1907, Algernon Blackwood, “Max Hensig—Bacteriologist and Murderer” Chapter 4, in The Listener and Other Stories, New York: Knopf, 1917, p. 105, It was, of course, an effect of hypnotism, he remembered thinking, vaguely through the befuddlement of his drink—this culminating effect of an evil and remorseless personality acting upon one that was diseased and extra receptive.
Source: wiktionary