MESMERISM.
“Thus smiling, as some fly had tickled slumber,Not as Death’s dart, being laugh’d at.”Cymbeline.“By some illusion see thou bring her here,I’ll charm his eyes against she doth appear.”“Such tricks hath strong imagination.”Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“Thus smiling, as some fly had tickled slumber,Not as Death’s dart, being laugh’d at.”Cymbeline.“By some illusion see thou bring her here,I’ll charm his eyes against she doth appear.”“Such tricks hath strong imagination.”Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“Thus smiling, as some fly had tickled slumber,Not as Death’s dart, being laugh’d at.”Cymbeline.
“Thus smiling, as some fly had tickled slumber,Not as Death’s dart, being laugh’d at.”Cymbeline.
“Thus smiling, as some fly had tickled slumber,
Not as Death’s dart, being laugh’d at.”
Cymbeline.
“By some illusion see thou bring her here,I’ll charm his eyes against she doth appear.”
“By some illusion see thou bring her here,
I’ll charm his eyes against she doth appear.”
“Such tricks hath strong imagination.”Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“Such tricks hath strong imagination.”Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“Such tricks hath strong imagination.”
Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Ida.You are very formidable creatures, Evelyn, if you can touch and wound the heart of a sensitive girl so easily; we must be wary, dear Castaly. It must be a desperate case that justifies so desperate a remedy; yet, with all this danger, the magi of our day will, as I have heard, induce by their art this very state of trance.
Astr.Magnetic sleep. If the phenomena of this animal magnetism be not amystery, it is at least a curiosity. And yet Evelyn will tell us that they, too, obey thecommonlaws of our nature. I believe, however, there are stories of most strange andnovelinterest, beyond the scope even ofhisphilosophy.
Ev.The hand of a magnetiserseems, I confess, to effect a wonder; but your challenge will be fatal to you, Astrophel. In this same question of animal magnetism we may discoverthe spring of all your mysteries. The close analogies between thenaturalandimpartedphenomena of trance and magnetic sleep and somnambulism, and somnambulic blindness, and magnetic ecstacy; even the frauds of lucid vision and clairvoyance, and the vaunted gift of prophetic divination, with the explanation of some, and the refutation of others, will dispel the most subtle arguments in proof of divine influence; seeing that the process is conducted by men of mortal mould, who claim no merit even for the possession of occult learning.
Cast.Mercy, dearest Evelyn, mercy. No more philosophy to-night. The smile of yon planet Venus, that was twinkling from out its cerulean blue, is veiled in a cloud; for our cold discourse is treason to its influence. Be ready with your stories, Astrophel.
Ev.The history of Mesmerism is a romance in itself, dear Castaly. If I invade not the province of Astrophel, I will, as some apology for my dull prosing, sketch its progress by way of episode.
You must know, then, that it was Maximilian Holl who first, from the influence of his magnets on the body, imparted the practical idea of animalmagnetismto Mesmer, who had already written his inaugural thesis, at Vienna, on “Planetary Influence,” and had laid down this unblushing aphorism: “There is one health, one disease, one remedy, and one physician, and that physician am I.” His immediate proselytes were Deslon at Paris, and Gmelin at Heilbronne, and Reicke at Stutgard, and Klugé at Berlin. Encouraged by the Swedenborgian tenets, this magic brought immense revenue into the purses of Mainanduc in England, and the rest of its revivers; so that one hundred guineas were given for a course of lectures and experiments, and fifteen guineas for a consultation and the imparting of its influence.
In after times Miss Prescott, among others, gained great fame in the art: but De Lauterbourg was one of its most popular professors. Three thousand patients, it is said, were often waiting for the magnetic influence about his house at Hammersmith.
In 1784 an ordonnance of the French king confirmed Mesmer in his working of these apparent miracles. By tractions on the body, either with the hand or by substances magnetized with his “imponderable fluid,” bychampooing, and the accompaniment of sweet music, a state of enchantment of the senses was induced. Convulsions and mania were often excited in the “Hall of Crisis,” which was lined by soft cushions to protect the convulsionaries. These paroxysms and tempests of the brain Mesmer seemed to control, like a second Prospero, with his wand of enchantment, gliding, in robes of silk, among the multitude of devotees, whom novelty and voluptuousness had attracted to his shrine.
To study and report on these mysteries, commissioners were appointed by the “Faculty of Medicine,” by the “Academy of Sciences,” and by the “Royal Society of Medicine.” Thesesavansreferred all to the influence of imagination, or of emotion in sensitive systems; and that there must be this sensitive predisposition is often proved, for idiots, and those who have been blindfold, and unconscious children,remain uninfluenced, although it is declared by one that he magnetized anidiot baby!
I must observe, that before the commissions in Paris, especially that of which Franklin was a member, not the slightest influence was observed; and the experiments of Monsieur Berner, who was the chief manipulator, were a perfect failure, especially in regard to theclairvoyance.
