Article October 19, 1899 Issue

Injured by a False Belief

New York Herald

One of the strangest defences ever offered in a court is that made by the Edison Electric Illuminating Company, of Paterson, N. J., in a suit against it which is now on trial. The plaintiff is Berthold Frankel, a salesman, who alleges that during a storm he was struck by a falling arc light wire in Broadway, and seriously injured. He was taken to the General Hospital at the time and was a patient there for three months.

It is admitted by all the physicians who have testified that he displayed all the symptoms which usually follow such a shock, but they deny that there was any burn on his body to indicate that he had been touched by a wire. The defence is that Frankel never came into contact with the wire at all, and that his illness after the supposed accident has been due entirely to hypnotic suggestion, the patient being at one and the same time the operator and the subject.

The first witness who indicated this possibility was Charles L. Cuthbert, who witnessed the occurrence. He said that he saw the wire fall and watched it until it ceased its spluttering. Then, supposing that the wire had become dead, he kicked it into the gutter, feeling not the slightest shock. Immediately afterward two men came along under an umbrella, and, although he was satisfied that the danger was past, he warned them about the wire. As they approached it one of them fell to the ground.

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