CHAPTER XI.

A Scientific Explanation of Hypnotism.—Dr. Hart’s Theory.


In the introduction to this book the reader will find a summary of the
theories of hypnotism. There is no doubt that hypnotism is a complex
state which cannot be explained in an offhand way in a sentence or two.
There are, however, certain aspects of hypnotism which we may suppose
sufficiently explained by certain scientific writers on the subject.

First, what is the character of the delusions apparently created in the
mind of a person in the hypnotic condition by a simple word of mouth
statement, as when a physician says, “Now, I am going to cut your leg
off, but it will not hurt you in the least,” and the patient suffers
nothing?

In answer to this question, Professor William James of Harvard College,
one of the leading authorities on the scientific aspects of psychical
phenomena in this country, reports the following experiments:

“Make a stroke on a paper or blackboard, and tell the subject it is not
there, and he will see nothing but the clean paper or board. Next, he
not looking, surround the original stroke with other strokes exactly
like it, and ask him what he sees. He will point out one by one the new
strokes and omit the original one every time, no matter how numerous
the next strokes may be, or in what order they are arranged. Similarly,
if the original single line, to which he is blind, be doubled by a
prism of sixteen degrees placed before one of his eyes (both being kept
open), he will say that he now sees one stroke, and point in the
direction in which lies the image seen through the prism.

“Another experiment proves that he must see it in order to ignore it.
Make a red cross, invisible to the hypnotic subject, on a sheet of
white paper, and yet cause him to look fixedly at a dot on the paper on
or near the red cross; he wills on transferring his eye to the blank
sheet, see a bluish-green after image of the cross. This proves that it
has impressed his sensibility. He has felt but not perceived it. He had
actually ignored it; refused to recognize it, as it were.”

Dr. Ernest Hart, an English writer, in an article in the British
Medical Journal, gives a general explanation of the phenomena of
hypnotism which we may accept as true so far as it goes, but which is
evidently incomplete. He seems to minimize personal influence too
much—that personal influence which we all exert at various times, and
which he ignores, not because he would deny it, but because he fears
lending countenance to the magnetic fluid and other similar theories.
Says he:

“We have arrived at the point at which it will be plain that the
condition produced in these cases, and known under a varied jargon
invented either to conceal ignorance, to express hypotheses, or to mask
the design of impressing the imagination and possibly prey upon the
pockets of a credulous and wonder-loving public—such names as mesmeric
condition, magnetic sleep, clairvoyance, electro-biology, animal
magnetism, faith trance, and many other aliases—such a condition, I
say, is always subjective. It is independent of passes or gestures; it
has no relation to any fluid emanating from the operator; it has no
relation to his will, or to any influence which he exercises upon
inanimate objects; distance does not affect it, nor proximity, nor the
intervention of any conductors or non-conductors, whether silk or glass
or stone, or even a brick wall. We can transmit the order to sleep by
telephone or by telegraph. We can practically get the same results
while eliminating even the operator, if we can contrive to influence
the imagination or to affect the physical condition of the subject by
any one of a great number of contrivances.

“What does all this mean? I will refer to one or two facts in relation
to the structure and function of the brain, and show one or two simple
experiments of very ancient parentage and date, which will, I think,
help to an explanation. First, let us recall something of what we know
of the anatomy and localization of function in the brain, and of the
nature of ordinary sleep. The brain, as you know, is a complicated
organ, made up internally of nerve masses, or ganglia, of which the
central and underlying masses are connected with the automatic
functions and involuntary actions of the body (such as the action of
the heart, lungs, stomach, bowels, etc.), while the investing surface
shows a system of complicated convolutions rich in gray matter, thickly
sown with microscopic cells, in which the nerve ends terminate. At the
base of the brain is a complete circle of arteries, from which spring
great numbers of small arterial vessels, carrying a profuse blood
supply throughout the whole mass, and capable of contraction in small
tracts, so that small areas of the brain may, at any given moment,
become bloodless, while other parts of the brain may simultaneously
become highly congested. Now, if the brain or any part of it be
deprived of the circulation of blood through it, or be rendered
partially bloodless, or if it be excessively congested and overloaded
with blood, or if it be subjected to local pressure, the part of the
brain so acted upon ceases to be capable of exercising its functions.
The regularity of the action of the brain and the sanity and
completeness of the thought which is one of the functions of its
activity depend upon the healthy regularity of the quantity of blood
passing through all its parts, and upon the healthy quality of the
blood so circulating. If we press upon the carotid arteries which pass
up through the neck to form the arterial circle of Willis, at the base
of the brain, within the skull—of which I have already spoken, and
which supplies the brain with blood—we quickly, as every one knows,
produce insensibility. Thought is abolished, consciousness lost. And if
we continue the pressure, all those automatic actions of the body, such
as the beating of the heart, the breathing motions of the lungs, which
maintain life and are controlled by the lower brain centers of ganglia,
are quickly stopped and death ensues.

