XANTIPPE, BEFORE JEALOUSY.—A FIRST LOVE—BLASTED HOPES.—A DOCTOR’S STORY.—THE FLIGHT FROM “THE HOUNDS OF THE LAW.”—THE EXILE AND RETURN.—DISGUISED AS A PEDDLER.—ESCAPES WITH HIS LOVE.—ENGLISH BEAUS.—YOUNG COQUETTES.—A GAY AND DANGEROUS BEAU.—HANDSOME BEAUS.—LEAP YEAR.—AN OLD BEAU.—BEAUTY NOT ALL-POTENT.—OFFENDED ROYALTY.—YOUTH AND AGE.—A STABLE BOY.—POET-DOCTOR.
XANTIPPE, BEFORE JEALOUSY.—A FIRST LOVE—BLASTED HOPES.—A DOCTOR’S STORY.—THE FLIGHT FROM “THE HOUNDS OF THE LAW.”—THE EXILE AND RETURN.—DISGUISED AS A PEDDLER.—ESCAPES WITH HIS LOVE.—ENGLISH BEAUS.—YOUNG COQUETTES.—A GAY AND DANGEROUS BEAU.—HANDSOME BEAUS.—LEAP YEAR.—AN OLD BEAU.—BEAUTY NOT ALL-POTENT.—OFFENDED ROYALTY.—YOUTH AND AGE.—A STABLE BOY.—POET-DOCTOR.
An old lady once said, “I’ve hearn say that doctors either are, or are not, great experts in love affairs; I’ve forgotten which.” Just so!
“I would not be a doctor’s wife for the world,” I have heard many a lady affirm. True; for few doctors have had the misfortune (or folly) to select a jealous woman for a life companion.
Socrates, the great philosopher, and physician of the mind, seems to have had the ugliest tempered woman in the world, whose very name,Xantippe, has passed into a proverb for a scolding wife; yet she was not jealous of herspouse, but was said to have sincerely loved him; and he bore her outbursts of temper only as a great philosopher could, which seemed not to have disturbed the equanimity of his living nor the humor of his dying.
“Crito,”—these were his last words,—“Crito, forget not the cock that I promised to Esculapius!”
Alas! an affecting satire on philosophy and physic.
MY FIRST LOVE.
No; we find no cases to record of the jealousies of physicians, or their wives. All the jealousies of the former are spent on their professional brethren.
It is a philosophical fact that physicians, of all men, seldomare involved in disgrace, quarrels, or litigations on account of love affairs. Yet they have affections, like other men, and above all men know how to appreciate affection and virtue in woman.
First Love—Blasted Hopes.
I know of a little episode in the early life of a doctor, whose name modesty forbids me to mention. Let me briefly state it in the first person.
Ah, friend, if you and I should meetBeneath the boughs of the bending lime,And you in the same low voice repeatThe tender words of the old love-rhyme,It could not bring back the same old time—No, never.
I was young when I first fell in love,—not above six years of age; but love is without reason, blind to age. The object of my first affection was my school-mischief, as I then called her, who was about twenty. The disparagement of years never entered my innocent noddle. I used to start for school a half hour before nine, and stop on the way at the squire’s house, where Miss —— boarded. O, with what joy I always met her! In summer she gave me roses from the beautiful great white rose-bushes in the squire’s front yard; in autumn and winter, splendid red and green apples, from the orchard and cellar, and candy and kisses at all times. So I fell desperately in love with her.
I was greatly shocked, and not a little piqued, when one day she, in cold blood, bade me good by, and went away with a tall man, with shocking red whiskers. That is all I remember about him. I, however, mourned her loss for years, although my appetite remained unimpaired—my parents said.
“Like a still serpent, basking in the sun,With subtle eyes, and back of russet gold,Her gentle tones and quiet sweetness wonA coil upon her victims: fold on foldShe wove around them with her graceful wiles,Till, serpent-like, she stung amid her smiles.”
The next time I saw her was about ten years afterwards. O, with what pleasant anticipations I hastened to her house! I remembered her every look—her fair, intelligent face; her wavy black hair; her heavenly dark-blue eyes. O, I should know her anywhere! Her I never could forget.
TEN YEARS LATER.
With these thoughts I confidently knocked at the door. “Is Miss —— at home?” I inquired of the—servant, I supposed, who opened the door. Just then three or four dirty-looking little children ran screaming after the woman, calling out, “Marm, marm!”
“Hush, children, hush!” said the female, and, turning again to me, said,—
“Whom did you inquire for?” pushing back one of the red-headed urchins.
“Miss Mary ——, ma’am,” I answered. “She once lived at Blue Hill.”
She gave a sickly-looking smile. She looked sick before; her cheeks all fallen in; her skimmed-milk colored eyes had a weary, anxious expression; and her thin, bony hands, resting on the door-latch, looked like a consumptive’s, as she said,—
“When did you know her?”
“O, but a few years ago, ma’am. Is she here? Does she live inthis house?” I eagerly inquired.
“Well,” she replied, with another more sepulchral smile,
“I was once Miss Mary ——. I married Mr. —— ——, over ten years ago. My baby, here,”—presenting the second in size of the children to my view, a reddish-brown haired girl, quite unlike any one I had ever seen before, and wiping its nose with her calico apron,—“she is named for me, Mary ——. Won’t you come in, sir?”
No, I thought I would not stop. I didn’t stop till I reached the hotel, where I had begged the stage-driver to wait for me but a half hour before, while I called upon the lovely Miss Mary ——.
“O, sunny dreams of childhood,How soon they pass away!Like flowers within the wild wood,They perish and decay.”
A handy Doctor.
A young physician was supposed to be “keepin’ company” with a young lady. The matronly friend of the latter, having praised the young man from all points of view, returned one day from the death-bed of a friend, at which the physicianhad been present. She eulogized the living fully as much as the dead man, and finally turning to the girl, as if she had reached thene plus ultraof enthusiasm, she said, “Jane, he’s the handsomest man I ever see fixin’ round a corpse.”
A Doctor’s Story.
The writer is acquainted with a young physician, who read medicine with an old doctor, named Gitchel, or Twichel, of Portland, and commenced practice in his native village,—a great mistake for any practitioner to make,—and where he met with consequences natural to even a prophet, opposition and scandal. By some mistake, or, as his opponents charged, mal-practice, he lost a patient. Being, a few days later, in a shop in the next village, he was secretly informed that the “hounds of the law were after him—even at the next door, that very moment.” Terrified beyond necessity, he caught up his medicine chest, and, climbing out of the back window, fled to the woods. In the village, at home, he had courted a lovely young girl, with whom he had exchanged vows. She knew the talk that was going onrespecting the young doctor, but she believed it not, or, believing, clung the firmer to her pledges.
