The possibility of suggestion in waking conditions, and also a long time after the sleep has passed off (suggestions posthypnotiques ou suggestions a (longue) echeance), as well as the remarkable capacity of subjects to change their personality (changement de la personnalite objectivation des types), have been made the subject of careful investigation.  The voluntary production of bleeding and stigmata through spiritual influence has been asserted, particularly by Messrs. Tocachon, Bourru, and Burot.  The judicial significance of suggestion has been discussed by Professor Liegeois and Dr. Ladame.  Professor Pitres in Bordeaux is one of the suggestionists, though differing in many points from the Nancy school.

This whole tendency brings into prominence the psychical influence, while it denies the production of these results from purely physical phenomena, endeavoring to explain them in a different manner.  These explanations carry us into two realms, the first of which has been lately opened, and at present seems to abound more in enigmas than in solutions.

Metallotherapie, which was called into existence by Dr. Burg, and further extended by Dr. Gelle, contains a special point of interest—­the so-called transference in the case of hysterically or hypnotically affected persons.  Transference is caused by electro-magnetism, which has this peculiarity—­that in the case of specially sensitive persons it can transfer the bodily affection from left to right, and vice versa.  The transference of paralysis, the cures attempted on this plan, and the so-called “psychical transference,” which contains special interest for graphologists, are at the present time still open questions, as well as the closely connected theory of human polarity; and the odic experiments of Dr. Chazarain are yet waiting for their confirmation.  At present the problem of the connection between magnetism and hypnotism is under investigation, and in such a manner that we may hope for a speedy solution.

Still stranger than these reports are the accounts of the distant operation of certain bodies; at least, they seem strange to those unacquainted with psychometry and the literature of the past century relating to this subject.  Two physicians in Rochefort, Professors Bourru and Burot, in treating a hystero-epileptic person, found that gold, even when at a distance of fifteen centimeters, produced in him a feeling of unbearable heat.  They continued these experiments with great care, and, after a number of trials, came to this conclusion—­that in some persons certain substances, even when carefully separated from them by long distance, exercise exactly the same physiological influence as if introduced into their organism.  In order to explain these phenomena, they refer to the radiating force of Barety, an explanation neither satisfactory to themselves nor to others.  Lately the distinguished Parisian physician, Dr. Luys, has confirmed by his experiments the existence of these phenomena, but he thinks the explanation referable to hyper-sensitiveness of the “regions emotives et intellectuelles de l’encephale” yet even he has not reached the kernel of the difficulty.