Astrophel reminds me by his frown ——
Astr.That magnetic power is not granted to all; that all possess not the essential qualities of mind and body. It was affirmed that the operator must have his mind abstracted, and teeming with affection and benevolence towards his patients; must believe himself a verymagnet, and feel a desire of benefiting mankind. Thus a sympathy, or incorporation of atmospheres, was induced, by which disease was influenced; and even in persons distant from each other, by an intensity of thought the patient tasted, smelt, or heard, the flavours, odours, or sounds which at that moment affected the senses of theoperator. The magnetizer must thus be confident that, by his will, he can pass his whole nervous energy into his patient. It is essential, also, that themind of the patientshould have a corresponding willingnessto bemagnetized.
Ev.And this congenial platonism is sometimes so intense, that offers ofmagnetic marriageare made by the ecstatic ladies to their magnetizers, even though it may not beleap-year, on the plea that the loneliness of magnetic widowhood distressed them, and that the possession of asleepingpartner was better thansleepingalone.
Under this interesting disposition for magnetic union, the eyes of the maiden being fixed on the magnetizer intensely,hishands were passed before her body, his fingers thus forming natural conductors, by which the magnetic fluid was conveyed from the positive to the negative magnetic body. Then came the wonders of this influence. The patient was warmed by the benevolence of the magnetizer, who felt anauraor tingling in the part corresponding to any painful part of the patient’s body which was relieved or cured. Indeed, Bertrand assures us that many told him they saw ablue fluid streaming from his fingerswhen he magnetized them.
The secret of this is closely analogous to the effect of brooding over sorrow: the mind of the patient isconcentratedon the spot to which the passes are directed; and, as we know thatdiseasecan be excited thus by imagination (especially in the hypochondriac), so it is a truth that this concentration mayremovedisease and pain, especially by the superaddition of faith.
Astr.But the magnetizer, as they said, was not alwaysin a stateto operate, and required a certaintraining. So it was observed that Casper Hauser’scatdid not follow him after he had eaten meat; his magnetic and somnambulant qualities were destroyed by animal food, although they were so abundant in hiswilderstate,—as his history will thus illustrate to those who believe it:
“As I came into the room, and the door of the deceased person was opened, which I did not know, I felt a sudden dragging on both sides of my breast, as if any one wished to pull me into the room. As I went on and proceeded towards the sick person, a very strong breath blew on me from behind, and the pulling which I felt before in my breast I now felt in my shoulders. I went towards the window; the sick person followed me. At the time that I wished to ask a question of Mr. Von Gutter, I felt a trembling in my left foot, and it became unwell. She went back again, and that trembling left me. She seated herself under the canopy and said, ‘Will not the gentleman sit down?’ Hereupon Mr. Professor Hensler said to her, she should see me. So as she drew nigh to me, within two or three steps, I was still more unwell than before, and I felt pains in all my limbs. Mr. Professor Hensler told her that I was the man who had been wounded (that is, by the attempt which had been made to assassinate him); at the same time she noticed my scar, and pointed towards it; then came the air strong upon my forehead, and I felt pain in it, also my left foot began to tremble greatly. The sick person seated herself under the canopy, and said that she was ill; and I also said that I was so unwell that I must sit down. I sat down in the other room: now the other foot began to twitter. Although Mr. Von Gutter held my knees, I could not keep them still. Now a violent beating of my heart came on me, and there was a heat in all my body: that beating of the heart left me afterwards; and I had a twittering in my left arm, which ceased after some minutes, and I was again something better. This condition lasted until the next morning, then I had a headache again and a twittering in all my limbs, still not so violent. In the afternoon, about three o’clock, it came again something less, and left me earlier: then I was quite well again.”
“The Somnambulist was greatly affected by thepresenceof Hauser. I heard that, afterwards, when she was asleep, she had said these words,—‘That was a hard struggle for me.’ She felt indisposition from this process even on the next day.”
Ev.The first sensation from magnetism is usually that of slightvertigo,—a state of musing or reverie succeeding, the mind being lulled into abstraction, as it is by the rippling of water, the busy hum of bees, or the murmuring of the Æolian-harp. I would explain this feeling by the term,confusion of the senses; for a certain period must elapse ere an external object make an impression on the mind. When, therefore, objects or sounds becomeextremely rapid, the perception is confused, and the mind, left as it were to itself, cannot follow the impressionsso as to associate them, and thus the magnetic ecstacy ensues.
Astr.But Monsieur de Paysegur, who first excitedmagnetic somnambulism, magnetized trees and ropes, by which he converted those who clung to them into sleep-walkers. Dr. Elliotson, also, mesmerized asovereign, bymerely looking on it; and a girl, who intuitivelyselectedit from a heap of others, was instantly struck withcoma.
Ev.The last is a very frail experiment. Paysegur often failed in his illustrations, and then the cunning juggler explained this, by affirming that the trees counter-magnetized each other. Now, whatever may be the influence imparted by thistraction, the phenomena ofexcitedsomnambulism are similar precisely to thosespontaneouslyoccurring. Magnetic sleep, or ecstasis, is its precursor; and there is a total unconsciousness of it when awake. Here is one of those close analogies that are the most potent arguments on which the question of magnetism rests. For, in all the states alluded to, the interval ofecstacyisa blank. And, as in the cases of intense alarm, as you remember, the mesmeric ecstacy will cause a sensitive girl toforget the present, while the scenes of youth and infancy pass vividly before her memory.