FLIGHT OF THE DOCTOR.
“After night fell I left the woods, and took to the highway. To go home I was afraid. O, had I but braved the doctors, and defied the lawyers, all would have been well,” he told me afterwards. “But I had received such ill treatment, been scandalized so severely, that I was cowed to the earth. I knew not if my life, my Angie, had also turned against me, when the news was spread that I had tacitly admitted my crime by fleeing.
“I went to W., hundreds of miles away. I took a new name, and put out my shingle. I was at once patronized, and soon extensively; but I was morose and unhappy. I was offered a home and a wife. I had as good as a wife away in my far-off home; I was bound to her, and Ilovedher as Ihated my own soul! I dared not write to her, nor go to her. ‘O, my God, what shall I do?’ I cried, in my misery. He did not hear me, and I came to believe thatHe was not!
“Thus a whole year wore away, and I had not heard from home. Finally, I determined to make an attempt to see my Angie. I had, after going to W., allowed my heavy beard to go uncropped, which I had never done at home. I wore no clothes that I brought away with me from home. I purchased a few knickknacks, put on a slouched hat, and appeared in my native village as a peddler. Unless my voice betrayed me, I had no fears of detection. To prevent this mishap I kept a silver coin in my mouth when talking.
“I had called at several houses, but could learn nothing of my betrothed, without fear of exciting suspicion by too close inquiries. I therefore, unable longer to stand the suspense, entered her father’s house. She and her mother only were at home. I could scarcely suppress my feelings as I beheld her, the idol of my heart. When I spoke, she started to her feet, and with staring countenance gazed fixedly upon me. Then she fell back into her chair.
FLIGHT OF THE LOVERS.
THE LOVER AS A PEDDLER.
“My God, she did not know me.
“The mother noticed how pale the girl looked, and proposed to get her a drink of water from the porch.
“‘No, no, I am not faint.’
“‘Yes, yes,’ I articulated, with the coin in my mouth; ‘get her some water.’
“Away went the old lady, and, dropping my basket and spitting out the coin, I cried, ‘Angie, Angie, bless you, my darling,’ and fell kneeling at her feet.
“‘O, Charley, it is you,—the Lord be praised!—come at last.’
“I sprang to my feet. There was time to say no more. The mother returned and looked wistfully about.
“‘I thought I heard some one saying, “Charley, Charley,”’ she said, presenting the water to Angie, who was now flushed and excited. I was searching for my coin.
“‘O, the water is warm. Mother, dear, do go to the well in the yard, and get some fresh; and look to see if there is anybody outside calling.’ And away went the old lady.
“‘Now, Charley, what brought you back? And why did you stay? And—’
“‘Wait, wait. Number nine boots brought me. I’ve come for you, Angie.’
“‘You will be arrested if you are seen here, I am afraid,’ she said.
“‘Then meet me to-night at —— Crossing, and fly with me.’
“I then told her how I had lived, how I had suffered, and how much I loved her; and she consented to marry me, and secretly go away with me. But the difficulty now lay in getting a lawful man to marry us. The license could be bought; I was certain of that. So I went away and obtained it. I next hired a horse and carriage, and paid for it in advance, to go twelve miles.
“‘Aren’t you Charley ——?’ asked the stable man, eyingme sharply, as I was about to drive away to get Angie, that night.
“‘Take this,’—and I gave him a gold piece,—‘and ask no questions, nor answer any, till you see your horse and carriage safely back,’ was my reply.
“As we drove out of the village, I heard wagon wheels far behind us. Reaching the woods, I drove into a wood road, and the ‘hounds of the —— doctors’ rode fiercely past. Angie trembled for my safety. I reached a cross road. The moon shone quite brightly, and, jumping from the buggy, I soon found, by the fresh track, which road they had taken. I took a different. So I reached a train that night, and rode till morning; arrived at W. the next, and was married.”
It was at W. that I found him first. He was smart. He had a good memory. He was a handsome man, full six feet in his stockings. In all, his address was not excelled by any physician with whom I have ever met. He is now an excellent physician and surgeon, in a large city, in good practice. When he returned on a visit to his native village, as he did last year, the affair had blown over; for after a man is honored abroad, he may become so at home,—seldom before. I wish him happiness and prosperity.
“There is no greater rogue than he who marries only for money; no greater fool than he who marries only for love. I could marry any lady I like, if I would only take the trouble,” Dr. Macilvain heard an old fellow say. Of course, nobody but a conceited old bachelor would have said that, who needs a woman to just take some of the self-conceit out of him.
English Doctors as Beaus.
Some of the old English doctors were gay fellows amongst the ladies, according to the best authorities. Nevertheless, few men have arrived at eminence in the medical profession who were known to be afflicted with an overplus of romantic or sentimental qualities in their composition.
It may be interesting, particularly to ladies, to know that the majority of those physicians who have arrived at the dignity of knighthood owe their elevation rather to the smiles of love than the rewards of professional efforts. “Considering the opportunities that medical men have for pressing a suit in love, and the many temptations to gentle emotion that they experience in the aspect of female suffering, and the confiding gratitude of their fair patients, it is to be wondered at that only one medical duke is to be found in the annals of the peerage.” But the physician usually has quite sufficient self-control and honor about him, not only to keep his own tender sensibilities in subjection, but often to check those of his grateful and emotional female patient.
Thackeray has said that “girls of rank make love in the nursery, and practise the arts of coquetry upon the page boy who brings up the coals and kindlings.”
In this connection Mr. Jeaffreson, whose narratives have the virtue of being true as well as interesting, says, “I could point to a fair matron who now enjoys rank and wealth among the highest, who not only aimed tender glances, and sighed amorously upon a young, waxen-faced, blue-eyed apothecary, but even went so far as to write him a letter proposing an elopement, and other merry arrangements, in which a ‘carriage and four,’ to speed them over the country, bore a conspicuous part.”
The “silly maiden” had, like Dinah, a “fortune in silver and gold,” of about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and her tall, blue-eyed Adonis, to whom she made thisalmostresistless proposal, was twice her age. But he was a gentleman of honor, and, being in the confidence of the family, he generously, without divulging the mad proposition of the fair young lady, induced the father to take her to the continent, for a twelvemonth’s change of air and scenery.
“What a cold-blooded wretch!” will some fair reader exclaim.
“What a fool he was, to be sure!” says the bachelor fortune-seeker.
Well, she didn’t die for her first unrequited love, but married a “very great man,” and became the mother of several children. And this is the way the fair heroine of this little story avenged herself upon this “Joseph amongst doctors.”
Very recently she manifested her good will to the man who had offered her what is generally regarded as the greatest insult a woman can experience, by procuring a commission in the army for his eldest son.
