"The Indian fakirs, long supposed by many people to be merely cheats and liars, but now recognized by scientific men as possessing unusual powers of mental control of the body, are still perhaps the best examples of what the will can do to bodily machinery. Not long ago one of these fakirs, Tahra Bey, gave in London an exhibition to which numerous medical men were invited. Forty physicians and scientists sat on the stage of the theatre where the exhibition was given. All were permitted to examine the fakir during the demonstrations. Trickery was virtually impossible and experts agree that none was used.

"Some of Tahra Bey's demonstrations were familiar ones of stage hypnotists. Throwing himself into a trance-like state, he made his body quite rigid. The stiff body was then laid on a series of sabres, not fully sharp but still edged enough to be uncomfortable. A large stone was laid on the fakir's rigid chest and was pounded with a sledge.

"Brought out of his rigid condition, the fakir then thrust hat pins through his cheeks, and through folds of flesh on chest and arms. A penknife similarly thrust through a fold of flesh produced a bleeding wound, or a bloodless one, whichever the fakir suggested and announced in advance. Like his predecessors in India, Tahra Bey then lay down on a bed of six-inch nails driven point upward through a wooden door and reclined on this remarkable couch while an assistant weighing about 160 pounds stood for several minutes on the fakir's chest.

"After this the fakir's back, examined by some of the physicians present, showed distinct marks of the points of the nails but no blood was shed and the fakir claimed to feel no pain. That the hat points and knives were actually thrust through the flesh and that some of these wounds actually did not bleed as they would have done in normal bodies, was also attested by the medical committee.

"No claim was made by this particular fakir of anything supernatural in his performance, nor is any such claim in the least justified. That anyone can accomplish very much the same feats with

some training and a strong enough will is proved by the fact that many persons have done so; notably a Parisian sceptic named Paul Heuze, who disbelieved the supernatural claims of some of the earlier fakirs and managed, it is said, with but one rehearsal, to duplicate the feats of lying on the bed of nails and of thrusting pins and knives into his flesh without causing pain or drawing blood.