Now the effects of the passes of magnetism are referred tosixdegrees,—the chief conditions being those of sleep, somnambulism, and clairvoyance. The essence of the last, it seems, is combined with a blending of one’s own feeling and nature with those of others;—a reuniting, in fact, of body and soul once separated from that individual whole, which some philosophers, as Hecker, believed the whole human race to be. You observe my fidelity, Astrophel.
It must be confessed, that some of the experiments at which I have myself assisted exhibit very strange results. In some, there is the propensity to chatter nonsense,—a system of one form ofhysteria, of which the analogy is perfect. One little jade created much amusement, by inserting supernumerary syllables, thus—opporwaytuniwhatsty.
The insensibility of the nostril to the most powerfulammoniais a very imposing fact; one which must strike us more than that of insensibility of the eye to light, or the ear to sounds. For the faculty of perception may be often suspended in either of those organs of sense, if attention be powerfully diverted to another point, or, as it is by the abstraction of magnetic ecstacy, not directedto any.
So that I do not wonder when thoughtless proselytes believe these effects to bemiraculous, or credit the assertions of Pereaud, in his “Antidæmon of Mascon,” that,—“The devil causeth witches to fall into ecstacies, so that a man would say their souls were out of their body.” Or those of Bodin, in his “Theatre of Universal Nature,” that “those that are rapt of the devil feel neither stripes nor cuttings.”
So that the honour of the magnetic monomania must at last be conceded to the fallen angel.
Ida.And are all these wonders worked only to excite curiosity?
Astr.I believe there is some good in it. Is it not certain, that during this state of magnetic sleep, operations have been performed without creating pain? The lady on whom Mons. Chopelain operated, talked coolly and unconsciously during its performance. And Jules Cloquet, in Paris, amputated the breast of a lady who had been put into an ecstacy or state of apathetic trance by a mesmerizer.
Ev.It is, I believe, quite true that she was perfectly unconscious of the operation. But even this is notsafe. Pain is given us as a warning against extreme injury; that by our complaint or suffering, the surgeon’s mind may beon its guard. For the body is so far in disorder when it is chilled by this apathetic spell, that it may sink under fatal injuries, although they may be endured by the mind unconscious of its peril or its state. As a very curious antitype to these cases, it is stated in a medical gazette, that a young lady fell down in an hysterical fit and was insensible for two days. As a puffy swelling arose, she wastrephined, but there was no disease of the brain. In two days after this, she awoke and expressed all the steps of the operation, of which she had beenpainlessly sensible.
Astr.And in this state ofecstasis, is there not strange havoc played with the senses, by their seeming displacement or transference?
The philosophers will tell us that thegangliain the abdomen become as it werelittle brains, and the plexusses and the nerves of the skin become, like those of the senses, capable of imparting the idea of visible objects to those ganglia and of rendering a slight whisper distinctly audible. This is all very fine, and verymaterial; but this straining at explanation is itself a proof of mystery. Van Ghest records the case of Mademoiselle B——, a young lady who was magnetized: she assured him that while she was intently looked upon, she felt her eyes and brain leave her head, and become fixed in her stomach, in which situation she saw acutely; but if she was in the slightest degree disturbed, the eyes and their sense seemed to return to her head.
The stories recorded in the book of the Rev. Chauncey Townsend are not less curious than this.
Ev.Although I take themetaphysics of a divinewith reservation, hisfactsmay not be doubted. For there areotherpowerful impressions that will produce phenomena as curious. The arm of a young man in the “Ospidale della Vitta,” at Bologna, in 1832, was grasped by a convulsive patient. Violent spasms succeeded, and he lost the senses of taste, smell, and sensibility of the skin, but he could hearif the voice was applied on the stomach; and could, at that spot, discriminate between different substances.
Another patient in the same hospital was subject every third day to violent convulsions, during the continuance of which, he lost entirely the use of all his senses, and could neither hear, see, nor smell. His hands also became so firmly clenched, that it would be impossible to open them without breaking the fingers. Nevertheless, Dr. Ciri, the physician under whose charge he was placed, discovered that theepigastric region, at about two fingers breadth above the navel, received all the impressions of the senses, so as to replace them completely. If the patient was spoken to whilst the finger was placed on this spot, he gave answers, and even, when desired, opened his hands of his own accord. If any substance or matter was placed there, he could describe its form and quality, its colour and smell. As long as the finger was kept on the stomach, the convulsion gradually diminished until it entirely disappeared; but if the finger were placed on the heart, the convulsion returned with increased violence, and continued as long as the finger was kept in that position. If a flute was played while the finger was kept on the stomach, the patient heard the music; but if the finger was taken away, and placed on the heart, and then taken back again to its former position, the man askedwhy they played by intervals; yet the flute had never ceased. These experiments were all made in the presence of the professors and students of the hospital.
I will not counsel you, Astrophel, as to theextentof your belief in these strange tales, but extreme exaggeration often lessens the interest which scientific minds would take in these curiosities.