It is interesting to note the various qualities which have attracted the attention, or love, of different sons of Æsculapius to female beauties. Sometimes it has been her hair, the “pride of a woman,” that was the point of attraction, as it was with Dr. Mead, “whose highest delight was to comb the luxuriant tresses of the lady on whom he lavished his affections;” or the “eyes of heavenly blue,” like the lady love’s of Dr. Elliot, senior; or the tiny footprint in the sand, like that which first attracted Dr. Robert Ames to the woman of his choice. What the point of attraction was in the man is not easily ascertained.
A gay and dangerous beau among the “high ladies” was Dr. Hugh Smithson, the father of James Smithson (his illegitimate son), the founder of the “Smithsonian Institution” at Washington. Sir Hugh’s forte lay in his remarkably handsome person, said to be only second to Sir Astley Cooper in beauty of form and features. However, he had the address which secured to him one of the handsomest and proudest heiresses of England, and this is how he accomplished it.
He was but the grandson of a Yorkshire baronet, “with no prospects,” and was apprenticed to an apothecary, and for a long time paid court to mortar and pestle at Hutton Garden. The story runs, that the handsome doctor had been mittened by a “belle of private rank and modestwealth,” and that the only child and heiress of Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and an acquaintance of Sir Hugh’s, heard of his rejection, when she publicly observed that “the beauty who had disdained such a man was guilty of a folly that no other woman in England would have been.”
Sir Hugh would have been unwise not to have taken this broad hint, and he did what none of the heiress’s suitors, even of high rank, had yet aspired to,—proposed, and was accepted. Sixteen years later he was created Duke of Northumberland, and could well afford to laugh in his sleeve at the proposition that “his coronet should be surrounded withsennaleaves, instead of strawberry,” since he had reached a rank that no other M. D. had previously done, and possessed the “loveliest woman in England,” and a great fortune, to boot.
Lord Glenbervie, who from the druggist’s counter reached the peerage, was taunted by Sheridan with his plebeian origin, from which a patrician wife had redeemed him, in the following amusing verse:—
“Glenbervie, Glenbervie!What’s good for the scurvy?But why is the doctor forgot?In his arms he should quarterA pestle and mortar,For his crest an immense gallipot.”
Sir John Elliot was another handsome doctor of that period, who, notwithstanding his being disliked by King George, could, with small effort and large impudence, “capture the hearts of half the prettiest women amongst the king’s subjects, and then shrug his shoulders with chagrin at his success.” “One lady, the daughter of a nobleman, ignorant that he was otherwise occupied, made him an offer, and on learning, to her surprise and mortification, that he was already married, vowed she would not rest till she had assassinated his wife.”
Dr. Arbuthnot, whose courtly address, sparkling wit, ready flow of language, innate cordiality, and polished manners made him a great favorite about London, was one of the finest looking gentlemen of his time. The doctor was contemporary with Dean Swift, with whom he used to enjoy flirtations with the queen’s maids of honor about St. James.
“Arm in arm with the dean, he used to peer about St. James, jesting, laughing, causing matronly dowagers to smile at ‘that dear Mr. Dean,’ and young girls, out for their first season at court, green and unsophisticated, to blush with annoyance at his coarse, shameless badinage,—bowing to this great man, from whom he hoped for countenance; staring insolently at that one, from whom he expected nothing; quoting Martial to the prelate, who could not understand Latin; whispering French to a youthful diplomatist, who knew no tongue but English; and continually angling for the bishopric, which he never got.”
From flattering court beauties, Arbuthnot became flatterer to the gouty, hypochondriacal old queen. But wine and women made sad havoc with poor Arbuthnot, who died in very straitened circumstances.
Dr. Mead, before mentioned, was twice married. He was fifty-one years old when married the second time, to a baronet’s daughter. Fortunate beyond fortunate men, he had the greatmis-fortune of outliving his usefulness. His sight failed, and his powers underwent that gradual decay which is the saddest of all possible conclusions to a vigorous and dignified existence. Even his valets domineered over him. Long before this his second childhood, he excited the ridicule of the town by his vanity and absurd pretensions as a “lady-killer.”
“The extravagances of his amorous senility were not only whispered about, but some contemptible fellow seized upon the unpleasant rumors, and published them in a scandalous novelette, wherein the doctor was represented as a ‘Cornuterof seventy-five,’ when, to please the damsel who ‘warmed his aged heart,’—she was a blacksmith’s daughter,—the doctor, long past threescore and ten, went to Paris, and learned to dance.”
AN AGED PUPIL.
Dr. Richard Mead died aged eighty-one. The sale of his library, pictures, and statues brought the heirs eighty thousand dollars. His other effects amounted to one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.
Another Dr. Mead, uncle to the above, lived to the age of one hundred and forty-nine years. Both of these physicians were remarkable for their kindness and liberality. The latter left five pounds a year to the poor, to continue forever.
Beauty not Potent with Ladies.
A handsome person is not alone requisite to win the affections of a sensible lady. Radcliffe, who was as great a humbug in affairs matrimonial as in all other matters, was represented as being “handsome and imposing in person;” but his overbearing manner, and his coarse flings at the softer sex, made him anything but a favorite with the ladies. While he professed to be a misogynist, he made several unsuccessful attempts, particularly late in life, to commit himself to matrimony.
A lady, with “a singing noise in her head,” asked what she should do for it. “Curl your hair at night with a ballad,” was the coarse reply.
Once, when sitting over a bottle of wine at a public house, Queen Anne sent her servant for Dr. Radcliffe to hasten to her Royal Highness, who was taken suddenly ill with what was vulgarly called “the blue devils,” to which gormandizers are subject, but more properly termed indigestion. “When the wine is in, the wits are out,” was readily demonstrated in this case; for, on a second messenger arriving from the queen for her physician to make all haste, Radcliffe banged his fist down on the board, at which other physicians also sat, and exclaimed,—
“Go tell her Royal Highness that she has nothing but the vapors.”
When, on the following morning, the process being reversed,—the “wine was out, and wits were in”—the doctor presented himself, with pomp and a show of dignity, at St. James’, judge of his mortification, when the chamberlain stopped him in the anteroom, and informed him that he was already succeeded by Dr. Gibbons.
The queen never forgave him for saying she had the “vapors.” Radcliffe never forgave Dr. Gibbons for superseding him. “Nurse Gibbons,” he would bitterly exclaim, “is only fit to look after nervous women, who only fancy sickness.”
When the doctor was forty-three years of age, he made love to a lady of half his years, and followed with an offer of marriage, which was accepted. As the fact became public, the doctor was warmly congratulated upon his good fortune, for the lady was not only young, but was a beauty, and an heiress to seventy-five thousand dollars.
