EV. Enough of Plato, dear Astrophel; or believe, with me, that _his_
philosophy on this point was merely _figurative of the similarity of
mind, or genius, or feature, between the dead and the living_;—as it
was said of old, that the soul of Raphael had transmigrated to the body
of Francesco Mazzola (Parmegiano), _because_ his style and personal
beauty so closely resembled those of the all but divine master of his
art.
And pray what was the gist of that special astronomer, who affirmed that
he “saw something written in the moon?”—A wild romance only? No,
forsooth. Pythagoras may classically vociferate—
“——errat, et illinc,
Huc venit, hinc illuc, et quoslibet occupat artus
Spiritus: eque feris humana in corpora transit,
Inque feras noster.”
But read further, and you will find the high moral to be a severe
injunction against flesh-eating:
“Then let not piety be put to flight,
To please the taste of glutton appetite;
But suffer innate souls secure to dwell,
Lest from their seats your parents you expel:
With rabid hunger feed upon your kind,
Or from a beast dislodge a brother’s mind.”
Think you this injunction will be obeyed, in the face of the “Almanac
des Gourmands?”
IDA. Evelyn is severe. May I tell him that, among the records of the
East, he will find incidents blended with this idea which may almost
consecrate the creed of a Pagan. As the honey is hung close to the
poisoned sting of the bee, there may be a bright spot to illuminate the
gloomy annals of superstition. The very belief in _transmigration_ may
impart an atom of mercy, even to an infidel; and where superstition,
shorn of the light of Christianity, _must_ prevail, it were better sure
to foster that notion which may, even in one little sentiment, half
humanize the heart.
Listen to this contrast, between some orient sects, along the eastern
shores of Hindostan. The daughters of Guzzerat fold their infants to
their bosoms drugged with opium; and when the babe is thus poisoned, the
Hindu girl will answer with a languid and seeming innocent smile, “It is
not difficult to blast a flower-bud.”
Then the Kurrada Brahmins (as we read in the “Rudhiradhyaya”), believing
themselves the agents of Vishara Boot, the spirit of poison, sacrifice
the pundits to their vampire goddess, Maha-Lackshmi.
Equally blind, yet more happy in the _nature_ of their superstition, are
the Shravuch Banians, or the proselytes of Jena. The Yati, or
officiating priest of _this_ order, in purifying the temples, sweeps the
floor with the Raju-hurrun, a broom of cotton-threads, lest hapless one
little insect may be destroyed. And this we may believe, from the creed
of transmigration being influential among these people. Sir Paul Rycaut
also, in his oriental history, informs us of parallel incidents among
the devout Mahomedans, who, believing that in the body of a brute may
reside the soul of a departed relative, ransom, with their gold, many a
bird that would otherwise flutter away its captivity in a cage.
CAST. I will not flout your praises, Ida; but, in our own island, this
illusion has rather led _to_ captivity. I remember the story of a lady,
living in Worcestershire, who, under the innocent delusion that her
daughters were changed into singing-birds, hung her pew in the cathedral
with cages of goldfinches and linnets. And Lord Orford, in his
“Reminiscences,” thus records the monomania of the Duchess of Kendal:
“In a tender mood, he (King George) promised the duchess that if she
survived him, and it were possible for the departed to return to this
world, he would make her a visit. The duchess, on his death, so _much
expected_ the accomplishment of that engagement, that a large raven, or
some black fowl, flying into one of the windows of her villa, at
Isleworth, she was persuaded it was the soul of her departed monarch so
accoutred, and received and treated it with all the respect and
tenderness of duty, till the royal bird, or she, took the last flight.”
ASTR. You spoke of the absolute _senselessness_ of trance; and yet there
were some hints of the awakening power of fear. Is this consistent?
EV. I expected your objection. In the cases of perfect catalepsy, the
brain is not conscious of its mind, or if the mind be active, there is
no _assurance of its activity_. But, as its faculties are awakened, it
usually begins to work exactly where it left off;—one of the most
imposing proofs, both of a separate existence during life, and of our
bodies’ _unconsciousness_ of this transient disunion.
