Beware the Ides of October.

you have wept enough; dry your tears. I adjure to you-do not kill, do not use bad language. I adjure smokers and alcoholics and drug addicts to stop destroying themselves. I am not a mystic. My mission is to make you believe in my power. It is phenomenal, but it exists and it is unique. Children, heed your parents. Do not torment cats and dogs, they also feel pain when hurt." The camera showed the audience. Some people were swaying sleepily in their seats; a few men were waving their arms as if doing sedentary exercises. Most people sat with their eyes closed, although he said it did not matter whether they were open or closed. "Don't worry about your involuntary movements. That is how it should be. It will pass as soon as I stop." He ended his seance by counting to 33. His major theses were good. His appeals and messages were human and natural. He struck me as a well intentioned person, a philanthropist keen to use his unusual powers. After the seance I felt sleepy, but I usually do at 11 pm. My wife claimed, however, that her legs and arms felt a little heavier as he talked, and my mother in law aged 85 said the next morning that she had a good night's sleep, something which had not happened for a long time. In any case, the seance was a welcome relief from the war or revolutionary films that have for years been the usual entertainment on television on a Sunday night. Meanwhile I am waiting hopefully for the long term effects of Mr Kashpirovsky's magnetic treatment because I have now been quite bald for 30 years. What does it all mean? Is it a manifestation of the preoccupation with the mystic, the inexplicable that is a part of the Russian character (remember Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Rasputin), or a truly psychotherapeutic influence projected by Mr Kashpirovsky? Following in the steps of Mesmer et al It all seemed vaguely familiar. Somewhere, sometime I had read or heard about such phenomena. And then I remembered: it had all been described and analysed by Professor Sergei Yudin in a chapter in his selected works entitled "Profiles of the Past in the Development of Surgical Anaesthesia." The manuscript was written during 1946-7, just before his imprisonment and exile to Siberia in 1948, and was not published until 1960. Professor …