The wedding day was set, which was to crown Radcliffe’s happiness, when a little drawback arose, which was not previously mentioned in the bills. The peculiar condition of the beauty’s health rendered it expedient that, instead of the doctor, she should marry her father’s book-keeper.
The doctor’s acetous temper towards the fair sex was not lessened by this mishap, nor were the ladies backward in giving him an occasional reminder of the fact. Nevertheless, unlike the burnt child, that avoided the fire, Radcliffe, sixteen years afterwards, made a second conspicuous throw of the dice. He was then about sixty. He came out with a new and elegant equipage, employed the most fashionable tailors, hatters, and wig-makers, “who arrayed him in the newest modes of foppery, which threw all London into fits of laughter, while he paid his addresses, with the greatest possible publicity, to a lady who possessed every requisite charm,—youth, beauty, and wealth,—except a tenderness for her aged suitor.
“Behold, love has taken the place of avarice [the affair was thus aired in a public print]; “or, rather, is become avarice of another kind, which still urges him to pursue what he does not want. But behold the metamorphosis! The anxious, mean cares of a usurer are turned into the languishments and complaints of a lover. ‘Behold,’ says the aged Æsculapian, ‘I submit; I own, great Love, thy empire. Pity, Hebe, the fop you have made. What have I to do with gilding but on pills? Yet, O Fate, for thee I sit amidst a crowd of painted deities on my chariot, buttoned in gold, clasped in gold, without having any value for that belovedmetal, but as it adorns the hat, person, and laces of the dying lover. I ask not to live, O Hebe! Give me gentle death. Euthanasia, Euthanasia! That is all I implore.’
“O Wealth, how impotent art thou, and how little dost thou supply us with real happiness, when the usurer himself cannot forget thee for the love of what is foreign to his felicity, as thou art!”
Although Radcliffe denied his own sisters during his life, “lest they should show their affection for him by dipping their hands in his pockets,” some stories of his benevolence are told, one of which is, that finding one Dr. James Drake, when “each had done the utmost to injure the other,” broken down and in distressed circumstances, he sent by a lady fifty guineas to his unfortunate enemy, saying,—
“Let him by no means learn who sent it. He is a gentleman who has often done his best to hurt me, and would by no means accept a benefit from one whom he had striven to make an enemy.”
A Stable-boy, Poet, and Doctor.
Poor George Crabbe, the poet-doctor-apothecary, had a very hard time in this cold, unappreciative world, until Love smiled upon his unhappy lot. He was born in the old sea-side town of Aldoborough, where his father was salt inspector,—not an over-lucrative office in those days. George was the eldest of a numerous family.
From the common school he went to apprenticeship with a rough old country doctor, who lodged him with the stable-boy. From this indignity he was, however, soon released, and went to live with a kind gentleman, a surgeon of Woodbridge. Here he began to write poetry. Here, also, he became acquainted with a young surgeon, named Leavett, who introduced Crabbe to a lovely young lady, with whom he fell desperately in love.
This inestimable young lady resided at Parham Lodgewith her uncle, John Tovell, yeoman, and her name was Sarah Elmy. Mr. Tovell possessed an estate worth four thousand dollars per annum, and, without assuming any “airs,” was a first-class “yeoman” of that period—“one that already began to be styled, by courtesy, an esquire.”
“On Crabbe’s first introduction to Parham Lodge, he was received with cordiality; but when it became known that he had fallen in love with the squire’s niece, it was only natural that his presumption should at first meet with the disapproval of Mrs. Tovell and the squire.”
BIRTHPLACE OF GEORGE CRABBE.
After closing his term of apprenticeship with Dr. Page, young Crabbe returned to his native village, where he furnished a little shop with “a pound’s worth of drugs,” and an array of empty bottles, and set himself up as an apothecary. His few patients were only amongst the poorer class of the town. Although he had plighted troth with the lovely Sarah at Parham Lodge, with starvation staring him in the face at Aldoborough, and the opposition of the lady’s familyat the Lodge, there was little prospect of bettering his condition in life. The temporary military appointments which he received brought him no nearer his desired object. The lady remained true to her vows; and long after his friend Leavett had quitted the shores of time, and his new and true friend Burke had extended to the promising author his patronage, she received the reward for her faithful waiting.
The union of Crabbe with Miss Elmy conferred eventually upon the poet, doctor, and apothecary, the possession of the estate of “yeoman” Tovell—Parham Lodge. A maiden sister of the squire’s, dying, left him a considerable sum of money. The loving, waiting Sarah proved a faithful, though some might say a somewhat domineering, wife, as the following quotation intimates:—
“I can screw Crabbe up or down, just like an old fiddle,” this amiable woman was wont to say; and throughout her life she amply demonstrated the assertion.
“But her last will and testament was a handsome apology for all her past little tiffs.”
The Right Man.
A curious story is told, and vouched for, respecting the manner in which Dr. and Rev. Thomas Dawson obtained a rich and pious wife. This gentleman combined the two professions of preacher and doctor. If, during divine services, he was called upon to prescribe for an invalid, he wound up his sermon, requested his audience to pray for the sick, and repaired forthwith to administer to the body. I presume the congregation to whom the reasonable request was made did not take it in the same light as did an “M. D.” of whom we heard, who made a point to be called out of church every Sabbath.
Once the minister, who had a bit of humor in his manner, stopped on a certain occasion in his “thirdly,” and said,“Dr. B. is wanted to attend upon Mr. ——, and may the Lord have mercy upon him.”
The doctor was so enraged at this “insinuation” that he called upon the parson, and demanded an “apology to the congregation, before whom he felt he had been grossly slandered.”
The parson agreed to this proposal, and in the afternoon he arose and said,—
“As Dr. B. feels aggrieved at my remark of this morning, and demands an apology, I hereby offer the same; and as that was the first case, I trust it may be the last in which I am ever called upon in his behalf to supplicate divine intervention.”
But to return to Dr. Dawson. Amongst his patients was a Miss Mary Corbett, said to be one of the wealthiest and most pious of his flock, whom, on his calling upon her one day, he found bending in reverence over the Bible.
The doctor approached, and as she raised her eyes to his she held her finger upon the passage which occupied her immediate attention. The doctor bent down and read the words at which her finger pointed—“Thou art the man.”
The doctor was not slow to take the hint. Thus he obtained a pious wife, she a devout husband.—See “Book About Doctors.”
A great deal has been reported respecting the “off-hand” manner in which Abernethy “popped the question” to Miss Anne Threlfall. The fact of the case is given by Dr. Macilwain. The lady was visiting at a place where the doctor was attending a patient—of all places the best to learn the true merits of a lady. He was at once interested in her, and ere long there seemed a tacit understanding between them. “The doctor was shy and sensitive; which was the real Rubicon he felt a difficulty in passing; and this was the method he adopted: he wrote her a brief note, pleading professional occupation, etc., and requesting thelady to take a fortnight in which to consider her reply.” From these facts a great falsehood has oft been repeated how he “couldn’t afford time to make love,” etc., and that she must decide to marry him in a week, or not at all.