ASTR. I may own, Evelyn, that your illustrations of our questions, in
despite of some _straining_ at explanation, carry, on _many_ points,
conviction to my own mind, but not on _all_. There is another question
equally interesting with the former. _How is vitality preserved during
this protracted abstinence?_
EV. Remember, dear Astrophel, my confession, that there _are_
inexplicable mysteries. But, to the point of your last question. We are
aware of the long period during which the body may fast after shipwreck,
or beneath a fallen cliff, or even on the incarceration of animals for
the purpose of experiment. Thus Captain Bligh, and seventeen persons,
sailed four thousand miles in an open boat, with a small bird
occasionally for the food of all. The Juno’s crew, wrecked off Aracan,
existed twenty-three days without food; and the wreck of the Medusa is
fresh in our memories. Here the body _feeds on its own fat, shrinking_
until that supply is lost, and then it dies.
I might relate to you the very impressive stories of Anne Moore, of
Tutbury; of Janet M’Cleod, told by Dr. Mackenzie; and many strange facts
related by Dr. Willan, Sir William Hamilton, and others.
I might refer you to legends, of which I can scarcely press for your
belief. As the strange but authenticated story of Anna Garbero, of
Racconiggi, forty miles from Turin, who existed without nutrition for
two years, becoming like a shrivelled mummy. And that of Eve Hergen, who
existed thirteen years upon the odour of flowers! But even with that
incredulous frown of Astrophel’s, and that faint smile of thine, fair
Castaly, let me at once to my explanations.
In _natural_ sleep the functions of the body are impeded. One of these
is digestion. As there is little waste of the system there is little
necessity for repletion, and life can be supported by a _very slight_
action of the heart, a minute current of blood; like the slender
vitality of infants, who, even in a state of health, seem frequently
scarcely to breathe. The circulation is materially influenced in sleep,
the pulse being slower and more feeble than during waking; the
relaxation of the _cutaneous_ vessels inducing frequent perspiration,
especially in debilitated systems, and in the last stages of _adynamic_
fevers.
The body of the cataleptic patient descends to the condition of less
complex animal life, in which there appears a much greater simplicity of
organization; and we well know, as we descend in the scale of creation,
towards the cold-blooded single-hearted animals, and especially if we
reach the _zoophyte_, in how exact a proportion to this simplicity of
structure is the tenacity of life increased. “Fish,” says Sir John
Franklin, “were taken out of the nets frozen, and became a solid mass of
ice, being by a blow of a hatchet easily split open; they, however,
recovered their vitality on being thawed.”
A course of _systematic_ abstinence will enable us, if we wished it, to
endure extreme privations, which a high feeder would soon sink under;
and this is probably the discipline adopted by the fakirs of India, who
fast so long under the influence of superstitious devotion.
Vaillant’s spider lived without food nearly one year; John Hunter’s toad
fourteen months; land tortoises eighteen months; a beetle three years;
and two serpents, according to Shaw, five years; an antelope has
survived twenty days without food; some dogs forty days; an eagle 23
days.
Now all animals fall asleep at certain temperatures, which they cannot
resist, but the common effect of _extreme_ cold is death. Dr. Solander
was yielding to the influence of intense cold in _Terra del Fuego_, but
was saved by the firmness of Sir Joseph Banks. Richmond, the black, lay
down on the snow to sleep, and died.
There is a close analogy between this state and the _hybernation_ of
animals, although the causes are not similar. _Animalculæ_ often become
torpid for lack of moisture, and, even after the lapse of twenty-seven
years, have been revivified by water. The small _furcularia anastobea_
will repeatedly become animated and lively by a single drop of water,
its previous condition being completely quiescent. The snail, the
alligator, indeed most of the _ophidian_ and _saurian_ reptiles, assume
the torpid state in a period of extreme drought; and Humboldt states
this also of the _centenes solosus_, a Madagascar hedgehog.
This hybernation of animals, as of the marmot and the dormouse,
resembles the deep sleep arising from cold of a _certain_ degree; for if
this be _intense_, they will sometimes be momentarily roused from it.
They may be constantly kept awake by heat and powerful light.
Thus hybernation and the _sleep of plants_ take place from the
withdrawal of _stimuli_; _heat_ being the _animal_—_light_ the
_vegetable_ stimulus.
CAST. The sleep of plants? a fiction surely!
