HYPNOTISED WIFE

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXXI, Issue LXXXI, 14 May 1920, Page 4

HYPNOTISED WIFE

A SUBTLE. CRUELTY.

WHAT A DOCTOR SAW;

The< question wßat is legal cruelty has been brought; to the front byseveral recen* cases in the- English; courts.

A remarkable case of cruelty by hypnotism is related* by Mrs M. L. Seatoa: Tiedeman, of the Divorce Law Reform Union.

"The following case of Bubmiesion and' terror in the wife brought about by the hypnotic influence of the husband related to me by a doctor is by no means uncommon, and emphasises all too clearly the need for reform in our Divorce and Marriage Laws. "Some years, ago an eminently sane and normal woman was slowly but sttrely losing' her reason: She gradually wilted in the most inexplicable manner until one day, when attending her, the doctor discovered the cause. "He was asking in the presence of her husband" whether she had at secret worry, because he cowld not otherwise explain her conditions.

4'By chance he was seated opposite a mirror which reflected the husband standing Behind his chair, and saw him; making $ie most horrible grimaces, with a fiendish loe-1; the eyes were fixed on the wife, who was gradually being hypnotised. -

"Suddenly she fainted, and it was some time before the doctor could bring her round. "It was only on his threatening to throw up the case tha-t he got the truth from his patient, and she related how-, for more than three years, her husband had terrified her in this way whenever she failed to please him, and how she had been too afraid to tell anyone because she felt that no one would believe her story. "'We have innumerable cases in which the cruelty is so subtle that only the declining health of the wife and medi•cal evidence «ould establish it. "Notwithstanding facts like these, opponents of divorce law reform still contend that such marriages are sanctified and must not be dissolved."