He was married to her January 9, 1800, and attended lectures the same day.
“POPPING THE QUESTION.”
“Many years after, I met him coming out of the hospital, and said,—
“‘You are looking very gay to-day, sir.’
“‘Yes,’ he replied, looking at his white vest and smart attire, ‘one of the girls was married this morning.’
“‘Indeed, sir? You should have given yourself a holiday on such an occasion, and not come down to lecture.’
“‘Nay,’ he replied, ‘egad, I came down to lecture the same day I was married myself.’”—Memoirs of Abernethy.
MIND AND MATTER.
“The evidence of sense is the first and highest kind of evidence of which human nature is capable.”—Wilkins.
“They choose darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.”—Scripture.
IN WHICH ANIMAL MAGNETISM, MESMERISM, AND CLAIRVOYANCE ARE EXPLAINED.—“THE IGNORANT MONOPOLY.”—YET ROOM FOR DISCOVERIES.—A “GASSY” SUBJECT.—DRS. CHAPIN AND BEECHER.—HE “CAN’T SEE IT.”—THE ROYAL TOUCH.—GASSNER.—“THE DEVIL KNOWS LATIN.”—ROYALTY IN THE SHADE.—THE IRISH PROPHET; HE VISITS LONDON.—A COMICAL CROWD.—MESMERISM.—A FUNNY BED-FELLOW.—CLAIRVOYANCE.—THE GATES OF MOSCOW.—THE DOCTOR OF ANTWERP.—THE OLD LADY IN THE POKE-BONNET.—VISIT TO A CLAIRVOYANT.—“FORETELLING” THE PAST.—THE OLD WOMAN OF THE PENOBSCOT MOUNTAINS.—A SECRET KEPT.—CUI BONO?—VISITS TO SEVENTEEN CLAIRVOYANTS.—A BON-TON CLAIRVOYANT.—A BOUNCER.—RIDICULOSITY.
IN WHICH ANIMAL MAGNETISM, MESMERISM, AND CLAIRVOYANCE ARE EXPLAINED.—“THE IGNORANT MONOPOLY.”—YET ROOM FOR DISCOVERIES.—A “GASSY” SUBJECT.—DRS. CHAPIN AND BEECHER.—HE “CAN’T SEE IT.”—THE ROYAL TOUCH.—GASSNER.—“THE DEVIL KNOWS LATIN.”—ROYALTY IN THE SHADE.—THE IRISH PROPHET; HE VISITS LONDON.—A COMICAL CROWD.—MESMERISM.—A FUNNY BED-FELLOW.—CLAIRVOYANCE.—THE GATES OF MOSCOW.—THE DOCTOR OF ANTWERP.—THE OLD LADY IN THE POKE-BONNET.—VISIT TO A CLAIRVOYANT.—“FORETELLING” THE PAST.—THE OLD WOMAN OF THE PENOBSCOT MOUNTAINS.—A SECRET KEPT.—CUI BONO?—VISITS TO SEVENTEEN CLAIRVOYANTS.—A BON-TON CLAIRVOYANT.—A BOUNCER.—RIDICULOSITY.
Mind and matter!
What is the connection?
Why does one’s yawning set a whole room full to yawning?
What is the unseen power, appropriated mostly by the ignorant, which at times controls another weaker mind, or, for the time being, controls disease? The majority of medical men “get around” this question by denying the whole proposition. But that does not satisfy the jury—the people. The great community know that there is some unseen power, which is partially developed in certain persons, which has great controlling influence over certain other persons;hence over their diseases, especially mental or nervous diseases.
I hope to be able to explain something of this “phenomenon.”
Those who practise it know nothing of itsmodus operandi, any more than the bird that sings on yonder willow knows of the science of music.
To the common suggestion, “It’s spirits,” I say, No,no!
If it were “spirits,” why does the spirit always seek alow organizationthrough which to manifest itself? There are few exceptions to this rule.
It is unnatural, inconsistent with the divine attributes for the supernatural to mingle with the natural. The circulation of the blood was once attributed to the action of the sun—hence a man fell asleep at sunset—and to supernatural causes.
Science has done away with these absurd notions.
“It is a manifestation of divine power,” say others.
Well, for that matter, everything is; butdirectlyit is not, for what answers the “spirit” suggestion answers this one also. Divine power cannot be limited.
For want of a better name, let us call this power “animal magnetism.”
The man who controls the mind of another, or another’s disease, through his mind, must possess the following requisites: First, health; second, will; third, faith that he can control the subject. Noreasoningis necessary. The less causality he possesses, the better. The less reasoning faculties, the better he can perform.
Why?
Animal magnetism is an animal power—not a spiritual. All the animal qualities—organs—are located in the back and lower part of the brain. They act independent of reason. Passions have no reason. The affections have no reason. Anger and hate have none. The force, drivingpower of man is centred back of the ears. The cerebellum, or lower brain, acts independent of reason. Birds, and most of the animals, possess all the qualities that the cerebellum of man contains.
The upper brain—the cerebrum—is the instrument of our thoughts—our reason. In sleep, it is still; its action is suspended. Hence there is no reason in our dreams. The motive power is in the lower brain; hence somnambulism. If there is anything of a “trance” nature, it means shutting off the action of the cerebrum, and concentring the power in the cerebellum. Some persons have but little upper brain. If they have the other requisites, they may become good clairvoyants, or magnetizers, according to the manner in which they exercise the animal power.
I have yet to find a professional clairvoyant with large or active reasoning (intellectual) qualities.
Yet Room for more Discoveries.
Thelivingblood has not yet been analyzed. It contains a vitalizing element which chemistry has not yet been adequate to detect. There is yet as much to be discovered in the science of life as has already been revealed to man. It will yet be found out.
How is the power, or force, conveyed from the operator to the person operated upon? Through what medium does it act?
Let us begin with the brain. Let us take a ball of cotton for our illustration. We draw out a piece from it, and spin it out to our fancy. It is a thread, butcottonstill, twisted to a fine string. The brain is located at the top of man. By means of fine threads, called nerves, the brain is distributed over the entire body, so completely that you cannot stick a pin in the flesh without touching a nerve, wounding the brain. Suspend the entire action of the brain, as by ether, chloroform, or nitrous oxygen gas, and sticking thepin is not felt. Partially suspend the action, as by a small quantity of the nitrous oxygen gas, and the force of the brain (or active force) is centred upon the lower brain, and the man under its influence acts out his animal nature in spite of reason.
