some men to magnetize animals has been revived, although it was no doubt
fully known to the ancients, and may in part explain the taming of
venomous serpents in the East. The most remarkable case is probably that
of Mr. Jan, director of the Zoological Gardens at Milan, who "charms"
serpents and lizards. In the year 1858 he was requested by a learned
visitor, Professor Eversmann, to allow him to witness some experiments;
he at once seized a lizard (L. viridis) behind the head and looked at
it fixedly for a few moments; the animal lay quiet, then became rigid,
and remained in any position which he chose to make it assume. Upon
making a few passes with his forefinger it closed its eyes at his
command. Mr. Jan discovered his gift accidentally one day when a whole
bagful of lizards (L. ocellata) had escaped from him, and he forced them
by his will and his eye, to return to his keeping. (_Der Zoolog.
Garten._ Frankfort, 1861, p. 58.) A Frenchman, Treseau, exercised the
same power over birds, which he exhibited in 1860 in Paris. He
magnetized them with his hand and his breath, but as nine-tenths of the
poor creatures died before they became inured to such treatment, no
advantage could be derived from his talent. (Des Mousseaux, p. 310.) A
countryman of his, Jacques Pelissier, is reported by the same authority
to have been able to magnetize not only birds, which allowed themselves
to be taken from the trees, but even hares, so that they remained
sitting in their forms and were seized with the hand (p. 302).
SOMNAMBULISM.
It is well known that somnambulism, in the ordinary sense of the word,
designates the state of persons who suffer from an affection which
disturbs their sleep and causes them to perform strange or ordinary
actions, as it may happen, in a state in which they are apparently half
awake and half asleep. This disease is already mentioned in the most
ancient authors, and its symptoms are correctly reported in Aristotle.
(_De Gener. Anim._) He states that the sufferers rise in their sleep,
walk about and converse, that they distinguish objects as if they were
awake, ascend trees, pursue enemies, perform tasks, and then quietly
return to bed. The state of somnambulism seems to be intermediate
between ordinary dreaming and magnetic clairvoyance, and is probably the
effect of a serious disturbance in our physical life, which causes the
brain to act in an unusual and abnormal manner. It has always been
observed at night only, and most frequently at full moon, since the moon
seems to affect somnambulists not merely by her light, but in each of
the different phases in a peculiar manner. The immediate causes of
night-walking are often most trivial; as Muratori, for instance, tells
us of a priest who became a somnambulist whenever he neglected for more
than two months to have his hair cut! Richard (_Theorie des Songes_, p.
288) mentions an analogous case of an old woman whom he knew to be
subject to the same penalty.
While nightmares oppress us and make apparently all motion impossible,
somnambulism, on the contrary, produces a peculiar facility of
locomotion and an irresistible impulse to mount eminences, favored
either by an actual diminution of specific gravity, or by an increase of
power. This tendency lies again half-way between the sensation of
flying, which is quite common in dreams, and the actual elevation from
the ground and suspension in the air, which occur in extreme cases of
ecstasy. The senses remain during night-walking in a state of
semi-activity; the somnambulist may appear as if fast asleep, seeing and
hearing nothing, so that the loudest noises and even violent shaking do
not rouse him; or he may, like a dreamer, be partly under the influence
of outward impressions. One will rise at night, go to the stable, saddle
his horse and ride into the woods, while another mounts the window-ledge
and performs all the motions of a man on horseback. Many move with
unfailing certainty on perilous paths, and find their way in deepest
darkness; others make blunders and fall, as Professor J. Feller did, who
mistook an open window for a door. By what means they perceive the
nature of their surroundings, is still unexplained; it may be the action
of the ordinary senses, although these seem to be closed, or they may
possess those exceptional faculties which constitute the magic phenomena
connected with somnambulism. Thus Forbes (_Brit. and For. Med. Rev._,
1846) ascribes their power to an increased sensitiveness of the retina,
and mentions the case of Dr. Curry, who suffered from this symptom to
such a degree that he distinguished every object in a completely
darkened room with perfect ease. In somnambulists, however, the eyes are
generally closed or violently turned up; and in the rare cases in which
they are open, they evidently see nothing. It is, besides, well
established that people thus affected have continued to read, to play on
instruments, and even to write after they had fallen sound asleep, and
without ever opening their eyes. The sensitiveness of the retina could
here not avail much. A case is mentioned of a father who rose at night,
took his child from the cradle, and with wide open eyes carried it up
and down the room, seeing nothing, and in such a state of utter
unconsciousness that his wife, walking by his side, could safely draw
all his secrets from him without his becoming aware of the process or
remembering it the next morning. At the age of forty-five he ceased to
walk in his sleep, but, instead, had prophetic dreams which revealed to
him the occurrences of the following day and later future events.