“We know by observation in cases where portions of the skull have been
removed, either in men or in animals, that during natural sleep the
upper part of the brain—its convoluted surface, which in health and in
the waking state is faintly pink, like a blushing cheek, from the color
of the blood circulating through the network of capillary
arteries—becomes white and almost bloodless. It is in these upper
convolutions of the brain, as we also know, that the will and the
directing power are resident; so that in sleep the will is abolished
and consciousness fades gradually away, as the blood is pressed out by
the contraction of the arteries. So, also, the consciousness and the
directing will may be abolished by altering the quality of the blood
passing through the convolutions of the brain. We may introduce a
volatile substance, such as chloroform, and its first effect will be to
abolish consciousness and induce profound slumber and a blessed
insensibility to pain. The like effects will follow more slowly upon
the absorption of a drug, such as opium; or we may induce
hallucinations by introducing into the blood other toxic substances,
such as Indian hemp or stramonium. We are not conscious of the
mechanism producing the arterial contraction and the bloodlessness of
those convolutions related to natural sleep. But we are not altogether
without control over them. We can, we know, help to compose ourselves
to sleep, as we say in ordinary language. We retire into a darkened
room, we relieve ourselves from the stimulus of the special senses, we
free ourselves from the influence of noises, of strong light, of
powerful colors, or of tactile impressions. We lie down and endeavor to
soothe brain activity by driving away disturbing thoughts, or, as
people sometimes say, ‘try to think of nothing.’ And, happily, we
generally succeed more or less well. Some people possess an even more
marked control over this mechanism of sleep. I can generally succeed in
putting myself to sleep at any hour of the day, either in the library
chair or in the brougham. This is, so to speak, a process of
self-hypnotization, and I have often practiced it when going from house
to house, when in the midst of a busy practice, and I sometimes have
amused my friends and family by exercising this faculty, which I do not
think it very difficult to acquire. (We also know that many persons can
wake at a fixed hour in the morning by setting their minds upon it just
before going to sleep.) Now, there is something here which deserves a
little further examination, but which it would take too much time to
develop fully at present. Most people know something of what is meant
by reflex action. The nerves which pass from the various organs to the
brain convey with, great rapidity messages to its various parts, which
are answered by reflected waves of impulse. If the soles of the feet be
tickled, contraction of the toes, or involuntary laughter, will be
excited, or perhaps only a shuddering and skin contraction, known as
goose-skin. The irritation of the nerve-end in the skin has carried a
message to the involuntary or voluntary ganglia of the brain which has
responded by reflecting back again nerve impulses which have contracted
the muscles of the feet or skin muscles, or have given rise to
associated ideas and explosion of laughter. In the same way, if during
sleep heat be applied to the soles of the feet, dreams of walking over
hot surfaces—Vesuvius or Fusiyama, or still hotter places—may be
produced, or dreams of adventure on frozen surfaces or in arctic
regions may be created by applying ice to the feet of the sleeper.

“Here, then, it is seen that we have a mechanism in the body, known to
physiologists as the ideo-motor, or sensory motor system of nerves,
which can produce, without the consciousness of the individual and
automatically, a series of muscular contractions. And remember that the
coats of the arteries are muscular and contractile under the influence
of external stimuli, acting without the help of the consciousness, or
when the consciousness is in abeyance. I will give another example of
this, which completes the chain of phenomena in the natural brain and
the natural body I wish to bring under notice in explanation of the
true as distinguished from the false, or falsely interpreted, phenomena
of hypnotism, mesmerism and electro-biology. I will take the excellent
illustration quoted by Dr. B. W. Carpenter in his old-time, but
valuable, book on ‘The Physiology of the Brain.’ When a hungry man sees
food, or when, let us say, a hungry boy looks into a cookshop, he
becomes aware of a watering of the mouth and a gnawing sensation at the
stomach. What does this mean? It means that the mental impression made
upon him by the welcome and appetizing spectacle has caused a secretion
of saliva and of gastric juice; that is to say, the brain has, through
the ideo-motor set of nerves, sent a message which has dilated the
vessels around the salivary and gastric glands, increased the flow of
blood through them and quickened their secretion. Here we have, then, a
purely subjective mental activity acting through a mechanism of which
the boy is quite ignorant, and which he is unable to control, and
producing that action on the vessels of dilation or contraction which,
as we have seen, is the essential condition of brain activity and the
evolution of thought, and is related to the quickening or the abolition
of consciousness, and to the activity or abeyance of function in the
will centers and upper convolutions of the brain, as in its other
centers of localization.

“Here, then, we have something like a clue to the phenomena—phenomena
which, as I have pointed out, are similar to and have much in common
with mesmeric sleep, hypnotism or electro-biology. We have already, I
hope, succeeded in eliminating from our minds the false theory—the
theory, that is to say, experimentally proved to be false—that the
will, or the gestures, or the magnetic or vital fluid of the operator
are necessary for the abolition of the consciousness and the abeyance
of the will of the subject. We now see that ideas arising in the mind
of the subject are sufficient to influence the circulation in the brain
of the person operated on, and such variations of the blood supply of
the brain as are adequate to produce sleep in the natural state, or
artificial slumber, either by total deprivation or by excessive
increase or local aberration in the quantity or quality of blood. In a
like manner it is possible to produce coma and prolonged insensibility
by pressure of the thumbs on the carotid; or hallucination, dreams and
visions by drugs, or by external stimulation of the nerves. Here again
the consciousness may be only partially affected, and the person in
whom sleep, coma or hallucination is produced, whether by physical
means or by the influence of suggestion, may remain subject to the will
of others and incapable of exercising his own volition.”

In short, Dr. Hart’s theory is that hypnotism comes from controlling
the blood supply of the brain, cutting off the supply from parts or
increasing it in other parts. This theory is borne out by the
well-known fact that some persons can blush or turn pale at will; that
some people always blush on the mention of certain things, or calling
up certain ideas. Certain other ideas will make them turn pale. Now, if
certain parts of the brain are made to blush or turn pale, there is no
doubt that hypnotism will follow, since blushing and turning pale are
known to be due to the opening and closing of the blood-vessels. We may
say that the subject is induced by some means to shut the blood out of
certain portions of the brain, and keep it out until he is told to let
it in again.