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mon observation. Call to a person who is near a candle, "Your hair is burning," and he is almost sure quickly to draw back and put his hand to his head. The sight of certain insects is apt to produce the sensation of itching, or of something crawling over the body.

We all know persons rich in sensibility, but poor in will. They are generally of nervous organization, very impressible, "And take suggestion as a cat laps milk."

Their will either is originally weak, or, not having been duly exercised, gradually grows feebler, until the ability to call it up is almost lost. We say of them that they are "easily led," "bave no decision." Such persons are indeed "puppets pulled by suggesting strings" held by another of stronger volition and force. of character, who bends their service to his will. In old age there is deterioration of will-power, and the same happens from the prolonged use of alcohol, hasheesh, opium, chloral, cocoaine, and other narcotics.

Mr. Braid, while investigating the alleged "odyle force” of Baron Reichenbach, found that whatever sensations were producible by the agency of magnets, crystals, etc., the same event happened when the subjects believed that the agents were being used, although they were not, and that the quality of the experienced sensations depended on the ideas formed by the subject, and which had been previously suggested to him. A lady of sound health, being put into a dark closet, in the waking state, and directed to look at a powerful magnet, when asked to describe what she saw, replied, after gazing awhile, "Nothing." When told that, if she looked attentively, she would see streams of fire come out of the instrument, she immediately said she saw a shower of sparks similar to those in some kinds of fireworks. The lid of the box which contained the magnet being closed without her knowledge, she still saw the sparks. The experiment was frequently repeated, with the same result whenever she went into that closet, even after the magnet had been removed to another room. Here expectation and "the mere association of ideas were sufficient to cause her to realize a visible representation of the same light and flames." Another placed her hands on the poles of

a magnet, and there was, naturally, no attraction between the hand and the magnet; but when it was suggested that her hand would be held fast by its attraction, then she was unable to withdraw it,

Dr. Carpenter mentions the case of a gentleman of high literary and scientific attainments, possessing in an unusual degree the power of self-concentration, who, when, in the waking state, placed his hand on a table and fixed his attention upon it for half a minute, would be unable to withdraw it, if assured in a determined tone that he could not do so. He, too, could be brought to see flames issuing from the poles of a magnet, of any form or color that might be suggested to him.

If disease can be caused by the emotions in a class of patients, it can occasionally be removed by them. Physicians know the effect produced upon hysterical paraplegics by the threat to sear the back with a hot iron. Recovery of the lost power of the lower limbs, in persons thus afflicted, on their experiencing a strong emotion, as anger, fright, has sometimes happened. A certain lady who had not walked for years, being at a seaside resort, was wheeled in a chair to the beach by her husband, who quitted her to go a short distance. On his return he was surprised to see her running toward him, and found that in his absence she had been insulted by a couple of drunken sailors, and had thus suddenly recovered the use of her legs. During the earthquake in the Riviera, last year, persons who had been paralyzed for years, it is said, were cured immediately, and were seen running in their night-clothes through the streets from the threatened houses. It is wonderful how often such hysterical subjects become quick-witted and quick-footed under the influence of fear or other emotions.

The influence of Suggestion in the hypnotic state is curiously shown by placing the sensitive in certain attitudes, the usual physical accompaniments of some of the passions and emotions. When the body and limbs are stiffened and the head thrown slightly back, we have the expression of pride; when slightly bent, that of humility; when on the knees, with hands clasped and the eyes looking up, deep devotion.

The exercise of will-power by a patient has been known to

be followed by happy results. The author of that charming work, "The Original," tells how he successfully combated invalidism, to which he had been subject from infancy. "During these long years," he writes, "I felt no security. One day, when reading Cicero's 'De Oratore,' some passage decided me to rise for my book, stand bolt upright, and determine to be well," and complete restoration of health ensued, which continued until a short period of his death, many years afterward.

All the miracles of healing in ancient and modern times seem explainable by the trilogy, Expectation, Suggestion, Faith. The quack says his medicine will cure, and it is taken with this assurance. There is no doubt on the part of the patient. Full confidence is first secured, and the cure may follow. And so it is with the Mind Cure, Suggestive Medicine, mesmerism, magnets, metals, and the Well of Lourdes. Quite recently, in New Jersey, a girl, after an attack of measles, lost her voice. Her parents had heard of the cures of like cases effected by visiting a certain chapel in Ireland. They were too poor to take her there, but they procured some of the plaster from the wall of the chapel, and the child drank of the water in which it had been soaked, and her voice immediately came back. Dr. Bernheim mentions the case of an hysterical girl who came to his clinic with loss of voice. He said before her that such cases were often successfully treated by electricity. Before using it, however, he applied his hand over the larynx, saying, "You will now be able to speak," and the voice returned.

Whatever may be the successes of Suggestion as a healing agent, it can never become a remedy of general application. Its limitation is distinct. Impressible natures only, whether hypnotized or in a waking state, can be brought under its influence. When any evidence of its having cured organic disease is presented, it will be time enough seriously to consider its merits. When it removes a cancer, arrests pneumonia or typhoid fever, its claims as a mode of healing may receive attention. No reliable testimony to such an effect has so far been brought forward. Lord Bacon tells us that "the mind of man is full of superstition and imposture," and that it is consonant to its nature "for the affirmative or active to effect more than the negative or

privative. So that a few times hitting a presence, countervails ofttimes failing or absence." When Diagoras was shown, in the temple of Neptune, the votive offerings of those who had escaped shipwreck, and was asked if it were folly to invoke the god in a tempest, he replied, "Where are they painted who were drowned?" When the event answers expectation it is registered, but the more numerous failures are passed by.

The history of all marvel cures tells the same tale. Each healing epidemic has its period of birth, development, decay, extinction, and its sun often goes down while it is yet day— pitiful evidence of the infirmity of the human mind, so readily moved by novelty, so credulous of wonders. When man has more concern about, and knowledge of, the means of his existence-what Faraday called "the very beautiful laws and conditions by which we do live and stand upon the earth ”—then we shall be less likely to

"So stain our judgment

To prostitute our past-cure malady

To empirics; or to dissever so

Our great self and our credit, to esteem

A senseless help, when help past sense we deem."

MEREDITH CLYMER.

THE TENEMENT-HOUSE PROBLEM.

THE tenement problem includes the question of what shall be done for the very lowest class of the degraded poor, and reformers are at once met with the objection, "Why, these people are not suffering as you suppose they are. You project yourself, with your tastes and habits, into their environment, and fancy what you would suffer in such surroundings. But they are not suffering like that. They will not care enough about your better tenements to move into them, even at the rents they pay now. They are wedded to filth and misery. They don't want you to do anything for them."

The embarrassing part of this objection is that it is true. The degraded poor are not suffering from a keen sense of degradation; they do not desire either your sympathy or your interference. Attempt to deny this, and proceed loftily to relieve an oppressed class suffering bitterly and ready to worship you as their benefactor, and you will be discouraged at the very first step. Of course, this is not asserting that no poor people are suffering. There is a large number of poor people who do suffer, but they are not the degraded creatures of the very lowest class. They are, as a rule, nouveaux pauvres, not absolutely poor perhaps, but poor in their own estimation because they are a little poorer than they were yesterday. The nouveaux pauvres are suffering; but it is les misérables whom we are chiefly considering in the tenement problem, and the most awful part of the misery of les misérables is that their misery does not bring with it any great sense of degradation.

No, we may not assert that the degraded poor are anxious to be improved. But that should not discourage effort. On the contrary it should intensify it a hundred-fold. Do you suppose that Philanthropy will shut her purse, and turn away her eyes, and go quietly home again, because you tell her the tenement

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