My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

LIFE AT LEICESTER AND NEATH 125effect, or an exceedingly slight one. During thetrance they seemed in a state of semi-torpor, withapparently no volition. They would remain perfectlyquiescent so long as I did not notice them, but wouldat once answer any questions or do anything I toldthem. On the two boys with whom I continued toexperiment for some time, I could produce catalepsyof any limb or of the whole body, and in this statethey could do things which they could not, andcertainly would not have done in their normal state.For example, on the rigid outstretched arm I wouldhang at the wrist an ordinary bedroom chair, and theboy would hold it there for several minutes, while Isat down and wrote a short letter for instance, withoutany complaint, or making any remark when I took itoff. I never left it more than five minutes, because Iwas afraid that some injury might be caused by it.I soon found that this rigidity could be produced inthose who had been mesmerised by suggestion only,and in this way often fixed them in any position,notwithstanding their efforts to change it. Oneexperiment was to place a shilling on the table infront of a boy, and then say to him, " Now, you can'ttouch that shilling." He would at once move hishand towards it, but when half-way it would seem tostick fast, and all his efforts could not bring it nearer,though he was promised the shilling if he couldtake it.But perhaps the most interesting group of phenomenato me were those termed phreno-mesmerism.I had read, when with my brother, George Combe's" Constitution of Man," with which I had been greatlyinterested, and afterwards one of the writer's workson Phrenology, and at the lecture I had seen some ofthe effects of exciting the phrenological organs by