The _living_ blood has not yet been analyzed. It contains a vitalizing
element which chemistry has not yet been adequate to detect. There is yet
as much to be discovered in the science of life as has already been
revealed to man. It will yet be found out.
How is the power, or force, conveyed from the operator to the person
operated upon? Through what medium does it act?
Let us begin with the brain. Let us take a ball of cotton for our
illustration. We draw out a piece from it, and spin it out to our fancy.
It is a thread, but _cotton_ still, twisted to a fine string. The brain is
located at the top of man. By means of fine threads, called nerves, the
brain is distributed over the entire body, so completely that you cannot
stick a pin in the flesh without touching a nerve, wounding the brain.
Suspend the entire action of the brain, as by ether, chloroform, or
nitrous oxygen gas, and sticking the pin is not felt. Partially suspend
the action, as by a small quantity of the nitrous oxygen gas, and the
force of the brain (or active force) is centred upon the lower brain, and
the man under its influence acts out his animal nature in spite of reason.
A man, I hold, who magnetizes or mesmerizes another, uses only the force
of the lower brain. Like begets like. He cannot affect a person of large
intellectual organs; only one with the animal organs active.
You cannot _see_ the gas, yet it affects the person. You cannot see the
subtile power conveyed from one man to a weaker. He conveys it by
touch--nerve to nerve. I believe science will yet discover just what this
subtile agent is--both in the blood and nerves; for it is in both, or why
does the suspension of it in one destroy the other? Destroy the nerve, and
the corresponding blood-vessel is inactive. Destroy the blood-vessel, and
the corresponding nerve suffers.
It is the power that the mother exercises to hush her sobbing babe to
slumber. As the child gathers strength of mind, she loses that control. A
person may be used as a mesmeric subject until he becomes a mere idiotic
machine. Educate a clairvoyant doctor, and what becomes of his clairvoyant
power? It is lost with the increase of intellectual power. Now, is this a
"divine" quality, that only ignorance can make use of? Is it really
"hidden from the wise and prudent, and given to babes?" All sciences were
practised by the uneducated first, before being reduced to a _science_. I
think this will be yet reduced to a useful science. As it now stands, it
is useless. If it is a spirit power, the spirits are mighty silent as to
the fact.
We come into this world by natural causes. We live, grow, exist, and we
die by natural causes. We brought no knowledge with us; we carry none out.
All the qualities yet developed in man are natural, and adapted to this
life. Millions upon millions have so lived and so died, and a spirit
power in _this_ world is no nearer to being established than it was when
Adam was a little boy. All that heretofore has been attributed to spirit,
or supernatural causes, has been proven to be but natural. I claim that
magnetism and the undiscovered sciences are natural, and have no
connection with the next world, to which we tend. The human eye, to some
extent, is magnetic. A blind man cannot thrill an audience; hardly can an
orator with glasses over his eyes. Dr. Chapin approaches the nearest to
it. Dr. Beecher's great magnetic power is in his eyes, and is also let off
at the ends of his fingers. But to _thoroughly_ magnetize a person, he
must be _touched_.