GAVE A LECTURE

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 78, 29 September 1934, Page 14

GAVE A LECTURE

WHILE UNDER CHLOROFORM

Patients in the Charing Cross Hospital, London, were recently given a lecture on Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon. But tho lecturer knew nothing of what was taking place—he had just been operated on and was still under the anaesthetic, says an English paper. . ,

The lecturer is the Rev. Walter Wynn, of Chesham, Buckinghamshire. "At first, when I was complimented on my lecture by Mr. Towns, the patient in the next bed, who was also from Chesham,"-Mr. Wynn said, "I thought he was joking. I made careful inquiries, however, before I left the hospital and there is no doubt that I delivered tho lecture.

"This seems to mo to raise important physiological and psychological problems and to give a key to what is known as a trance, of which there are several Biblical records. I have since submitted tho facts to a man of wide medical and pathological knowledge. Ho admitted he could give no rational explanation.

"But another doctor, who deals with mental cases, said' the brain must have been at work, because it 'reeled off' latent memories. Still a third was of opinion that it was the 'subliminal self using the brain and voice, but he was unable to explain how this was possible when the body was insensitive under chloroform.

"There are people who pass into the trance state, and claim to be used by spirits," Mr. Wynn concluded. "My experience cannot be of this class, but it certainly raises the question of what power in the human body can defy the influence of chloroform".