These pictures are correct in theiroutline, but the artistshave not spared their colours. They will remindus, who are learned in legends, of that illusive monomania among the monks of Mount Athos, who believed that they could at pleasure attain a celestial vision by communing devoutly with the Deity,while their attention or their sight were directed to the umbilicus! And they were therefore called “Omphalopsychians.” We discover also very close analogies to this mental concentration, in the acuteness with whichonesense is endowed on the failure ofanother. The delicacy of touch in the blind is oftenextreme; I knew a blind lady who played an excellent rubber, passing her finger lightly over the card spots; and more curious still are the cases of Miss M’Avoy, of Stanley the organist, and of Professor Saunderson. De Luc tells us of a lady, who read distinctly by passing her fingers over the page, even of a strange book. In Laura Bridgman, an American girl, an inmate of the Institution of Boston since 1837, thewhole faculty of perceptionwas concentrated in the one sense of touch. At the age of two, sight, and hearing, and smelling, and almost taste, deserted her. To this interesting creature, through the acuteness of her sense of touch in tracing letters, has been imparted so much knowledge, that themoral sentimentsand the congenial affections of the heart are now beautifully displayed in her character. If by the dumb alphabet, or finger-talking, conversation is commenced with her, she follows the fingers with her arm with extreme rapidity, so that scarce a letter escapes her. Such are the wonders of this child’s intelligence, that her mind has been cited as illustrative ofinnate sentiment; but the veryfacilityis enough to explain her actions.
Le Cat writes of a blind sculptor at Voltera, who modelled features most faithfully by the touch.
A French gentleman lost the integrity ofevery sense, butsensationremained in half of his face, on which he received the correspondence of his friends by their tracing on it letters or forms.
In Mr. Eschke’s establishment at Berlin, conversation was carried on by tracing letters on theclothes of the back.
A Bolognese, on witnessing a woman in acutehysteria, became occasionally convulsed, and impenetrably deaf; if, however, the slightest whisper was breathed to thepit of the stomach, he heard distinctly.
From Andral’s Lectures, to please you, Astrophel, I will select this fragment:
“I saw yesterday a young lady who has been frequently magnetized, and who, on my visit, presented some very remarkable circumstances. After a fit of indigestion she fell into the ecstatic state, in which she continued when I saw her. Her skin was perfectly insensible, and her eyes were open like animals’ in whom thefifth pairof nerves has been divided. She could perceive light, knew the difference between day and night for instance, but she could see and distinguish nothing else. She could not speak, but by signs expressed that her intellect was unusually active. But the most remarkable of the phenomena she presented was a singularexaltation of the sense of hearing. So extraordinarily delicate had this become, that she distinctly perceived sounds inaudible to myself and several other persons.”
Carus, unmindful of the existence of a state of abstract reverie resembling sleep, records the case of a young ecclesiastic, who composed sermons in a state of slumber, correcting and adding to them withpeculiar care. And this is the deduction: that the sense of vision seemed to betransferred to the fingers, as the eyes were perfectly blinded to the writing paper. His eyes, when he sat for his portrait, should have been painted at the tips of his fingers.
James Mitchell, congenitally deaf and blind, discriminated his friends from strangers, and even formed a fair estimate of character, by the smell of the parties. And there was a deaf woman (writes Le Cat) who could read, and even tell the difference of languages, from thesilentmotion of thelip.
From these very curious illustrations we may confess that these lines in Hudibras are no fiction:
——“Communities of sensesTo chop and change intelligences,As Rosicrucian virtuosisCan see with ears and hear with noses.”
——“Communities of sensesTo chop and change intelligences,As Rosicrucian virtuosisCan see with ears and hear with noses.”
——“Communities of sensesTo chop and change intelligences,As Rosicrucian virtuosisCan see with ears and hear with noses.”
——“Communities of senses
To chop and change intelligences,
As Rosicrucian virtuosis
Can see with ears and hear with noses.”
For so strange are the synonymes of the senses, that the blind will express their notion ofcolourbysound; the tint of scarlet is like the sound of a trumpet. From this hint, probably, St. Amand, in the “Pilgrims of the Rhine,” speaks of avisible music.
Ida.Do we not perceive, also, something of this acuteness in the sense of touch under certain other conditions? In the story of Caspar Hauser, whether it be romance or reality, we read the following illustration of the effect ofmineraltraction:
“Once, when the physician, Dr. Osterhausen, and the royal crown fiscal, Brunner, from Munich, happened to be present, Daumer led Caspar, in order to try him, to a table covered with an oil cloth, upon which lay a sheet of paper, and desired him to say whether any metal was under it. He moved his finger over it, and then said, ‘There it draws.’ ‘But this time,’ replied Daumer, ‘you are nevertheless mistaken, for,’ withdrawing the paper, ‘nothing lies under it.’ Caspar seemed at first to be somewhat embarrassed, but he put his finger again to the place where he thought he had felt the drawing, and assured them repeatedly that hetherefelt a drawing. The oil cloth was then removed, a stricter search was made, and a needle was actually found there.”
