LECTURE UNDER CHLOROFORM

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21906, 15 September 1934, Page 3 (Supplement)

LECTURE UNDER CHLOROFORM

HOSPITAL PATIENTS TALK STRANGE CASE IN LONDON Patients in i;he Charing Cross Hos-> pital, London, were recently given » lecture on Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon. But the lecturer knew nothing of what was taking place—he had just been operated on and wasi 6'cill under the anaesthetic.

The lecturer is the Rev. Walter Wynn, of Cheiiham, Buckinghamshire. " At first, when I was complimented on my lecture by Mr. Towns, the patient in the next bed, who was also from Chcsham," 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 the lecture. . "This seems .to me 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 the facts to a man of wide medical and pathological knowledge. He 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 "he 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 quosition of what power in the human body can defy the influence of chloroform."