(_Heer, Observ._) Gassendi (_Phys._, l. viii. ch. 8) mentions a young
man, living in Provence, who rose in his sleep, dressed, drew wine in
the cellar, wrote up the accounts, and in the darkest night never
touched objects that were in his way. If he returned quietly to his bed,
he slept well, and strangely enough, recalled everything he had done in
the night; but if he was suddenly aroused in the cellar or in the
street, he was seized with violent trembling and palpitations of the
heart. At times he saw but imperfectly; then he fancied he had risen
before daybreak, and lit a lamp. The _Encyclopedie Methodique_ reports
the case of a young priest who wrote his sermons at night, and with
closed eyes, and then read each page aloud, correcting and improving
what he had written. A sheet of paper held between his eyes and his
manuscript did not disturb him; nor did he become aware of it if the
latter was removed and blank paper was substituted; in this case he
wrote the corrections precisely where they would have been inserted in
the text. Macnish mentions ("On Sleep," p. 148) the curious case of an
innkeeper in Germany, a huge mass of flesh, who fell asleep at all times
and in all places, but who, when this happened while he was playing
cards, nevertheless continued to follow suit, as if he could see what
was led. In 1832, when he was barely 50 years old, he literally fell
asleep, paralysis killing him instantly during one of these attacks of
sleep. The same author mentions somnambulists who in their sleep walked
to the sea-shore and swam for some distance without being waked, and the
case of a Norwegian who during his paroxysms took a boat and rowed
himself about for some time. He was cured of his affection by a tub full
of water, which was so placed that he had to step into it when leaving
his bed. In Scotland a peasant discovered from below the nest of a
sea-mew, which hung at an inaccessible height upon a steep rock; some
weeks afterwards he rose in his sleep, and to the horror of his friends,
who watched him from below, climbed to the place, took the birds, and
safely returned to his cabin. In former ages somnambulists were reported
to have even committed murder in their sleep; a Parisian thus rose,
dressed himself, swam across the Seine, killed his enemy, and returned
the same way without ever awaking; and an Englishman also is reported to
have murdered a boy, in a state of unconsciousness, while laboring
under this affection. Modern science, however, knows nothing of such
extreme cases, and the plea has not yet been used by astute lawyers.
Simple somnambulism is not unfrequently connected with magnetic
somnambulism, and may occasionally be seen even in trances during
daytime. In such cases persons who walk in their sleep may be questioned
by bystanders, and in their answers prove themselves not unfrequently
able to foretell future events, or to state what is occurring at a
distance; or they perform tasks in their sleep which they would not be
able to accomplish when awake; they compose music, write poetry, and
read works in foreign languages, without possessing the requisite
knowledge and training. A poor basket-weaver in Germany once heard a
sermon which moved him deeply; several weeks later he rose at night, and
repeated the whole sermon from beginning to end; his wife tried in vain
to rouse him, and the next morning he knew nothing of what had happened.
Cases of scholars who, sorely puzzled by difficult problems, gave them
up before retiring, and then, in the night, rose in a state of
somnambulism, and solved them easily, are by no means uncommon.
IX.
MIRACULOUS CURES.
"Spiritus in nobis qui viget, illa facit."
--CORN. AGRIPPA, Ep. xiv.
