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EXPERIMENTAL TRANSFERENCE OF SIMPLE SENSATIONS IN THE NORMAL STATE.

It is somewhat remarkable that the facts of thought-transference should only have attracted serious attention within the last two decades. With waking percipients, indeed, such phenomena do not seem to occur unsought with sufficient frequency, or—if we leave on one side for the moment telepathic hallucinations—on a sufficiently striking scale to afford evidence of any transmission of thought or sensation otherwise than through the familiar channels. But the hypnotic state appears to offer peculiar facilities for such transmission, and hypnotism, under the name of mesmerism, has now been closely studied by numerous observers for upwards of a century. The earlier French observers,[15] indeed, occasionally recorded instances of what appears to have been thought-transference between the mesmerist and his subject. But these facts were observed by the way, in the search for phenomena of another kind; and no attempt appears to have been made to follow up the clue by means of direct experiment. Even the English observers of 1840 and onwards, though familiar with what they termed "community of sensation" between the operator and his subject, appear never to have realised its possible significance. Dr. Elliotson, for instance, describes in the Zoist (vol. v. pp. 242–245) some experiments in which a lady, mesmerised by himself, was able to indicate correctly the taste of salt, cinnamon, sugar, ginger, water, and pepper, as Dr. Elliotson placed successively these various substances in his mouth. But he seems to have recorded the results chiefly from curiosity, and to have regarded them as of little scientific interest compared with the stiffening of a limb, or the painless performance of an operation under mesmeric anæsthesia. Dr. Esdaile (Practical Mesmerism, p. 125), Mr. C. H. Townshend (Facts in Mesmerism, pp. 68, 72, 76, etc., etc.), Professor Gregory (Animal Magnetism, p. 231), and other writers of that time, record similar observations. But the subject seems to have been crowded out, on the one hand, with the more cautious observers, by the growing importance of hypnotism as an anæsthetic and a curative agency, on the other by the greater marvels of "clairvoyance" and "spirit" communications.

It was Professor Barrett, of the Royal College of Science, Dublin, who, in a paper read before the British Association at Glasgow in 1876, first isolated the phenomenon from its somewhat dubious surroundings, and drew public attention to its importance. Up to that time "community of sensation" or thought-transference seems to have been known only as a rare and fitful accompaniment of the hypnotic trance. But in the course of the correspondence arising out of his paper Professor Barrett learnt of several instances where similar phenomena had been observed in the waking state. The Willing game was just then coming into fashion, and cases had been observed in which the thing willed had been performed without contact between the performer and the person willing, and apparently without the possibility of any normal means of communication between them. Later, in the years 1881–82, a long series of experiments, in which Professor Sidgwick, the late Professor Balfour Stewart, the late Edmund Gurney, Mr. F. W. H. Myers and others joined with Professor Barrett, seemed to establish the possibility of a new mode of communication. And these earlier results have been confirmed by further experiments continued down to the present time by many observers both in this country and abroad. In the present chapter some account will be given of experiments in the transference of simple ideas and sensations performed with percipients in the ordinary waking state. The next chapter will deal with similar results obtained with hypnotised persons. In Chapters IV. and V. results of a more complicated or unusual character will be described and discussed.

Transference of Tastes.

The particular form of telepathy which first attracted attention to the whole subject, the transmission to the percipient of impressions of taste and pain experienced by the agent, appears to have been observed in the normal state very rarely. One such case may be here quoted. In the years 1883–85 Mr. Malcolm Guthrie, J.P., of Liverpool, the then head of a large drapery business in that city, conducted a long series of experiments with two of his employees, Miss E. and Miss R. In September 1883 Mr. Guthrie, Mr. Edmund Gurney, and Mr. Myers, indicated respectively by the initials M. G., E. G., and M., had a series of trials with these percipients in the transference of tastes. The percipients, who were fully awake, were blindfolded; the packets or bottles containing the substances experimented upon were placed beyond the range of possible vision; and in the case of strongly smelling substances, either at a distance or outside the room; and other precautions were taken by the agents, by keeping the mouth closed and turning the head away, etc., in order that the percipients should not become aware by the sense of smell of the nature of the substance experimented with. Strict silence was of course observed. It may be conceded that when all possible precautions are taken, experiments with sapid substances must be inconclusive when the agent is in the same room with the percipient; since nearly all such substances have an odour, however faint. In view, however, of the extreme sensibility already demonstrated (see below, pp. 23, etc.) of these particular percipients to transferred impressions of other kinds, it seems probable that the results in this case also were actually due to telepathy. The alternative explanation is to attribute to persons in the normal waking state a degree of hyperæsthesia for which we have no exact parallel even in the records of hypnotism. For to persons of normal susceptibility the odour of a small quantity, e.g. of salt or alum, in the mouth of another person at a distance of two or three feet would certainly be quite inappreciable.

No. 1.—By MR. GUTHRIE AND OTHERS.