Caspar Hauser might have felt this, or a cunning youth might have palmed on us hisideafor a truth. Yet I confess Parkinson also relates the case of a woman who fainted on the touch of astethoscope, exclaiming that it was “drawingher too strongly.”
Cast.And of clairvoyance. Have you no incidents, Astrophel?
Astr.Many. Listen to the following fragments. One from Andral’s Lectures:
“M. Feruss was present at the experiment. A watch was held behind the individual’s head. ‘I see,’ said he, ‘something that shines.’ ‘What is it?’ ‘A watch.’ He was asked the hour, andreplied exactly. Two different watches were tried. He was equally precise. The watches were taken out of the room, and the hands altered. He still told the hours and minutes expressed on the dials.”
Another from an English newspaper, in 1833:
“Mr. Barnaby (’twas at Bow-street) took his watch from his pocket, and said, ‘What have I got in my hand?’ ‘A watch,’ was the reply.—‘What is it made of?’ ‘Gold.’—‘What chain is attached to it?’ ‘None at all,’ said the boy: ‘there is a riband to it.’—‘Can you tell at what hour the hand stands?’ ‘Yes, at twelve.’ Mr. B. showed his watch, and the hands were at twelve precisely. Mr. B. then produced his purse from his pocket, and asked the boy the colour of it, and what it contained, and his answers were, without having the least opportunity of turning round towards the bench, that one end of the purse was brown, and the other yellow, and that the brown end contained sovereigns, and the yellow end silver. Mr. B. admitted the correctness of the description, and, taking some silver from his pocket, asked the boy to describe the different pieces. ‘What is this?’ ‘Sixpence,’ said the boy, ‘and of the date 1819.’—‘What is the next?’ ‘A shilling, and dated 1816,’ was the reply. And when the clerk brought forth another coin, and asked similar questions, the boy said, ‘That is a sixpence of the date of 1817;’ and all these guesses proved to be correct.”
Townsend and Wood, at Antwerp and Paris, produced this second sight in several instances. E. A., with eyes bandaged, read two hundred pages of print, and even written music.
Ev.A little more sifting of these cases, Astrophel, and they would resemble that of the cataleptic female of Amiens, related by Petelin; who also professed to tell the spots of a card,unseenby her. But it was discovered that the physicianglided it beneath the bedclothes. Or that told by Bertrand, of anotherecstatic female:—“While lying entranced in a chamber illuminated by a candle, her ring was removed from her finger by Monsieur Bertrand, and given to a person standing near him. She was asked who had her ring,—‘Mr. Eyre has it in his trowsers pocket.’ Mr. Bertrand exclaimed that she was wrong, for it wasnotto Mr. Eyre the ring was given. The lady persisted in her statement, and, on immediate inquiry, it was found that the person who first was given the ring had secretly conveyed it to Mr. Eyre.”
The pages of history are not deficient in these pretensions to miracle. From Ulrick Zwingle we learn that Thomas Aquinas, the evangelical doctor, professed, by intense thought, to throw himself into ecstacy; in which, strange visions and mysteries of another existence passed before him.
Matthew Paris writes of a monk of Evesham, and of a certainSir Owen, that, in one of these ecstacies, was favoured with an introduction into Saint Patrick’s purgatory. So the mad visionary, Jacob Bœhm, fell into many strange trances, and at last were revealed to him,—“The origin of nature; the formation of all things; and even divine principles and intelligent natures!”
But the case of Santa Theresa, if we can but believe the testimony of so accomplished an hypocrite, presents phenomena far more remarkable than all these. “Her frame was naturally delicate, her imagination lively, and her mind, incapable of being fixed by trivial objects, turned with avidity to those which religion offered, the moment they were presented to her view. But, unfortunately, meeting with the writings of Saint Jerome, she became enamoured of the monastic life, and, quitting the line for which nature designed her, she renounced the most endearing ties, and bound herself by the irrevocable vow. Deep melancholy then seized on her, and increased to such a degree, that for many days she lay both motionless and senseless, like one who is in a trance. Her tender frame, thus shaken, prepared her for ecstacies and visions, such as it might appear invidious to repeat, were they not related by herself and by her greatest admirers. She tells us that, in the fervour of her devotion, she not only became insensible to every thing around her, but that her body was oftenlifted up from the earth, although she endeavoured to resist the motion. And Bishop Yessen relates in particular, that, when she was going to receive theEucharistat Avila, she was raised in a rapture higher than the grate, through which, as is usual in nunneries, it was presented to her. She often heard the voice of God, when she was recovered from a trance; but sometimes the devil, by imitation, endeavoured to deceive her, yet she was always able to detect the fraud.”
So that Theresa’s life was an elysium on earth, and she might well have cried out in her ecstacy, —
“——sic sine vitâ,Vivere quam suave est, sic sine morte mori.”
“——sic sine vitâ,Vivere quam suave est, sic sine morte mori.”
“——sic sine vitâ,Vivere quam suave est, sic sine morte mori.”
“——sic sine vitâ,
Vivere quam suave est, sic sine morte mori.”
