Waterbury evening Democrat., 1890-08-22
POWER OF SUGGESTION.
A Much Moro Powerful Factor Than Ha
 Generally Supposed.


 A Much Moro Powerful Factor Than Hs
 Generally Supposed.
 If Fletcher. of Saltoun, had lived in well-known aphorism, and declared that: Let me make the newspapers of people, and care not who makes the laws" It is, indeed, a matter of common observation that the man who reads but one newspaper is likely to be- come more or less consciously the echo of it's opinions. But recent investiga- tions of the phenomena of hypnotism show that the imprint made upon the brain by reading. however cursory, is much deeper and more permanent than is commonly supposed. A patient at one of the Paris hospitals was able, while in the trance state, to repeat word for word scientific lecture which she had heard some time before, but of which in her normal condition she could not recollect syllable. Other experiments showed that, had she read the lecture, instead of hearing it, the re- suit would have been the same. Anoth CT instance indicating that impressions made upon the brain, though we may not be able to reproduce them at will, really last as long as the life of the organism, is mentioned by Sir William Hamilton. It is the case of man who, in the delirium of fever, uttered sem tences in several foreign languages with neither of which did he in a state of health possess any acquaintance. It turned out upon inquiry that at ona period of his life this man had heard those languages spoken, though he had never understood them. If we reflect upon this seemingly well-established mperishability of cerebral impressions, we can not but feel that it immensely heightens the moral responsibility of all writers, and especially of contribu- tors to newspapers which have world wide audience.
 The daily record of crime and vice, though 1t may not afterward be recover able by the reader through any deliber- ate effort of the memory, is neverthe- less engraven on the tablets of the brain, and who can say that its evil suggestions may not under certain morbid conditions, or at some grave moral crisis, exercise an imperceptible but malignant influence upon the char acter and conduct. It is certain that the crimes which hypnotized persons may be made tocommit are perpetrated in obedience to suggestions addressed to those very sections of the brain, normally inactive, which, under special stimulation, evince the extraordinary tenacity of memory above described. Why, under hy- photic conditions, may not crime be self-suggested? This field of inquiry is as yet but imperfectly explored, but some experiments indicate that what is called auto-suggestion, or morbid inn pulse excited by the remembered wrong doing of others, may be irresistible by 8 hypnotized person, while in his waking hours it would be easily controlled. The inference is that evil communicar tions may corrupt good manners in ways more subtle than have hitherto been imagined, and that he should do we'll to safeguard young men and young women not only from those books and news papers which deliberately palliate crime and vice, but even from those which present colorless record of evil doings considered as matter of news IN. Y. Ledger.