Hypnotism: Its History, Practice and Theory

 

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Of course, experiments, the results of which can be made use of, should only be carried out under the strictest conditions. I think I may assume from Harnack's own publications, that he was not invariably as careful as he might have been. He speaks of cases in which people were supposed to cause deflection of the magnetic needle by merely approaching it, though he himself had to rub the glass-plate. He was able to experiment with two people who were said to possess this power. With one of them the experiment failed—he assumed the subject was only a magnetopath in her leisure hours. Harnack writes, "I obtained better results in the second case, that of a woman of the educated classes. It was only by accident that she became aware that she possessed this peculiar power. She told me at once that she did not always succeed in deflecting the needle by approaching and withdrawing her finger (she never rubbed the glass-face)." In his experiments with this lady, Harnack used a rather large, but simply constructed compass, with a glass-face; the needle was about 4 inches long, and very sensitive. When the experiment had been going on for about ten minutes, the needle suddenly deflected in the direction of the subject's finger-tips. The deflection gradually increased to from 20° to a5°. Harnack considers this experiment, which he often

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repeated, thoroughly convincing. During the experiments " the lady wore nothing that was made of steel, and no stays," and Harnack thinks that this excluded all possibility of fraud, because if the subject had had anything made of steel about her, the needle must have been affected directly she approached the compass, but nothing of the kind ever happened. Harnack further thinks that the lady and her husband took no special interest in the matter, but were solely concerned in serving the cause of truth.

But the experiments Harnack made with this lady are not convincing. His assumption that if she had had anything steel about her it would have caused the needle to deflect directly she approached the compass, is incorrect. That would depend upon whether the steel object were freely movable, so that she might weaken its action when she wished. At all events, I have not been able to discover anything in Harnack's publications showing that those precautions were taken which are absolutely necessary, if the possibility of some steel object being concealed about the subject is to be precluded. It would have been all the better

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