The uniform and indispensable condition of all miraculous cures, whether
produced by prayer, imposition of hands, penitential castigation, or
magic power, is faith. Physician and patient alike must believe that
disease is the consequence of sin, and accept the literal meaning of the
Saviour's words, when he had cured the impotent man near the pool called
Bethesda, and said: "Behold, thou art made whole: _sin_ no more, lest a
worse thing come unto thee." (St. John v. 14.) Like their great teacher,
all the apostles and saints of the church have ever insisted upon
repentance in the heart before health in body could be accorded. It is
interesting to notice, moreover, that all Oriental sages, the Kabbalists
and later Theosophists, have, without exception, adopted the same view,
however widely they may have differed on other points. In one feature
only some disagreed: they ascribed to evil spirits what others
attributed to sin; but the difference is only nominal, for men, by sin,
enter into communion with evil spirits, and become subject to their
power. Hence the woman "which had a _spirit_ of infirmity eighteen
years" was said to have been "bound by Satan," and when she was healed
she was "loosed from the bond." (Luke xiii. 16.)
To this common faith must be added on the part of the physician an
energetic will, and in the patient an excited imagination. The history
of all ages teaches, beyond the possibility of doubt, that where these
elements are present results have been obtained which excite the marvel
of men by their astonishing promptness, and their apparent
impossibility. They seem generally to be the result of certain symbolic
but extremely simple acts, such as the imposition of hands--which may
possibly produce a concentration of power--the utterance of a blessing,
or merely a continued, fixed glance. The main point, however, is, of
course, the psychical energy which is here made available by a process
as yet unknown. Prayer is probably the simplest agency, since it
naturally encourages and elevates the innermost heart of man, and fills
him with that perfect hope and confidence which are necessary for his
recovery. This hope is, in the case of miraculous cures performed at the
shrines of saints, materially strengthened by the collective force of
all preceding cures, which tradition has brought to bear upon the mind,
while the senses are powerfully impressed, at the same time, by the
surroundings, and especially the votive offerings testifying to the
reality of former miracles. In the case of relics, where the Church sees
simply miracles, many men believe in a continuing magic power
perceptible only to very sensitive patients; thus the great theologian,
Tholuk, ascribes to the "handkerchiefs or aprons" which were brought
from the body of St. Paul, and drove away diseases and evil spirits
(Acts xix. 12), a special curative power with which they were
impregnated. (_Verm. Schriften_, I. p. 80.) At certain times, when the
mind of a whole people is excited, and hence peculiarly predisposed to
meet powerful impressions from specially gifted and highly privileged
persons, such miraculous cures are, of course, most numerous and most
striking. This was the case, for instance, in the first days of
Christianity, at the time of the Reformation, and during the years which
saw the Order of Jesuits established. There is little to be gained,
therefore, by confining the era of such phenomena to a certain
period--to the days of the apostles, when alone genuine miracles were
performed, as many divines believe, or to the first three centuries
after Christ, during which Tholuk and others still see magic
performances. Magnetic and miraculous cures differ not in their nature,
but only in their first cause, precisely as the trance of somnambulists
is identical with the trance of religious enthusiasts. The difference
lies only in the faith which performs the cure; if it is purely human,
the effect will be only partial, and in most cases ephemeral; if divine
faith and the highest power co-operate, as in genuine miracles, the
effect is instantaneous and permanent. Hence the contrast between the
man who at the Lord's bidding "took up his bed and walked" and the
countless cripples who have thrown aside their crutches at the graves of
saints, only to resume them a day or two afterward, when, with the
excitement, the newly acquired power also had disappeared. But hence,
also, the resemblance between many acts of the early Jesuit Fathers and
those of the apostles; the intense energy of the former, supported by
pure and unwavering faith, produced results which were to all intents
and purposes miraculous. With the death of men like St. Xavier, and the
rise of worldly ambition in the hearts of the Fathers, this power
disappeared, and modern miracles have become a snare and a delusion to
simple-minded believers.
The faith in such psychical power possessed by a few privileged persons
is as old as the world. Pythagoras performed cures by enchantment; AElius
Aristides, who had consulted learned physicians for ten years in vain,
and Marcus Antoninus, were both cured by incubation. Tacitus tells us
that the Emperor Vespasian restored a blind man's sight by moistening
his eye with saliva, and to a lame man the use of his feet by treading
hard upon him. (Hist. l. iv. c. 8.) Both cures were performed before an
immense crowd in Alexandria, and in both cases the petitioners had
themselves indicated the means by which they were to be restored, the
emperor yielding only very reluctantly to their prayers and the urgent
requests of his courtiers. (Sueton., _Vita Vespas._) Pyrrhus, king of
Epirus, had cured colic and diseases of the kidneys by placing the
patient on his back and touching him with his big toe (Plutarch, _Vita
Pyrrhi_); and hence Vespasian and Hadrian both used the same method!
