_MENTAL AUTOMATISM._
A recent work by Prof. Th. Flournoy, entitled ‘Des Indes à la
Planète Mars,’[G] contains an account of a remarkable case of mental
automatism, or sub-conscious personality. The subject is a young woman
of about thirty years, apparently in good health, but always of a
nervous and imaginative type. She developed tendencies towards lapses
of consciousness, hallucinations and automatic actions; and these
developed later, under the inspiration of spiritualistic séances, into
a series of cycles, or automatic dramas, in which the medium speaks
or writes and acts under the influence of several diverse subordinate
personalities. In one of these cycles--which, it must be understood,
are continued from one sitting to another, although in her intermediate
normal life she knows nothing of what she has said or done in the
trance--she becomes Marie Antoinette, and is said to act the part
with unusual dramatic skill. In another and far more elaborate cycle
the scene is transferred to the planet Mars, and the houses, scenery,
plants and animals, peoples, customs and goings-on of the planet are
described; sketches are made, and reproduced in the volume, of these
extra-mundane appearances. Still more remarkable is the appearance of
the Martian language, which in successive séances the subject hears,
speaks, sees before her in space, and, in the end, even writes. From
the mystery of Mars we are taken to the equally mysterious Hindu cycle;
here the medium becomes an Indian princess of the fifteenth century,
reveals her history and that of her associates in the Oriental life,
tells of herself as Simandini; of Sivrouka, her prince, who reigned
over Kanara and built in 1401 the fortress of Tschandraguiri. Wonderful
to relate, these names are not fictitious, but are mentioned by one De
Marlès in a volume published in 1828; the author, however, does not
enjoy a high reputation as a historian. When occasional utterances
of the Hindu princess are taken down, they are found in part to have
close resemblance to Sanskrit words; while in her normal condition the
medium is as ignorant of Sanskrit as she is of any language except
French, and is entirely ignorant of both De Marlès and the people
of India five hundred years ago. Surely this is a tale, bristling
with mystery and improbability, which, if told carelessly or with a
purpose, we should dismiss as a willful invention! M. Flournoy has been
unusually successful in revealing the starting points of the several
automatisms and of connecting them with intelligible developments of
the medium’s mental life; and the manifestations, though they remain
as remarkable examples of unconscious memory and elaboration of ideas,
nowhere transcend these limitations. The sketches of Martian scenery
are clearly Japanesque or vaguely Oriental; the Martian language is
pronounced an ‘infantile’ production, and is clearly modeled after the
French, the characters being the result of an attempt to make them as
oddly different from our own as possible; the Sanskrit goes no farther
than what one could get from a slight acquaintance with a Sanskrit
grammar; and while there is a copy of De Marlès in the Geneva Library
(where the medium lives), no connection can be established between
either De Marlès or the grammar and the subject of this study. Most
of this knowledge of these remarkable sub-conscious states would have
been impossible were it not for ‘spirit control’ of one Leopold, who,
in accordance with the doctrine of reincarnation which permeates the
several cycles, was in his life the famous Cagliostro. By suitable
suggestion, Leopold can be induced to make the entranced subject speak,
write, draw, or interpret her strange messages from other worlds; and
where Leopold says ‘nay’ all progress is stopped. This case has many
analogies with other cases that have been recorded, but goes beyond
most of them in the complexity and bizarre character of the unconscious
elaborations and in the feats of memory and creative imagination which
it entails. These accomplishments, it should be well understood, never
appeared suddenly or fully developed, but only after a considerable
period of subliminal preparation, and then only hesitatingly, and
little by little, just as is the case with the acquisitions of normal
consciousness; and all these acquisitions bear unmistakable marks of
belonging to the same person. The special value of this account thus
lies in the accuracy of the description and the success with which the
account has been made thoroughly intelligible and significant.
[G] The book has just been published by the Harpers in an
English version, under the title ‘She Lived in Mars.’
_THE MOSQUITOES OF THE UNITED STATES._
Dr. L. O. Howard, the entomologist of the United States Department of
Agriculture, has just published a bulletin entitled, “Notes on the
Mosquitoes of the United States: Giving some Account of their Structure
and Biology, with Remarks on Remedies.” The author has, for some years,
been interested in the general subject of the biology of mosquitoes
and of remedies to be used against them, and has brought together in
this bulletin all the published and unpublished notes which he has been
collecting during this period. The bulletin contains synoptic tables
of all North American mosquitoes, prepared by Mr. D. W. Coquillett,
and gives detailed facts regarding the geographical distribution of
the different species mentioned. All the five North American genera
are illustrated and full, illustrated accounts are given of the life
history of the two principal genera, Culex and Anopheles, as studied
in _Culex pungens_ and _Anopheles quadrimaculatus_. The author calls
special attention to the two genera of large mosquitoes, Psorophora and
Megarhinus, and urges the importance of the study of these two genera,
especially by physicians in the South, in regard to their possible
relation to the spread of malaria. Considerable space is given to the
subject of remedies, the principal ones considered being kerosene
on breeding pools, the introduction of fish in fishless ponds, the
artificial agitation of water and general community work. It is clearly
shown not only that the mosquito may be, in many localities, readily
done away with at comparatively slight expense, but that by careful
work many malarious localities may be made healthy. The subject of
mosquitoes and malaria is not discussed in the bulletin, which contains
simply references to available papers on this subject, like the article
by Dr. Patrick Manson, published in THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY for
July, the aim of the author being to bring together all available
facts about the mosquitoes of the United States, in order to assist
physicians who are studying the malarial relation from the point of
view of local conditions.