A man, I hold, who magnetizes or mesmerizes another, uses only the force of the lower brain. Like begets like. He cannot affect a person of large intellectual organs; only one with the animal organs active.
You cannotseethe gas, yet it affects the person. You cannot see the subtile power conveyed from one man to a weaker. He conveys it by touch—nerve to nerve. I believe science will yet discover just what this subtile agent is—both in the blood and nerves; for it is in both, or why does the suspension of it in one destroy the other? Destroy the nerve, and the corresponding blood-vessel is inactive. Destroy the blood-vessel, and the corresponding nerve suffers.
It is the power that the mother exercises to hush her sobbing babe to slumber. As the child gathers strength of mind, she loses that control. A person may be used as a mesmeric subject until he becomes a mere idiotic machine. Educate a clairvoyant doctor, and what becomes of his clairvoyant power? It is lost with the increase of intellectual power. Now, is this a “divine” quality, that only ignorance can make use of? Is it really “hidden from the wise and prudent, and given to babes?” All sciences were practised by the uneducated first, before being reduced to ascience. I think this will be yet reduced to a useful science. As it now stands, it is useless. If it is a spirit power, the spirits are mighty silent as to the fact.
We come into this world by natural causes. We live, grow, exist, and we die by natural causes. We brought no knowledge with us; we carry none out. All the qualities yet developed in man are natural, and adapted to this life. Millions upon millions have so lived and so died, and aspirit power inthisworld is no nearer to being established than it was when Adam was a little boy. All that heretofore has been attributed to spirit, or supernatural causes, has been proven to be but natural. I claim that magnetism and the undiscovered sciences are natural, and have no connection with the next world, to which we tend. The human eye, to some extent, is magnetic. A blind man cannot thrill an audience; hardly can an orator with glasses over his eyes. Dr. Chapin approaches the nearest to it. Dr. Beecher’s great magnetic power is in his eyes, and is also let off at the ends of his fingers. But tothoroughlymagnetize a person, he must betouched.
Power of the Human Eye.
A wild animal has only small reasoning organs. The influence of the human eye is potent over him. Lichtenstein says, “The African hunters avail themselves of the circumstance that the lion does not attempt to spring upon his prey until he has measured the ground, and has reached the distance of ten or twelve paces, when he lies crouching on the ground, gathering himself up for the effort. The hunters,” he says, “make it a rule never to fire on the lion until he lies down at this short distance, so that they can aim directly at his head with the most perfect certainty. If one meets a lion, his only safety is to stand still, though the animal crouches to make his spring; that spring will not be hazarded if the man remain motionless, and look him steadfastly in the eyes. The animal hesitates, rises, slowly retreats some steps, looks earnestly about him, lies down, again retreats, till, getting by degrees quite out of the magic circle of man’s influence, he takes flight in the utmost haste.”
It is said of Valentine Greatrakes, the great magnetizer and forerunner of Mesmer, that the glance of his eye had a marvellously fascinating influence upon people of a susceptible or nervous organization. All magnetizers, etc., who havetried their powers upon the writer, first bent a sharp, scrutinizing gaze upon the eye of their unruly subject. Yet they have exercised noreasonin selecting the subject.
THE LION MAGNETIZED.
I attended the exhibitions of Professor Cadwell, night after night, in Boston. I went on the stage. I examined the subjects whom he controlled “like an old fiddle,” and, physiognomically and phrenologically, not one of them was above mediocrity intellectually, and the most of them were far below. The best subjects had the least intellectuality. His control over them was astonishing. In some he could suspend the power of memory, others all the reasoningfaculties. Some he could control muscularly, some mentally.
“This is a hot stove,” he said, setting an empty chair before the row of men, boys, and girls sitting along the wall side of the stage. “It is very hot;” and they began drawing back—all but one. “Don’t you see the stove, and feel the awful heat, Frank?” he asked of one hard subject.
A HARD SUBJECT.
“I can feel the heat, but I can’t see the stove in that chair,” was his droll reply.
The professor could make this gentleman forget his name, but could not make him believe that “a silk hat was a basin of water.”
The Royal Touch.
The old ignorant kings and queens were said to remove the scrofula (king’s evil) by the touch. Gouty old Queen Anne was the last to exercise the royal prerogative to any extent.
A scrofulousdevelopmentis the result of imperfect action, and obstruction of some one or more of the five excretory organs of the human system. These are the skin (or glands of the same), the lungs, the liver, the kidneys, and the colon. The most that the regular physician does in scrofula (or onewho is not a specialist in this branch of physic) is to attend to the general health of the patient of a scrofulous diathesis, build up the strength, and endeavor to increase the vitality. Thisin a measuretends to reduce the scrofulous development. Now, will not a child sleeping continually with an aged person or invalid tend to reduce the vitality of the child? Yes, it absorbs the disease of the one, while the vitality is thrown off for the benefit of the weaker person. Here, you see, one person may partake of the vitality of another by touch. Then may not the continued touch of a healthy person (king or subject) affect the health of a weaker, on the principle of increased vitality?
But it really removes no cause, hence cannot take the place of an alterative, or anti-scrofulous medicine. The “crew of wretched souls” who waited the king’s touch really believed that he “solicits Heaven.” Hence the cure. The coin which he hung about the neck of these “strangely visited people, all swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,” called their attention continually to “the healing benediction.”
Pyrrhus, who was placed upon the throne by force of arms B. C. 306, was said to cure the “evil” by the “grace of God.” Valentine, who only held his throne—A. D. 375—by the help of Theodosius, not by the “grace of God”—claimed to cure scrofula by the latter power, as did Valentine II., whose wicked temper ended his life in a “fit of passion.”
The subject of the following sketch claimed also divine power:—
Herr Gassner. “The Devil understands Latin.”
It seems from the following truthful account of Herr Gassner, a clergyman at Elwangen, that the devil can understand Latin, as well as “quote Scripture.” About the year 1758 this clergyman became so celebrated in curing diseases by animal magnetism, that the people came flocking from Switzerland, the Tyrol, and Swabia, in great numbers, to be cured of all sorts of ailments, a thousand persons arriving at a time, who had to lodge in tents, as the town could not lodge them all.
GASSNER HEALING “BY THE GRACE OF GOD.”
Hismodus operandiwas as follows. Dressed in a long scarlet cloak, a silken sash about his loins, a chain about his neck, and wearing, or holding in one hand, a crucifix, and touching with the other the diseased part, and in the Latin tongue commanding the disease, or the evil spirit, whichever the case was termed, to depart, in the name of Jesus Christ, the patient was usually healed. Dr. Schlisel says, that Gassner “spoke chiefly in Latin, in his operations, and the devil is said to have understood him perfectly.”
