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 very _magnet_,
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 the _operator_. 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 the
_mind of the patient_ should have a corresponding willingness _to be_
magnetized.
EV. And this congenial platonism is sometimes so intense, that offers of
_magnetic marriage_ are made by the ecstatic ladies to their
magnetizers, even though it may not be _leap-year_, on the plea that the
loneliness of magnetic widowhood distressed them, and that the
possession of a _sleeping_ partner was better than _sleeping_ alone.
Under this interesting disposition for magnetic union, the eyes of the
maiden being fixed on the magnetizer intensely, _his_ hands 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 an _aura_ or
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 a _blue fluid streaming from his fingers_ when he
magnetized them.
The secret of this is closely analogous to the effect of brooding over
sorrow: the mind of the patient is _concentrated_ on the spot to which
the passes are directed; and, as we know that _disease_ can be excited
thus by imagination (especially in the hypochondriac), so it is a truth
that this concentration may _remove_ disease and pain, especially by the
superaddition of faith.
ASTR. But the magnetizer, as they said, was not always _in a state_ to
operate, and required a certain _training_. So it was observed that
Casper Hauser’s _cat_ did not follow him after he had eaten meat; his
magnetic and somnambulant qualities were destroyed by animal food,
although they were so abundant in his _wilder_ state,—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 the _presence_ of 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 slight
_vertigo_,—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 become _extremely rapid_, the perception is
confused, and the mind, left as it were to itself, cannot follow the
impressions _so as to associate them_, and thus the magnetic ecstacy
ensues.
ASTR. But Monsieur de Paysegur, who first excited _magnetic
somnambulism_, magnetized trees and ropes, by which he converted those
who clung to them into sleep-walkers. Dr. Elliotson, also, mesmerized a
_sovereign_, by _merely looking on it_; and a girl, who intuitively
_selected_ it from a heap of others, was instantly struck with _coma_.
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 this _traction_, the phenomena of _excited_
somnambulism are similar precisely to those _spontaneously_ occurring.
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 of _ecstacy_ is
_a blank_. And, as in the cases of intense alarm, as you remember, the
mesmeric ecstacy will cause a sensitive girl to _forget the present_,
while the scenes of youth and infancy pass vividly before her memory.
Now the effects of the passes of magnetism are referred to _six_
degrees,—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 of _hysteria_, of
which the analogy is perfect. One little jade created much amusement, by
inserting supernumerary syllables, thus—oppor_way_tuni_whats_ty.
The insensibility of the nostril to the most powerful _ammonia_ is 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 directed _to any_.
So that I do not wonder when thoughtless proselytes believe these
effects to be _miraculous_, 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 not _safe_. Pain is given us as a
warning against extreme injury; that by our complaint or suffering, the
surgeon’s mind may be _on 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 was _trephined_, 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 been _painlessly sensible_.
ASTR. And in this state of _ecstasis_, is there not strange havoc played
with the senses, by their seeming displacement or transference?
The philosophers will tell us that the _ganglia_ in the abdomen become
as it were _little 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 very _material_; 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 the _metaphysics of a divine_ with reservation, his
_facts_ may not be doubted. For there are _other_ powerful 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 hear _if 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 the
_epigastric 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 asked _why 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 the _extent_ of 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 their _outline_, but the artists _have not
spared their colours_. They will remind _us_, 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 which _one_ sense is endowed on the
failure of _another_. The delicacy of touch in the blind is often
_extreme_; 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, the
_whole faculty of perception_ was 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 the _moral sentiments_ and 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 of _innate sentiment_; but
the very _facility_ is 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 of _every sense_, but _sensation_
remained 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 the _clothes of the back_.
A Bolognese, on witnessing a woman in acute _hysteria_, became
occasionally convulsed, and impenetrably deaf; if, however, the
slightest whisper was breathed to the _pit 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 the _fifth pair_ of 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
singular _exaltation 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 with
_peculiar care_. And this is the deduction: that the sense of vision
seemed to be _transferred 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 the _silent_
motion of the _lip_.
From these very curious illustrations we may confess that these lines in
Hudibras are no fiction:
——“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 of _colour_ by _sound_; 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 a _visible 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 of _mineral_ traction:
“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 he
_there_ felt 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 his _idea_ for a truth. Yet I confess Parkinson also relates the
case of a woman who fainted on the touch of a _stethoscope_, exclaiming
that it was “_drawing_ her 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, and _replied 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, _unseen_ by her. But it
was discovered that the physician _glided it beneath the bedclothes_. Or
that told by Bertrand, of another _ecstatic 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 was
_not_ to 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 certain _Sir 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 often _lifted up from the earth_, although she
endeavoured to resist the motion. And Bishop Yessen relates in
particular, that, when she was going to receive the _Eucharist_ at
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.”
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 their _eidōlon_; and
also that they were, at that exact time, speaking or thinking of _them_.
This was Shelley’s conviction, that minds _sympathetically_ imparted
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 resemble _new_ faculties. 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 who _saw_ this
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—