Yet the modern proselytes to Mesmerism would scarcely believe this a fiction, but an illustration of that lucid vision which may, it is believed, be so highly excited, as to associate the being with universal nature: a creed grounded on the expansion or illimitable nature of thought or mind, by which it seems to leave the body, carrying with it its consciousness.
So the disciples of Mesmer asserted, that, when they thought or spoke warmly of absent persons, they would both appear in theireidōlon; and also that they were, at that exact time, speaking or thinking ofthem. This was Shelley’s conviction, that mindssympatheticallyimparted ideas and thoughts,—particles, indeed, of the “mens divinior.” So that they might well see in the dark.
Brown would be in a flood of joy to hear the affirmations of these ecstatics, whose spirits, as they believe and avow, are for the time released from the chains of mortality. “Why,” exclaimed one of these half-spiritualized creatures,—“Why do you bring me again to life? Would you depart from me, my body would grow cold, my soul would not return to it, and I should be happy.”
Astr.You are fond of caricature, Evelyn. I speak of sober truths only. I am told that the powers of acquirement may be so increased by magnetism, as to resemblenewfaculties. A lady, during a sort of ecstacy, sung most scientifically church music; although, when awake, she entirely failed, and had forgotten all. And others will speak languages and sentiments, of which they are perfectly unconscious when awake.
There was a girl in the vicinity of Bedford Row, of whose case there are related similar wonders of this magnetically-imparted accomplishment; and her beauty was so enchanting, as to transcend the brightest visions of Michael Angelo or Correggio.
Ev.Like that of the inspired somnambule, of whom Wolfart thus writes in his “Annals:” “An evil spirit ushered in her somnambulic sleep, and then a good spirit spread its wings around her; and when they had conversed, he flew with her to the Eternal City, through the sun and the moon; and while there, tranced scenes were around her, and her spirit was enjoying her beatitude: her face was like the face of a seraph, and no mortal painter might essay to trace its beauty.” So say those whosawthis mystery.
Astr.Yet, as to the prophetic power imparted by magnetism,—cases are recorded by our enthusiastic proselytes, which throw the spells of the conjuror into an eclipse —
Ev.And therefore forbid belief. —
Astr.—Even those displayed before our learned bodies. Madame Celini Sauvage, you remember, in the presence of the committee, in Paris, was placed in somnambulism. Even while insensible to stimuli she formed, it is recorded, a correct judgment of the diseases of persons around her, especially in the person of M. Marc, one of the committee; and in that of a young lady, on whom M. Dupuytren had operated for dropsy, and had tried the effects of the milk of a goat which had been anointed with mercury. Madame, unconscious of this,prescribed the very same remedy. You remember the report, Evelyn.
Ev.I remember, but believe it not.
Cast.And is it thus withallour legends? have you no more faith in your own order? There is the learned physician, Justin Kerner.Youhave not forgotten, Astrophel, his beautiful story of that most accomplished somnambule, the Prophetess of Prevorst, who seemed, as she said, to draw from the air a living principle, and whosevery vitality, it was believed, was preserved by the magnetic influence. The body of this ethereal creature enfolded her spirit like a veil of film,—she was a very flower of light living on sun-beams. Her senses were lighted up by the minutest atom. A web of gossamer stung her waxen skin like a nettle. At the pale green light of a glow-worm, she fell into ecstatic sleep; and then, (as to my own Tasso,) came to her spectral visitants, with whom she conversed, and whose colourless forms were visible even to her earthly companions. This fair creature had, as the story goes, been some time dead, when her mother made passes over her cold face and lips; and lo! her eyes opened, and a tremor was on her lip. Were I Astrophel, methinks I would make a pilgrimage to Lowenstein, where her body lies. And now, Evelyn, if you will, reprove me for my wildness, but confess there must be a sort of truth in legends so circumstantial as these.
Ev.A fair question, dearest Castaly. Yes, it is the crude or false interpretation of thatsort of truth, a transient glimpse it may be, of some embryo principle, that leads to popular error. A baseless theory is raised on anisolatedfact; and infantile science, bursting from its leading-strings ere it can crawl, topples headlong down the precipice, and splits on the rock of hypothetical presumption.
And then the confusion into which the mind is thrown by the definitions and conclusions of magnetizers, would make a very Babel of the fair field of philosophy. The least perplexing, perhaps, is that of the Frenchsavanswho referred magnetism to the efforts of a fluid matter consisting of fire, air, and spirit, to preserve its equilibrium in certain bodies which were, as to their capacity for this fluid, in a state of plus and minus. There is nothing very unphilosophical in this; for the essence of magnetism is somewhat analogous to eccentric derangement of mind, a disturbance of that order or symmetry among the faculties and actions, by which one is highly excited and another is comparatively passive. In a word, Mesmerism is true in part: itmayinduce catalepsy, somnambulism, exalted sensation, apathetic insensibility, suspended circulation, even death. Clairvoyance and prophecy alone are the impositions as regards itseffects, as the “blue flame” at the finger tips is of itsnature.
