River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1890-08-21
POWER oE SUGGESTION.
A Much More Powerful Factor Than
Generally Supposed.

Generally supposed.
If Fletcher. of Saltoun, had lived in
our day, he would have modified his
wellknown aphorism, and declared
that: LET me make the newspapers
of a people, and care not who makes
the laws" 1t is, indeed, matter of
common observation that the man who
reads but one newspaper is likely 20 be-
come more or less consciously the echo
of its 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 recolleet a syllable. Other
experiments showed that, had she read
the lecture, instead of hearing it, the re-
/ suit would have been the same. Anoth-
er 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. 1t is the case of man who,
in the delirium of fever. uttered sem
fences in several foreign languages
with neither of which did he in state
of health possess any acquaintance. lt
turned out upon inquiry that at one
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
imperishability of cerebral impressions.
we can not but feel that it immensely
heightens the moral responsibility OF
all writer's, and especially of contribu
tors to newspapers which have a world
wide audience.
The daily record of crime and vice,
though it 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. 1t is certain that
the crimes which hypnotized persons
may be made to commit are perpetrated
in obedience to suggestions addressed
to those very sections of the brain,
normally inactive, which, under
special stimulation, eyince 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 a morbid i'm
pulse excited by the remembered wrong
doing of others, may be irresistible by a
hypnotized person, while in his waking
hours it would be easily controlled.
The inference is that evil communica-
tions may corrupt good manners in ways
more subtle than have hitherto been
imagined, and that be should do well 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 a colorless record of evil
doings considered as matter of news.
N Y Ledger