Professor Richet writes:[20]

’On Monday, July 2, 1888, after having passed all the day in my laboratory, I hypnotised Leonie at 8 P.M., and while she tried to make out a diagram concealed in an envelope I said to her quite suddenly:  “What has happened to M. Langlois?” Leonie knows M. Langlois from having seen him two or three times some time ago in my physiological laboratory, where he acts as my assistant.—­“He has burnt himself,” Leonie replied,—­“Good,” I said, “and where has he burnt himself?”—­“On the left hand.  It is not fire:  it is—­I don’t know its name.  Why does he not take care when he pours it out?”—­“Of what colour,” I asked, “is the stuff which he pours out?”—­“It is not red, it is brown; he has hurt himself very much—­the skin puffed up directly.”

’Now, this description is admirably exact.  At 4 P.M. that day M. Langlois had wished to pour some bromine into a bottle.  He had done this clumsily, so that some of the bromine flowed on to his left hand, which held the funnel, and at once burnt him severely.  Although he at once put his hand into water, wherever the bromine had touched it a blister was formed in a few seconds—­a blister which one could not better describe than by saying, “the skin puffed up.”  I need not say that Leonie had not left my house, nor seen anyone from my laboratory.  Of this I am absolutely certain, and I am certain that I had not mentioned the incident of the burn to anyone.  Moreover, this was the first time for nearly a year that M. Langlois had handled bromine, and when Leonie saw him six months before at the laboratory he was engaged in experiments of quite another kind.’

Here the savage reasoner would infer that Leonie’s spirit had visited M. Langlois.  The modern inquirer will probably say that Leonie became aware of what was passing in the mind of M. Richet.  This supranormal way of acquiring knowledge was observed in the last century by M. de Puysegur in one of his earliest cases of somnambulism.  MM.  Binet and Fere say:  ’It is not yet admitted that the subject is able to divine the thoughts of the magnetiser without any material communication;’ while they grant, as a minimum, that ’research should be continued in this direction.’[21] They appear to think that Leonie may have read ‘involuntary signs’ in the aspect of M. Richet.  This is a difficult hypothesis.

Here follows a case recorded in his diary by Mr. Dobbie, of Adelaide, Australia, who has practised hypnotism for curative purposes.  He explains (June 10, 1884) that he had mesmerised Miss ——­ on several occasions to relieve rheumatic pain and sore throat.  He found her to be clairvoyant.

’The following is a verbatim account of the second time I tested her powers in this respect, April 12, 1884.  There were four persons present during the seance.  One of the company wrote down the replies as they were spoken.