It is very striking to hear the modern lectures on physiological
subjects delivered in every capital in Europe, and to compare the calm
and easy manner in which the most astonishing and the most infernal
phenomena are described and discussed, with the horror and dismay that
the same facts would have created if disclosed by divines in churches
three centuries ago. Dr. Maudsley, in his recent work on "The
Physiology and Pathology of Mind," and other physicians occupied in his
line of practice, lead us through the lunatic asylums of every country,
pointing out as ordinary or extraordinary incidents the same
"afflictions" of children and other morbid persons which we read of, one
after another, in the Salem story. It is a matter of course with such
practitioners and authors to anticipate such phenomena when they have
detected the morbid conditions which generate them. Mr. Upham himself
is evidently very far indeed from understanding or suspecting how much
light is thrown on the darkest part of his subject by physiological
researches carried on to the hour when he laid down his pen. His view
is confined almost exclusively to the theory of fraud and falsehood, as
affording the true key. It is not probable that anybody disputes or
doubts the existence of guilt and folly in many or all of the agents
concerned. There was an antecedent probability of both in regard to
Mr. Parris' slaves, and to such of the young children as they most
influenced; and that kind of infection is apt to spread. Moreover,
experience shows us that the special excitement of that nervous
condition induces moral vagaries at least as powerfully as mental
delusions. In the state of temper existing among the inhabitants of the
Village when the mischievous club of girls was formed at the pastor's
house, it was inevitable that, if magic was entered upon at all, it
would be malignant magic. Whatever Mr. Upham has said in illustration of
that aspect of the case his readers will readily agree to. But there is
a good deal more, even of the imperfect notices that remain after the
abstraction and destruction of the records in the shame and anguish that
ensued, which we, in our new dawn of science, can perceive to be an
affair of the bodily organization. We are, therefore, obliged to him for
rescuing this tremendous chapter of history from oblivion, and for the
security in which he has placed the materials of evidence. In another
generation the science of the human frame may have advanced far enough
to elucidate some of the Salem mysteries, together with some obscure
facts in all countries, which can not be denied, while as yet they can
not be understood. When that time comes, a fearful weight of imputation
will be removed from the name and fame of many agents and sufferers who
have been the subjects of strange maladies and strange faculties, in all
times and countries. As we are now taught the new discoveries of the
several nerve-centers, and the powers which are appropriated to them;
and when we observe what a severance may exist between the so-called
organ of any sense or faculty and the operation of the sense or faculty;
and how infallibly ideas and emotion may be generated, and even beliefs
created in minds sane and insane, by certain manipulations of the nerves
and brain, we see how innocently this phenomenon may be presented in
natural somnambulism. Sleepwalkers have been known in many countries,
and treated of in medical records by their physicians, who could not
only walk, and perform all ordinary acts in the dark as well as in the
light, but who went on writing or reading without interruption though an
opaque substance--a book or a slate--was interposed, and would dot the
_i's_ and cross the _t's_ with unconscious correctness without any use
of their eyes. There is a wide field of inquiry open in this direction,
now that the study of the nervous system has been begun, however minute
is the advance as yet.