NOTES. 89 evening papers ;" yet It is impossible to read Dr. James's interesting paper on the " Hidden Self ** in the March " Scribner's " without re- flecting on the part which hypnotism may yet play in the law. It is strange to thmk of our jury system and present judicial machinery applied to some of the many questions which the subject may raise, more especially in the criminal law; but up to the present time it does not seem to have come before the courts of this country. In France, however, there have been such cases, an account of which, together with a very learned and valuable discussion of hyp- notism in its legal aspects, will be found in a recent work of M.Jules Liegeois,! Professor of Jurisprudence at Nancy. This book is an elabo- rate treatment of the subject and contains facts of great importance to medical jurisprudence. The author believes that there are serious dangers in hypnotism with which the law may be called upon to deal, and he gives many striking experiments to show how the hypnotized person may be made the victim of fraud or crime, or may, by means of the post-hypnotic suggestion, be used as a tool in the hands of another. 3 In the latter case, M. Ll^geois is of opinion that the law should regard the hypnotizer as the criminal, treating the subject as legally irresponsible. Among the few occasions when the question has actually come up in court is a remarkable case some twenty-five years ago in which a beggar had enticed from her home, under very peculiar circumstances, the daughter of respectable French peasants. He was arrested, and the magistrate put to two doctors the question whether the accused *' could by the influence of magnetic passes have destroyed her moral liberty to such an extent as to give his acts the character of rape." The doc- tors answered in the affirmative, and at the trial, which resulted in a conviction, other experts were called and testified before the jury to the same effect. M. Liegeois points out that the physicians seem to have imperfectly understood the nature of the " magnetism " of which they testified, but that the circumstances of the case were such as entirely to confirm the theory that the prisoner exercised a hypnotic influence over his victim. The facts of a more recent case, where the memory of a girl convicted of theft was awakened by hypnotism, and it was thus discovered that she had secreted the missing article while in a state of somnambulism, bear a strange resemblance to the main incident of Wilkie Collins's " Moonstone." In a note appended to the report of a recent criminal case on appeal in one of the Southern States {^State v. Baker, 10 S. E. Rep. 639), the presidmg judge takes occasion to protest against the pre- vailing practice of incorporating into a bill of exceptions, whenever the evidence is brought into question, the stenographer's report of the pro- ceedings in the lower court. It not only, the judge claims, renders the record vague and voluminous, and involves the State and individ- uals in much unnecessary expense, but it also throws upon the judges ^ De la Suggestion et du Somnambulisme dans leurs Rapports avec la Jurisprudence et la Medecine Legale. Paris, Octave Doin 1889. 2 In an article entitled "Hypnotism and Crime" in the April "Forum," Dr. Charcot, v/ho belongs to a different school from M. T.i6geois. states his belief that the danger of such a use of the hypnotic suggestion is much overrated; his views seem, however, to be connected with the pecu- liar doctrines of his school. A treatise on Hypnotism by Dr. Kjornstrom, of Stockholm, recently translated for the Humboldt Library, also contains a readable, though rather thin, chapter on Hypnotbm and the Law.