The imposition of hands, for the purpose of performing miraculous cures,
has been practised from time immemorial; Chaldees and Brahmins alike
using it in cases of malignant diseases. The kings of England and of
France, and even the counts of Hapsburg in Germany, have ever been
reputed to be able to cure goitres by the touch of their hands, and
hence the complaint was called the "king's evil." The idea seems to have
originated in the high north; King Olave, the saint, being reported by
Snorre Sturleson as having performed the ceremony. From thence, no
doubt, it was carried to England, where Edward the Confessor seems to
have been the first to cure goitres. In France each monarch upon
ascending the throne received at the consecration the secret of the
_modus operandi_ and the sacred formula--for here also the spoken word
went hand in hand with the magic touch. Philip I. was the first and
Charles I. the last monarch who performed the cure publicly, uttering
the ancient phrase: "_Le roi te touche, Dieu te guerisse!_" In a
somewhat similar manner the Saludadores and Ensalmadores of Spain cured,
not goitres and stammering only, as the monarchs we have mentioned, but
almost all the ills to which human flesh is heir, by imposition of
hands, fervent prayer and breathing upon the patient.
Similar gifts are ascribed to Eastern potentates, and the ruling
dynasty in Persia claims to have inherited the power of healing the sick
from an early ancestor, the holy Sheik Sephy. The great traveler Chardin
saw patients hardly able to crawl dragging themselves to the feet of the
Shah, and beseeching him only to dip the end of his finger into a bowl
of water, and thus to bestow upon it healing power. It will excite
little wonder to learn that those remarkable men who succeeded by the
fire of their eloquence and the power of contagious enthusiasm to array
one world in arms against another, the authors of the Crusades, should
have been able to perform miraculous cures. Peter of Amiens and Bernard
of Clairvaux obtained such a hold on the minds of faithful believers,
that their curse produced spasms and fearful sufferings in the guilty,
while their blessing restored speech to the dumb, and health to the
sick. Here also special power was attributed even to their clothes, and
many remarkable results were obtained by the mere touch. Spain, the home
of fervent ascetic faith, abounds in saints who performed miracles, the
most successful of whom was probably Raimundus Normatus (so called
because not born of woman, but cut from his dead mother's body by
skillful physicians), who cured, during the plague of 1200, great
numbers of men by the sign of the cross. To this class of men belong
also, as mentioned before, the early fathers of the Society of Jesus,
though their powers were as different as their characters. Ignatius
Loyola, who represented the intelligence of the new order, performed few
miraculous cures; Xavier, on the contrary, the man of brilliant fancy,
was successful in a great variety of cases. The first leaders, like
Loinez, Salmeron and Bobadilla, had no magic power at all, but later
successors, like Ochioa Carrera and Kepel, displayed it in a surprising
degree, although Ochioa's gifts were distinctly limited to the healing
of the sick by the imposition of hands. The whole period of this intense
excitement extended only over sixteen years, from 1540 to 1556, after
which the vivid faith, which had alone made the cures possible,
disappeared. It is worth mentioning that the Jesuits themselves and most
of their historians deny that they ever had power to perform miracles,
and ascribe the cures to the faith of the patients alone. St. Xavier, it
is well known, brought the dead to life again, and even if we assume
that they lay only in syncope and had not yet really died, the recovery
is scarcely less striking. The most remarkable of these cases is that of
an only daughter of a Japanese nobleman. Her death stunned the father, a
great lord possessed of immense wealth, to such a degree that his
friends feared for his reason; at last they urged him to apply to the
great missionary for help. He did so; the Jesuit, filled with
compassion, asked a brother priest to join him in prayer, and both fell
upon their knees and prayed with great fervor. Xavier returned to the
pagan with joyous face and bade him take comfort, as his daughter was
alive and well. The nobleman, very unlike the father in Holy Writ, was
indignant, thinking that the holy man either did not believe his child
had died or refused to assist him; but as he went home, a page came
running up to meet him, bringing the welcome message that his daughter
was really alive and well. She told him after his return, that her soul
upon leaving the body had been seized by hideous shapes and dragged
towards an enormous fire, but that suddenly two excellent men had
interposed, rescuing her from their hands, and leading her back to life.
