seizures were of the sort now familiar to science.  These have, therefore, emerged from the miraculous.  In fact, the phenomena which occurred at the tomb of the Abbe Paris have emerged almost too far, and now seem in danger of being too readily and too easily accepted.  In 1887 MM.  Binet and Fere, of the school of the Salpetriere, published in English a popular manual styled ‘Animal Magnetism.’  These authors write with great caution about such alleged phenomena as the reading, by the hypnotised patient, of the thoughts in the mind of the hypnotiser.  But as to the phenomena at the tomb of the Abbe Paris, they say that ’suggestion explains them.’[4] That is, in the opinion of MM.  Binet and Fere the so-called ‘miracles’ really occurred, and were worked by ’the imagination,’ by ‘self-suggestion.’

The most famous case—­that of Mlle. Coirin—­has been carefully examined by Dr. Charcot.[5]

Mlle. Coirin had a dangerous fall from her horse, in September 1716, in her thirty-first year.  The medical details may be looked for in Dr. Charcot’s essay or in Montgeron.[6] ’Her disease was diagnosed as cancer of the left breast,’ the nipple ‘fell off bodily.’  Amputation of the breast was proposed, but Madame Coirin, believing the disease to be radically incurable, refused her consent.  Paralysis of the left side set in (1718), the left leg shrivelling up.  On August 9, 1731, Mlle. Coirin ‘tried the off chance’ of a miracle, put on a shift that had touched the tomb of Paris, and used some earth from the grave.  On August 11, Mlle. Coirin could turn herself in bed; on the 12th the horrible wound ’was staunched, and began to close up and heal.’  The paralysed side recovered life and its natural proportions.  By September 3, Mlle. Coirin could go out for a drive.

All her malady, says Dr. Charcot, paralysis, ‘cancer,’ and all, was ‘hysterical;’ ‘hysterical oedema,’ for which he quotes many French authorities and one American.  ’Under the physical [psychical?] influence brought to bear by the application of the shift ... the oedema, which was due to vaso-motor trouble, disappeared almost instantaneously.  The breast regained its normal size.’

Dr. Charcot generously adds that shrines, like Lourdes, have cured patients in whom he could not ‘inspire the operation of the faith cure.’  He certainly cannot explain everything which claims to be of supernatural origin in the faith cure.  We have to learn the lesson of patience.  I am among the first to recognise that Shakespeare’s words hold good to-day: 

  ’There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
   Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’