One folly more. Mesmer himself vaunted to Dr. Von Ellikon, “twenty years ago I magnetized the sun;” &c. so that the miracle of Joshua was but a stroke of magnetism. Indeed, Richter, rector of the School of Dessau, affirms that all the miracles of the Testament were but the sequences of magnetic passes. And Kieser refers all to a “telluric spirit,” a sort of magic, of which the sun and moon are the grand reservoirs; nay, this influence is the real cause of sleep and waking.
Ida.So that we are mesmerized by the moon at night-fall, and unmesmerized by the sun at the opening of the dawn.
Ev.Then there were some aphorisms of Wolfart aboutfiddlingto the viscera with his magnetic medicine, and working them up, as it were, to a jig or a bolero. These are the visions of a madman. But surely the illusion regarding this mysterious fluid is confessed in Dupotet’s own notion ofhis ownwondrous faculty, when he asserts his belief that animal magnetism is analogous to the royal touch, and the mysteries of Apollo, and Æsculapius, and Isis, the miracles of Vespasian, and the Sibylline prophecies.
Astr.You sneer at this as you did at the blue flame; but Dupotet assures us that while he is magnetizing his patients, he feels a sensation at the points of his fingers resembling theaurafrom diffused electricity. Now is it not fair to ask if electro-magnetism may not reside in theanimalas well as in themineral, inmanas well as in thetorpedoandgymnotus. And why may there not be a condition of intercommunication oren rapport, a magneticauracreeping through the nerves of each body?
We should not, therefore, make any hasty decision against the presence of anaurastreaming from the fingers and directed by the will. Monsieur Deleuze said, in Paris, “I do not know if this be material or spiritual, nor to what distance it is impelled; but it is impelled and directed by my will, for if I cease to will, the influence instantly ceases.”
I remember Priestly opined thatphlogistonin our bodiesproducedelectricity, which was destined for our own purposes merely. But as thesilurusand thetorpedopossess the power ofimparting theirs, although at the expense of their animal power, I presume to think that concentrated mindmayimpart our own nervous influence to others.
Ev.I admire the acuteness of your question, Astrophel; but you are now come down from your clouds; you are descending unawares tophysiology. There are, doubtless, many peculiar states of the nervous system at present inexplicable. I grant it ispossiblethat the influence of the nervous energy may become so eccentric as to illustrate the phenomena of magnetism, if, as some believe, this influence depends on a subtle fluid analogous to light, heat, and electricity; the nerve conveying this fluid as the wire conducts the electric.
Thus an influence, which is apparentlyphysical, may be, in reality,mental, for there is usuallyconsciousnessof the contact. M. Bertrand believed that the mind alone of the patient was acted on, and this is strengthened by the experiments of the Abbé Faria, who produced many of these phenomena by merely exclaiming to his sensitive visitors, “Dormez.”
Astr.Well, you are drawing the influences of mind and body very closely together, Evelyn. If animal magnetism be not the universal influence of sensitive beings, what ispersonal sympathy?
Ev.It is not that mysterious freemasonry of the senses which may impart a superhuman knowledge, or confer a power of personal recognition. Yet we are required to believe such stories.
Astr.And are there not many well attested? There was a Monsieur de la Tour Landrie, a nobleman of France, who so powerfully influenced a young shoemaker by whom he was measured, that the youth fell into a senseless syncope, and profuse hæmorrhage succeeded it. This influence was repeated, and excited so deep an interest in the mind of the noble, that he instituted an inquiry regarding his birth and fortunes. And the result was, that Monsieur de la Tour discovered in the humble mechanic the son of his sister, the Baronne de Vesines.
The thrill of feeling with which the lover touches the lip of his mistress, the intense delight with which the mother presses her infant to her bosom, are illustrations of that power to which I allude. It is the magnetic touch of beauty which sends the fires of passion not only through the bounding heart of youth, but even through the icy veins of the stoic. “He that would preserve the liberty of his soul,” said Socrates, “must abstain from kissinghandsomepeople.” “What, then,” said Charmides, “must I be afraid of coming near a handsome woman? Nevertheless, I remember very well, and I believe you do so too, Socrates, that being one day in company with Critobulus’s beautiful sister, who resembles him so much, as we were searching together for a passage in some author, you held your head close to that beautiful virgin, and I thought you seemed to take pleasure in touching her naked shoulder with yours.” “Good God!” replied Socrates, “I will tell you truly how I was punished for it for five days after. I thought I felt in my shoulder a certain tickling pain as if I had been bit by gnats, or pricked with nettles; and I must confess, too, that during all that time I felt a certain hitherto unknown pain at my heart.”
Ev.So that “the crime,” like that of Sir Peter Teazle, “carried its punishment along with it.” But you must see that the mind of Socrates firstappreciatedbeauty, ere this influence was imparted to him.Imaginationis not certainly idle here, yet I grant, that if the charm ofsubstantialbeauty or endearment be wanting, poesy will ever be but a cold and joyless sentiment.
Astr.Then there is another mysterious sympathy, the fascination of the evil eye, orfascino. There were, both in Africa and in Illyria, writes Aulius Gellius, certain families believed to possess the power of destroying trees, flowers, and children, and this by merely praising them; and Plutarch and Pindar refer to the credence of the Greeks on this point, who were wont to invoke the Fate Nemesis against this fascination of an evil eye.
