MODERN SVENGALI
LONG-DISTANCE HYPNOTISM.
[BY CABLE —PBESS ASSN. COPYEIGHT.]
BERLIN/February 28
A sensation has been caused in psychic circles by the announcement of a “Svengali” in real life, named Dr Leo Thoma. The doctor put a man into a trance at a distance of 12,000 miles by means of a gramophone record.
Dr Thoma, who is an hypnotic expert, was asked by an Australian colleague to help in treating an Australian farmer who was suffering from acute melancholia. Dr Thoma, conceived the idea of recording words on a record which would be spoken as if' the farmer had been in his Berlin consulting room. Five records were made, and destroyed, before Dr Thoma was .satisfied that the modulation and resonance of his voice was properly reproduced. He then sent a record, with a life-sized portrait of himself to Australia, and the patient was instructed to gaze into the eyes of the portrait and persuade himself ■that, he was listening to Dr Thoma’s actual voice. Dr Thoma, waited for two months, aond he has now received a. cable stating that the farmer has' been cured. The gramophone eliminated the complex which was in the form of depression. Dr Thoma believes that this experiment. is the beginning of a. new form of mechanised ■treatment for nervous diseases.
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Greymouth Evening Star, 2 March 1931, Page 5
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215MODERN SVENGALI Greymouth Evening Star, 2 March 1931, Page 5
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