ABSTRACT
Hypnotism, since it has received general acknowledgment, has been applied chiefly to the treatment of nervous disorders. Consequently, the notion is prevalent that only persons of great excitability, weak-mindedness, or hysterical disposition make good subjects, and that the higher phenomena produced by the old mesmerists must have been due either to suggestion, self-deception, or fraud. Hence I determined to experiment on normal subjects, whose consent I could obtain for the purpose, and test what are the powers manifested in the hypnotic state and immediately on awakening, independent of any conscious, or (so far as I could judge) subconscious suggestion.
