One of the best known of these healers was Valentine Greaterick
(or Greatrakes), who was born in Ireland in 1628, and who came to
England (about 1665) by invitation of Lord Conway, upon a mission
thus quaintly expressed: to cure "that excellent lady of his, the
pains of whose _head_, as great and as unparalleled as they are,
have not made her more known and admired at home and abroad, than
have her other endowments." Lady Conway seems to have been intensely
devoted to mystical pursuits, and assembled at Ragley Castle such men
as Greatrakes, Rev. Joseph Glanvill, F.R.S., author of _Sadducismus
Triumphatus_, Dr. Henry Moore, the Cambridge Platonist, and others
of whom Mr. Lang speaks as "an unofficial but active society for
psychical research, as that study existed in the seventeenth
century." They told tales of "levitation" and witchcraft and the
movements of bodies by unseen agencies, at all of which one or the
other had been an eyewitness; and Greatrakes seems to have taken as
prominent a part in these as in the healing proceedings. Greatrakes
was called to his career by a special indication of providence--"he
heard a voyce within him (audible to none else) encouraging to the
tryals; and afterwards to correct his unbelief the voice aforesaid
added this signe, _that his right hand should be dead, and that the
stroaking of his left arme should recover it again_, the events
whereof were fully verified by him three nights together by a
successive infirmity and cure of his arme." While he failed to cure
Lady Conway's headaches "he wrought a few miracles of healing among
rural invalids," and seems to have been particularly successful
with nervous complaints. "I saw him," writes a contemporary, "put
his Finger into the Eares of a man who was very thick of Hearing,
and immediately he heard me when I asked him very softly severall
questions."
The status of the medical science of the day is well reflected in
the comment of Henry Stubbe, physician at Stratford upon Avon, from
whose contemporary account our knowledge of Greatrakes is obtained.
For explanation of the cures, he suggests "that God had bestowed upon
Mr. _Greatarick_ a peculiar Temperament, or composed his Body of
some particular Ferments, the _Effluvia_ whereof, being introduced
sometimes by a light, sometimes by a violent Friction, should restore
the Temperament of the Debilitated parts, reinvigorate the Blood,
and dissipate all heterogeneous Ferments out of the Bodies of the
Diseased, by the Eyes, Nose, Mouth, Hand and Feet." However crude may
seem this cure by the "Precipitation of the Morbifique Ferment," the
theoretical position of Mesmer is not less hypothetical, dogmatic,
and gratuitous. Indeed, to Greatrakes's and his biographer's credit,
it should be noted that they recognized the distinction between
functional and organic complaints; that Mr. Greatarick "meddles"
only with such diseases as "have their Essence either in the masse
of Blood and Spirit (or nervous liquors) or in the particular
Temperament of the parts of the Body," that he cures no disease
"wherein there is a decay of Nature." "This is a confessed truth by
him, he refusing still to touch the Eyes of such as their sight has
quite perished." None the less his cures were regarded as miraculous,
and Dr. Stubbe tells us that "as there is but one Mr. Greatarick,
so there is but one Sunne"; and to dispel incredulity in regard to
these wonders, he adds: "We are all Indians and Salvages in what we
have not accustomed our senses: What was conjuring in the last age is
Mathematiques in this. And if we do but consider the sole effects of
Gun-powder, as it is severally to be used, and revolve with ourselves
what we would have thought if we had been told those Prodigies, and
not seen them; will we think it strange if men think the actions
of extraordinary Ferments impossible?" But to leave the "Ferments"
for the recorded account of what was done, we can only note that
Greatrakes's methods consisted mainly of strokings and passes and
in driving the pains from one point to another until they went out
at the fingers or toes. There is nothing recorded that definitely
suggests the production of the hypnotic state; but direct suggestion,
reinforced by manipulations, obviously had much to do with the cures.
They clearly approximate more closely to the faith-cure methods of
to-day than to the phenomena of hypnotism.
The latter half of the eighteenth century seems to have offered
social, intellectual, and political conditions peculiarly favorable
to the success of fantastic schemers, of propagandists of
strange philosophies, and advertisers of supernatural procedures
for short-circuiting the road to health, wealth, knowledge, and
immortality. In this period there appeared Swedenborg's inspired
revelations and philosophic cult; Cagliostro's extravagant claims of
personal power and bold-faced impostures; Schrepfer, who combined
with Masonic mysteries a striking anticipation of the materializing
séances of modern spiritualism; Gassner, the priest, exorcist,
and healer; and finally Mesmer, the founder of animal magnetism,
and through it the parent of an endless progeny of unproved and
unprovable systems, and of equally irrational practices.
It is worth while to consider for a moment the career of Gassner, if
for no other reason than that Mesmer witnessed Gassner's procedures,
and that their methods have some points in common,--in particular the
calling out of acute symptoms, or "a crisis," as a means of cure.
Johann Joseph Gassner, a Suabian priest, appeared as a curer of
disease about 1773; he regarded most maladies as of Satanic origin,
and attempted cures by driving out the demon of disease by appeal to
divine agency. After inquiry regarding the nature of the complaint
and its symptoms, he would urge the patient to have faith, and
perhaps would offer a prayer for his recovery; he would then call out
the various symptoms of pain, stiffness, weakness, and the like, and
at the word "_Cesset_" these symptoms would disappear. "_Cesset ista
Debilitas_,"--the patient becomes as strong and as active as though
he had never been sick. "_Modo adsit Febris tantum in Manu et Brachio
dextro_,"--the right hand becomes cold and numb, and trembles,
the pulse in this arm is rapid, feverish, and strong, but slow and
normal in the left. "_Cesset in ista Manu et adeat sinistram_,"--the
left arm now becomes as the right had been, and the pulse of the
right is now normal; and so the treatment proceeds, accompanied by
the invocation, "_Præcipio hoc in nomine Jesu_." This process of
alternation of pain and its remission is continued, until at length
the patient is dismissed as cured. The status of Gassner's cures,
except for their more pronounced religious character, is much the
same as those of Greatrakes; both exhibit the effects of suggestion,
but neither recognized the process of suggestion, nor gives evidence
of having produced an abnormal condition. This, however, is by no
means excluded; and Greatrakes's account of the insensibility of his
own arm, as well as the similar state induced in his patients by
Gassner, indicate a high degree of suggestibility.