EV. Nay, a truth. The _irritability_ of plants is excited by their
peculiar stimulus; when this is withdrawn, they fall to sleep. Most of
the _discous_ flowers turn to the sun in his course, as the sun-flower,
the _helianthus_, and the _croton_. The acacia leaves at noon point
towards the zenith. The tamarind, the _oxalis_, and the trefoil, fold
their leaves on the exclusion of light. The evening primrose shuts its
blossom at sunset, while that minion of the moon, the night-blowing
_cactus, then only_ begins to bloom; perhaps like the owl, and
goat-sucker, and bat, who find _the sun too powerful an excitant_.
Vegetables may be put asleep by the withdrawal of proper stimulus,—the
exclusion of this light. But this is a law of nature, and ordained for a
special purpose. It is chiefly _during fructification_; the leaves at
night folding round the flowers and seed-vessels, to protect them from
the chilling blight of the night cold, which would congeal their juices.
In this condition of the plant its irritability ceases, but the
circulation of its sap-vessels is not suspended. Its vitality continues,
but if the exercise of its _peculiar phenomena_ be long discontinued, it
will fade and die. Now the _vis insita_ of the muscle resembles
vegetable irritability; and, as this is lost and sensibility suspended,
the body is indeed in a condition of vegetable sleep; for vegetables
have not of course sensation, although the Darwinian romance would endow
the _dionæa_, the _hedysarum_, and the _mimosa_ with sensibility, and
all the blossom-beauties of Flora with the fervour of sexual passion.
Trance then is caused by _the removal of a stimulus_. As somnambulism
may result from a _redundancy_ of nervous energy, trance and catalepsy,
as well as _incubus_, seem to arise from an _inefficient_ secretion or
supply of this quality, in whatever it may consist, or an impediment to
its transmission from the _sensorium_ or brain to the expansion of a
nerve. Thus the motive power of a muscle is in these diseases
_suspended_, which in _paralysis_ may be _permanently_ impaired or
destroyed.
To describe this state, I must abound in negatives. The brain is not
conscious: there is no sensation. Even the marrow by its _reflex
faculty_ does not excite a muscle: there is no action: the mind has no
cognizance: the body is for a time paralyzed. What is there then which
may be termed life? merely involuntary circulation and gentle breathing.
In this condition also there is a congestion of dark blood about the
brain and in the right side of the heart; the circulation being reduced
to an extreme _lentor_ or sluggishness, while in real _asphyxia_ there
is a total stagnation.
I have done with minute pathology: as there are however two diseases,
_epilepsy_ and _insanity_, which may be the _result_ of catalepsy, I may
offer a precept on the point. The propensity to trance cannot suddenly
be averted, but the state of the body and mind are important studies for
our treatment. Melancholy and apathy are the features of the mind of the
cataleptic, and languor and faulty secretions the symptoms of the body.
Cheerful society, sympathy with suffering, but firmness in resisting
sloth and erroneous fancies, and the direction of the patient’s mind to
moral recreations, comprehend the sum of our _mental_ treatment.
It is equally essential to ensure regulation of the secretions,
especially those of the liver. We should employ _cupping_ from the nape
of the neck, if there be pain, or heat, or fulness of the head, and
constant but gentle exercise. The head should not be low during sleep,
nor should food be taken within two hours of retiring to rest. I believe
obedience to these slight precepts will frequently mitigate, perhaps in
the end avert the attacks, especially if they have arisen from diseased
conditions of the body, or gloomy or depraved studies, and deep
contemplation.
The most simple or unconnected form of catalepsy, is that most likely to
end in madness. Perhaps, too, in deep and gloomy subjects, which begin
by absorbing mind and sense, the end is thus; so that cataleptic
abstraction is but the reverie or foretaste of mania.
As to suspected cases of still existing vitality: where there is
_plethora_, I would employ bleeding, or cupping, _insufflation_,
_Galvanism_; and I should not in extreme cases fear _acupuncture of the
heart_, and galvanic shocks then transmitted through the needle.
Beclard, in “La Pitié,” in Paris, allows the needle to remain three or
four minutes and then withdraws it, and I have learned from my oriental
friends, that the Chinese practice this mode extensively.