HYPNOTISM AT DISTANCE

Patea Mail, Volume LII, 4 March 1931, Page 4

HYPNOTISM AT DISTANCE

GKAMOPHOXK b’ECOKD AIDS. PATIENT 12.000 MILES A WAV. A sensation has been caused in psychic circles by (he announcement that a Svengali named Dr. Leo Thoma put a man into a trance at a distance of 12,000 miles by moans of a gramophone record. Thoma, who is a hpynotic expert, was asked by an Australian colleague to ihplp in treating an Australian farmer who was sufferiny from acute melanjcholia. Thoma conceived .(lie idea of recording his -words on a record, which were spoken as if the farmer had been, in his Berlin consulting room. Five records were made ami destroyed before Thoma was satisfied the modulation and the resonance of his voice wore properly reproduced. He then sent the record with a life-sized portrait of himself to Amstralia and the patient -was Instructed to gaze into the eyes of the portrait and persuade himself ho was listening to Thoma's actual voice. Thoma waited for two months and hag now received a cable that the farmer who was suffering from acute a ted a complex which took the form of depression. Thoma, believes the experiment is the beginning of a new form of mechanised treatment for nervous diseases.