The following narratives and analyses of facts relating to the investigation of important and interesting phenomena of the nervous system are published in the belief that they will be new, in whole or in part, to the majority of neurologists and practitioners, both in Europe and America.
Some of the facts connected with the detailed history of muscle-reading are here put on permanent record for the first time, and have been obtained partly from memory and partly from public and private documents in my possession.
It is interesting and incredible that these phenomena of the involuntary life which, during the past year, have been exciting so much inquiry in the neurological world, even so recently as 1874 were almost entirely without an audience.
It is just to remind students of these topics, who are comparing the earlier and later researches, that all the leading problems connected with the nature and phenomena of Trance were solved and the whole subject organized in a science by Mr. Braid and myself, years before the recent French and German experiments were inaugurated. My own special task was to take up the subject where Mr. Braid left it and bring it out of the territorial into the organized stage. This task was substantially accomplished in the monograph published in 1877, and which is referred to in the following statement of facts.
This article includes a defence of Dr. Charcot under the subject heading "The Moral Character of Trance Subjects".