The happy father immediately returned with her to the holy man, and as
soon as his child beheld Xavier and his companion, she fell down at
their feet and declared that they were the friends who had brought her
back from the lower world. Shortly afterwards the father and his whole
family became Christians. (Orlandini, Hist. Soc. Jesu., ix. c. 213.) The
case seems to be very simple, and is one of the most instructive of
modern magic. The girl was not dead, but lay in a cataleptic trance, in
which she had visions of fearful scenes, and transformed the fierce hold
which the disease had on her body into the grasp of hostile powers
trying to obtain possession of her soul. At the same time she became
clairvoyant, and thus saw Xavier and his companion distinctly enough to
recognize them afterwards. The cure was accomplished by the Almighty in
answer to the fervent prayer of two pious men filled with pure faith,
according to the sacred promise: "The effectual, fervent prayer of a
righteous man availeth much." All the more is it to be regretted that
even in those days of genuine piety and rapturous faith, foreign
elements should at once have been mixed up with the true doctrine; for
already Caspar Bersaeus ascribed some of his cures to the Holy Virgin;
and soon the power passed away, when the honor was no longer given to
Him to whom alone it was due.
From that day the power to perform miraculous cures has been but rarely
and exceptionably granted to a few individuals. Thus Matthias Will, a
German divine of the seventeenth century, was as famous for his
marvelous power over the sick and the possessed as for his fervent
piety, his incessant praying and fasting, and his utter self-abnegation.
Sufferers were brought to him from every part of Christendom, and
hundreds who had been given up by their physicians were healed by his
earnest prayers and the blessing he invoked from on high. His memory
still survives in his home, and an inscription on his tombstone records
his extraordinary powers. (Cath. Encycl., Suppl. I. 1320.) Even the
Jansenists, with all their hostility to certain usages of the Church,
had their famous Abbe Paris, whose grave in the Cemetery of St. Medard
became in 1727 the scene of a number of miraculous cures, fully attested
by legal evidence and amply described by Montgeron, a man whom the Abbe
had in his lifetime changed from a reckless profligate into a truly
pious Christian. (_La verite des miracles_, etc., Paris, 1737.) The
magic phenomena exhibited on this occasion were widely discussed and
great numbers of books and pamphlets written for and against their
genuineness, until the subject became so obscured by party spirit that
it is extremely difficult, in our day, to separate the truth from its
large admixture of unreliable statements. A peculiar feature of these
scenes--admitted in its full extent by adversaries even--was the perfect
insensibility of most of the enthusiasts, the so-called
_Convulsionnaires_. Jansenists by conviction, these men, calm and cool
in their ordinary pursuits, had been so wrought up by religious
excitement that they fell, twenty or more at a time, into violent
convulsions and demanded to be beaten with huge iron-shod clubs in order
to be relieved of an unbearable pressure upon the abdomen. They endured,
in this manner, blows inflicted upon the pit of the stomach which under
ordinary circumstances would have caused grievous if not fatal
consequences.
The above-mentioned witness, who saw their almost incredible sufferings,
Carre de Montgeron, states that he himself used an iron club ending in a
ball and weighing from twenty to thirty pounds. One of the female
enthusiasts complained that the ordinary blows were not sufficient to
give her relief, whereupon he beat her sixty times with all his
strength. But this also was unavailing, and a large and more powerful
man who was standing near had to take the fearful instrument and with
his strong arms gave her a hundred additional blows! The tension of her
muscles must have been most extraordinary, for she not only bore the
blows, which would have killed a strong person in natural health, but
the wall against which she was leaning actually began to tremble and
totter from the violent concussion. Nor were the blows simply resisted
by the turgescence of the body; the skin itself seemed to have been
modified in a manner unknown in a state of health. Thus one of the
brothers Marion felt nothing of thrusts made by a sharp-pointed knife
against his abdomen and the skin was in no instance injured. To do this
the trance in which he lay must necessarily have induced an entire
change of the organic atoms, and this is one of the most important magic
phenomena connected with this class of visions, which will be discussed
in another place.