The Austrian government gave him its assistance. The excitement became great. Elwangen was overcrowded by people, rich and poor. Riches flowed into the coffers of its trades-people, though Gassner took nothing directly for his cures. Hundreds of patients arrived daily; the apothecary gained a great revenue from dispensing simples ordered by Gassner, principally powder ofblessed thistle, oils, and washes. The printers labored day and night at their presses in order to furnish sufficient pamphlets, prayers, pictures, etc., for the eager horde of admirers. The goldsmiths were crowded, also, to furnish all kinds ofAgni Dei, crosses, charms, hearts, and rings. Even the beggars had their harvest, as well as bakers, hotel-keepers, and the rest.
During seven years he carried on his public cures. Hundreds of physicians went to see him. Mesmer, in answer to the inquiry of the Elector of Bavaria, declared his astonishing cures were produced merely by the exercise of magnetic spiritual excitement, of which he himself (claiming no God-like power) gave to the elector convincing proofs on the spot.
On the contrary, Gassner claimed that he could heal none unless they exercised faith. His surroundings, trappings,dress, crucifixes, appeals to Jesus Christ, and Latin mummery, had the effect to impress the patient with faith in Gassner’s Christ-like powers.
“Some,” says Dr. Schlisel, “described him as a prophetic and holy man; others accused him of being a fantastic fellow, an impostor, and leagued with the devil. Some accused him of dealing in the black art; others attributed his cures to the magnet, to electricity, to sympathy, to imagination; and some attributed the whole to the omnipotent power of the name of Christ.”
Having touched or rubbed the affected part of the patient, Gassner, in a “loud, proud voice,” commanded the disease to come forth, or to manifest itself. Sometimes he had to repeat this command ten times. Then, when the part was presented, he seized it with both hands; he inspired the patient to himself repel the disease, by saying, “Depart from me, in the name of Jesus Christ.”
“He then gave the patient his blessing by spreading his cloak over the head, grasping his neck or head in both hands, repeating a silent, earnest prayer, making the sign of the cross, ordering some simple from the apothecary’s, which he consecrates, compels the patient to wash his hands clean, when he is permitted to ‘depart in peace.’
“Most diseases he cured instantly. Some required months, and others he could not affect in the least.”
There is but one philosophical way to account for these cures. To say there is nothing in it, or, “It is all humbug,” will not satisfy the people. To affirm it is the arts of the devil is merely nonsensical. It isinfluence. Of what? Of one powerful mind over another. And when Gassner found a mind equally as powerful as his own, the disease refused to depart. There you have the whole of it, “in a nutshell,”—the exercising of one mind over another; and mind (not unusually) controls matter in the living body.
For about seven years Gassner was a public healer, and then he suddenly and forever disappeared.
Royalty in the Shade.
Sir John Fortesque, the learned legal writer of the time of Edward IV., spoke of the gift of healing by touch as a “time immemorial privilege of the kings of England.” He very seriously attributed the virtue to the unction imparted to the hands in the coronation. Elizabeth was not superior to this superstition, and she frequently appeared before the people in the character of a miraculous healer. There was formerly a regular office in the English Book of Common Prayer for the performance of this ceremony. The curious reader is referred to Macbeth, Scene III. of Act IV. for further particulars.
With the rise of Valentine Greatrakes, the “royal prerogative” received a staggering blow. The marvellous cures of this man, living in Ireland, reached England, and the king invited him to come to London; and along his journey, whither he was preceded by the returning messenger, we are told that the magistrates of the towns and cities waited upon Valentine, and begged him to remain and heal their sick.
On his arrival, the king, “though not fully persuaded of his wonderful gift, recommended him to the care of his physician, and permitted him to practise his power as much as he pleased in London.”
Greatrakes had no medical education, nor claimed aught beyond a gift of healing most diseases by “stroking the parts with his hand.” He is described as being a man of “commanding address, frank and pleasing, having a brilliant eye, gallant bearing, fine figure, and a remarkably handsome face. With a hearty and musical voice, and a natural stock of highanimalspirits, he was the delight of all festive assemblies. Yet he was a devout man.”
Daily there assembled a great number of people, invalids from all parts of the kingdom, to be healed, and to see the wonderful miracles performed by aman! Here congregatedthe dropsical, those afflicted by unsightly sores, tumors, and swellings, the lame, the halt, and the blind. “Some he could not affect, but the most of them he cured.” The only visible means he took was to stroke, or at times violently rub, the part affected. Lord Conway wrote in his praise, but added, “After all, I am far from thinking his cures miraculous. I believe it is by asanative virtueand anatural efficiency, which extend not to all diseases.” The Viscountess Conway was afflicted by an inveterate headache, which he could not remove. This lady was a positive character. The failure was attributed to thepeculiardisease, when it should have been assigned to the peculiarity of the person. Sir Evremond, then at court, wrote a sarcastic novel on the subject of “The Irish Prophet.” The Royal Society held a meeting on the subject, and, unable to refute the facts of his cures, accounted for them as being “produced by a sanative contagion in Mr. Greatrakes’ body, which had an antipathy to some peculiar diseases, and not to others.” They demanded (particularly Dr. Loyd, in a “severe pamphlet”) how he cured, and why he cured some, and could not others. Greatrakes replied that he was not able to tell. And “let them,” he said, “tell me what substance that is which removes and goes out with such expedition, and it will be more easy to resolve their questions.”
To the scandalous reports respecting his operations upon female patients, without referring directly to such report, he says, attributing the diseases to evil spirits, “which kind of pains cannot endure my hand, nay, not with gloves, but fly immediately, though six or eight coats or cloaks be between the person and my hand, as at the Lady Ranelagh’s,” etc.
The clergy had previously taken alarm, and cited Valentine before the Bishop’s Court to account for his proceedings, and when he took a scriptural view of his cures, he was forbidden to practise more; which was as preposterous as the decree of Louis XIV., which commanded that no moremiracles should be performed at the tomb of the Abbé Paris.
Neither the clergy nor the faculty could prevent him, and daily the crowd of representatives of heterogeneous diseases made pilgrimages to the Squire of Affam. The scene was said to be ludicrously painful. They came in crowds from everywhere; on foot and in carriages; the young and the aged; some hobbling upon crutches, others literally crawling along; the blind carrying the cripple upon his back, while the latter directed the way, and the deaf and dumb followed in their wake.
NO LACK OF PATIENTS.
While the lord mayor and the chief justice, with great physicians, were among his vehement supporters of the sterner sex, the majority of his real admirers were the ladies. The lovely Countess of Devonshire entertained him in her palace, and other high ladies lionized him nightly in their parlors, where he “performed his pleasant operations, with wonderful results, on the prettiest and most hysterical ladies present.” “But his triumph was of short duration. His professions were made the butts of ridicule, to which his presence of mind and volubility were unable to effectuallyrespond. His tone of conversation was represented by his enemies as compounded of the blasphemy of the religious enthusiast and the obscene profligate. His boast that he never received a fee for remedial services was met by a square contradiction, and a statement that he received five hundred dollars at once.” Finally, the tide of opposition and slander became too strong for him, and he returned to his native land, and to oblivion.