I think, too, traces of this credence may be found in Ovid, and Horace, and Pliny.
Ev.Yes, and in modern Italy the professors of the art are yet termedjettatori, oreye-throwers. But Valletta, an Italian author, conscious of the truth, boldly disclaims for his countrymen the notion ofdemoniac influence, referring it tophysical impression, somewhat resembling the fascination of the eye of the rattlesnake, that drops, as we are told, the bird from the branch into its mouth. In that exquisite sympathy between mind and body (the sequence of an influence on sensibility, or on the senses) consists the secret of all this.
You remember the effects of intense impression on the mind in the excitement of catalepsy, and indeed in causing instantaneous death: this is intense influence on thesensibility. The effects of deep impression on the sight or touch, by the passes of magnetism, are magnetic ecstacies: this is intense influence on thesenses. So that all your mysteries are the result of this influence passing through the brain to the body; and the vaunted miracles of Mesmer, and Bertrand, and Dupotet, are, as I have said, impositions, chiefly as regards thenatureof theirinfluence. And, like these, the doctrines of Fluddthe Seeker, of the Abbé Nollet, of Lavater, of Nicetas the Jesuit, and the quaint ideas of many other visionaries, which you may read in their writings, are really explicable by the laws of physiology.
When the magnetiser asserts that a patient should possessa disposition to be acted on, he unwarily divulges his own secret; for this is nothing more than blind faith in a promise. And this credulity is most characteristic of that disordered condition of a nerve, acute sensibility, in which the slightest causes may effect a seeming wonder. Nay, even disease anddeath wereso induced during the manipulations of Hensler and Emmelin.
This also is the secret of that influence imparted by the touch of a seventh son; or of the hand of a criminal hanging on the gallows; or the revolting precept of Pliny, that an epileptic should drink the blood of a dying gladiator, as it gushes from his wound; or thestrokingof Valentine Greatrex; thesympathetic powderof Sir Kenelm Digby; thetractorsof Perkins; of chiromancy, rhabdomancy, and of other curiosities recorded in tracts and journals.
In my professional life, I have seen the same influence, though infinitely less in degree, imparted by an implicit confidence in the blessings of our science. Even Bertrand honestly confesses its power.
A lady was thrown into deep sleep by the touch of a magnet, sent by him in an handkerchief from the distance of three hundred miles. But thesame effectwas produced by the contact ofunmagnetizedcambric; and Bertrand allows, that where an ignorance of his intention existed,even the magnetized talisman was powerlessover his patient.
I could tell you tales of bits of wood effecting all the wonders of the metallic tractors of Perkins; and cubes of lead, and those of nickel, fraught, as a learned doctor had declared, with magnetic virtues; but I spare you.
From this superstitious faith spring also the miracles of that pious saint, who had assumed the staff of Saint Francis Xavier, the Prince Hohenlohe. One of these was the cure of Miss O’Connor, attested by Dr. Baddeley, of Chelmsford, who had tried in vain to relieve the lady ofacute neuralgia. She was directed to prostrate herself at the altar in Chelmsford at the moment when the sainted prince would kneel at his shrine in the cathedral of Bamberg. At the appointed time, during the solemn celebration of high mass, as she exclaimed, “Thy will be done, O Lord,” the agonizing limb was painless.
I do not doubt the possibility of such an incident. And here is the unfolding of another secret of these German magnetizers, who were believed toshoot attheir patients with the unerring aim of a rifle, even though many miles might intervene. Nadler, as we are told in the “Asclepeion,” was so good a shot, that he brought a woman to the ground at the moment he fixed his magnetic aura at her, aiming between the eyes and the bosom, even at the distance of eighteen miles.
I am aware that this, my philosophy, would not pass current at the Vatican, for “the congregation of the holy office, having once applied to the pope, to know if animal magnetism were lawful, and if penitents might be permitted to be operated on; his holiness replied, that the application of principles and means purely physical to things and effects which are supernatural, for the purpose of explaining themphysically, is nothing but an unlawful and heretical deception.”
But I may tell you that his holiness himself was once a great monopolist of saints’ cures, if we may believe a book, printed by Roberts, in London, in 1605, entitled, “A Declaration of egregious Popish Impostures, to withdraw the hearts of religious men, under pretence of casting out devils; practised by Father Edmunds, alias Weston, a Jesuite, and divers Romish priests his wicked associates.”
And, moreover, the interference of priests has often led to the interdiction of protestants, in their scientific ministering to disease the most severe, as typhus fever, or surgical operations, because they were heretics; while the profane Paracelsus says, “It matters not, by God or devil, so hebecured;” even without an indulgence, I presume, from Della Genga, or the leave of the sacred college.
Believe me, the influence of faith will illustrate all this mystery, and reduce even these impostures to a simple truth. Without it, only the grossest superstition would believe that sympathy would thus “take the wings of the morning,” and impart to a mind that was thinking at our antipodes a consciousness of our own sentiments; for this would be a revival of that blind credulity, which in the darker ages was reposed in the superhuman agency of magic and of witchcraft.