitoris. On watching her we elicited the fact that she would.