Books.

I have taken great pleasure in reading this interesting book of Dr. Butler's. The stories all contain an ingenious plot and there is sufficient variety in the style and character of the stories. The method is the same as that involved in other detective tales. The peculiarity of the book lies in the power the principal character, Dr Furnivall, has of hypnotising the individual whom he finally decides by adroit process of reasoning, is the guilty party and thus causing him or her to lay bare in the straightest possible manner the whole truth whatever relation the truth sustains to the accusers. In some of these stories it is especially interesting to follow the process by which the complainant is involved in the crime when he had no thought that his connection with it could ever be brought out. In the stories of Conan Doyle there is extreme interest in following the processes by which Sherlock Holmes ultimately develops the proofs that incriminate the guilty party. We rather lose this pleasure in this book by the apparent ease with which the hypnotising causes the guilty party to disclose the truth.

Ellingwood's Therapeutist, Vol. 3, 1909, was edited by Finley Ellingwood M.D.