120 years ago today - May 19, 1897; Wednesday

Pres[iden]t. [Wilford] Woodruff at his office this afternoon, received a call from Bishop H[iram]. B. Clawson, with his grandson Hal, son of Stanley Clawson. The young man had made a study of hypnotism. He brought with him three young men who had been operated upon several times before. He put them into a state of somnambulism, and performed many curious experiments, such as running and [sic] hat pins through their arms. One of them when so ordered put a pin through his own cheeks. No blood came from the punctured skin, and the subjects appeared to suffer no inconvenience as a result. One of the young men was suspended across two chairs, his head resting on one and his feet on the other, with nothing else to support him, and he was made so rigid that two brethren present, who weighed together 330 pounds, sat on his body, which remained as stiff as a board. Hal Clawson stated that a noted hypnotist had failed to hypnotize after two weeks trial, and he thought he would try it himself and succeeded at the first effort. No one could be hypnotized without giving voluntary consent. It required a strong minded person, who could concentrate his thoughts upon one object, to be hypnotized. Red haired people were the easiest to control. He said there were three stages of hypnotism known as subjestion, somnambulism and catalepsy.

[Source: First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve minutes]

2 comments:

  1. Hal Clawson (Stanley Hastings Clawson Jr, 1874-1912) was my grandfather's oldest brother. After a brief career as a hypnotist, he became a manager of other performers, chiefly magicians Will B. Wood and Frederick Eugene Powell, noted American magicians touring Latin America. He briefly toured in vaudeville with the levitation "Edna" before his untimely death in 1912. His grandfather, Hiram B. Clawson, had himself been an actor and manager of the Salt Lake Theatre, as well as one of Brigham Young's personal secretaries and financial manager.

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    Replies
    1. Sorry, is dates above are wrong, should be 1879-1912.

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