We are indebted to several authorities for the foregoing sketch of Greatrakes, particularly Chambers’ Miscellany, Lord Conway, E. Rich, and Jeaffreson.
Mesmerism.
Frederick Anthony Mesmer, to whose name the aboveismis affixed, was born in Werseburg, in 1734. He neither discovered, developed, nor understood anything of the art which has immortalized him. He was a designing, audacious man. If Gassner, Prince Hohenloe, and Greatrakes were falsely accused of dealing with the devil, Mesmer was truly leagued with a Father Hell. Father Hell was professor of astronomy at Vienna, where Mesmer obtained a medical diploma, and where he was connected at first with Maximilian Hell in magnetic instruments. Having a falling out with the latter, Mesmer resorted to the arts of his great predecessor, Greatrakes, but professed to cure, without the help of God or man, all curable diseases. He produced marvellous effects (but only temporary, however) in both Vienna and Paris, to which latter place he repaired to practise animal magnetism.
Among the little episodes relative to his treatment is one of Madame Campan, a lady of the royal household, author of “Memoires de Marie Antoinette.” The husband of this celebrated lady sent for Dr. Mesmer—for all Paris was running mad after him—to cure him of lung fever. He came with great pomp, and having timed the pulse, andmade certain inquiries respecting the case, he gravely informed the husband and wife that it was not in the way of magnetism, and the only mode of cure lay in the following: “You must lay by his side”—for he was confined to his bed—“one of three things, an old empty bottle, a black hen, or a young woman of brown complexion.”
“A BOTTLE, A HEN, OR A WOMAN.”
“‘Sir,’ exclaimed the wife, ‘let us try the empty bottle first.’
“The bottle was tried, with what result is easily imagined. Monsieur Campan grew worse. Improving the opportunity of the lady’s absence, Mesmer bled and blistered the patient, who recovered.
“Imagine the lady’s astonishment when Mesmer asked for and actually obtained a written certificate of cure by magnetism” (Mesmerism).
This is more easily believed when one learns that Mesmer obtained his degree on an address, or thesis, relating to “planetary influence on the human body,” and that afterwards, in answer to the inquiry by a learned Paris physician, who asked him why he ordered his patients to bathe in the Seine, instead of spring water, as the waters of the Seine were always dirty, Mesmer replied,—
“Why, my dear doctor, the cause of the water which is exposed to the sun’s rays being superior to all other water is, that it is magnetized by the sun. I myself magnetized the sun some twenty years ago.”
All that sort of fellows have ever a short course. Mesmer reached his zenith in Paris about the year 1784, when, for one year’s practice, he received the enormous sum of four hundred thousand francs. The government, at the instigation of Count Maurepas, had previously offered him an annuity of twenty thousand francs, with ten thousand francs additional, to support a college hospital, if he would remain and practise only in France. “One unpleasant condition was attached to this offer, which prevented its acceptance; viz., three nominees of the crown were to watch the proceedings.”
The government appointed a commission, consisting of Dr. Guillotin, and three other physicians, and five members of the Academy,—Franklin, Bailly, Borey, Leroi, and Lavoisier,—to examine the means employed by Mesmer. The result of the investigation—the discovery of his battery, which he termed thebaquet, around which his patients assembled, and his windy pretensions to the self-possession of some animal magnetism beyond even his disciples, Bergasse and Deslon—was unfavorable to the truth of animal magnetism and morality, and the enthusiasm in his favor rapidly subsided. Mesmer soon found it convenient to repair to London. Here he made no great impression; his day had gone by.
He died in his native town, in all but penury and obscurity, in 1815.
Clairvoyance now made its appearance, which was but a different phase of magnetism, and Mesmerism was soon but indifferently practised in France. In England the faculty entirely ignored it.
Clairvoyance.
What is it? The word is French, meaning, literally, clear-sightedness. It is a power attributed to certain persons, or claimed by certain persons, of seeing things not visible to the eye, or things at a distance. It is the action of mind over mind,—the seeing, mentally, of one mind through another.
By personal experiment with clairvoyants, I am positively convinced that they follow the mind (thoughts) of the subject or patient. I have laid out my programme before visiting one, and the operator, whether pretending or not to a “trance” state, has followed that course to the end, but usually adding something which was conjectural. Practice helps them very much. But the most of those persons, male and female, who proclaim themselves clairvoyants, are humbugs and impostors.
Let any clear-headed man, who has good intellectual qualities, go to a good clairvoyant, and try the above plan. Think out just the places and persons you wish the clairvoyant (or spiritualist, if he or she choose to call themselves such) to bring up. Stick firmly to your text, and the operator will follow it, if he or she is a clairvoyant. They can tell you nothing that you do not already know. If they go beyond that, it is guessed at.
No person of large causality can be a clairvoyant. The moment they employ cause and effect, they are lost in doubt. How else can you account for nearly all the professional clairvoyants (and spiritualists) being persons of lowintellectuality? Of course they deny this; but a fact is a fact, andit can’t be rubbed out!
There is a magnetizing feature in clairvoyance. The operator can make some personsthinkthey see a thing, when it is an impossibility to see it. This influence is sometimes passed from one person to another imperceptibly.
When the earthquake shook up the minds of the Bostonians, in 1870, there was one grand illustration of this fact. A gentleman standing in front of the Old State House, on Washington Street, soon after the shock, asserted that the earthquake had started a stone in the front end of the Sears Building.
“There! don’t you see it?” he exclaimed to the people on the sidewalk, who are always ready to stop and look at any new or curious object, as he pointed towards an imaginary crack in the marble. “It is just above the corner of that window there”—pointing—“a crack in the stone a foot long.”
“O, yes, I see it,” said one and another; and the gentleman moved on, leaving the gaping crowd to gaze after the imaginary rent in the wall.
“Where is it?” inquired a new comer.
“Right up there over the door,” replied one.
“No, over that third window,” said another.
Some “saw it,” and others didn’t “see it,” but all day long the tide of curious humans ebbed and flowed. At eight o’clock in the morning I took a look—not at the broken stone in the marble front, but at the magnetized crowd looking upon an imaginary break. People with large causality looked, exclaimed, “Pooh!” and went on. The credulous stood gazing, and pointing out the rent to the “blind ones, who wouldn’t see,” hour after hour. At noon I again visited the scene. The crowd had shifted, but the same class, male and female, stood gazing at the “calico building,” and the same sort of people “saw the crack over the window.”