IMAGINATION AS A REMEDIAL POWER.
Astrology, alchemy, the once general belief in the healing effects of
the royal touch, the use of charms and amulets, and mesmerism, are
only various exhibitions of one superstition, having for their essence
the same little grain of truth, and for their outward expression
different forms of error. Disconnected as they appear at first sight,
a brief examination discovers the common features which prove them to
be of one family. By turns they have--each of them--given humiliating
evidence of the irrational extravagances that reasoning creatures are
capable of committing; and each of them, also, has conferred some
benefits on mankind. The gibberish of Geber, and the alchemists who
preceded and followed him, led to the study of chemistry, the utility
and importance of which science we have only begun rightly to
appreciate; and a curiosity about the foolishness of astrology led Sir
Isaac Newton to his astronomical inquiries. Lord Bacon says--"The sons
of chemistry, while they are busy seeking the hidden gold--whether
real or not--have by turning over and trying, brought much profit and
convenience to mankind." And if the delusions of talismans, amulets,
and charms, and the impostures of Mesmer, have had no greater
consequences, they have at least afforded, to the observant and
reflective, much valuable instruction with regard to the constitution
of the human mind.
In the history of these superstitions we have to consider the
universal faith which men in all ages have entertained in planetary
influence, and which, so long as day and night, and the moon and tides
endure, few will be found so ignorant or so insensible as to question.
The grand end of alchemy was to transmute the base metals into gold;
and it proposed to achieve this by obtaining possession of the
different fires transmitted by the heavenly bodies to our planet, and
subjecting, according to a mysterious system, the comparatively
worthless substances of the mineral world to the forces of these
fires.
"Now," says Paracelsus, in his "Secrets of Alchemy," "we come to
speake of a manifold spirit or fire, which is the cause of variety and
diversity of creatures, so that there cannot one be found right like
another, and the same in every part; as it may be seen in metals, of
which there is none which hath another like itself; the _Sun_
produceth his gold; the _Moon_ produceth another metal far different,
to wit, silver; _Mars_ another, that is to say, iron; _Jupiter_
produceth another kind of metal to wit, tin; _Venus_ another, which is
copper; and _Saturn_ another kind, that is to say, lead: so that they
are all unlike, and several one from another; the same appeareth to be
as well amongst men as all other creatures, the cause whereof is the
multiplicity of fire.... Where there is no great mixture of the
elements, the Sun bringeth forth; where it is a little more thick, the
Moon; where more gross, Venus; and thus, according to the diversity of
mixtures, are produced divers metals; so that no metal appeared in the
same mine like another."
This, which is an extract from Turner's translation of Paracelsus's
"Secrets of Alchemy" (published in 1655), may be taken as a fair
sample of the jargon of alchemy.
The same faith in planetary influence was the grand feature of
astrology, which regarded all natural phenomena as the effects of the
stars acting upon the earth. Diseases of all kinds were referable to
the heavenly bodies; and so, also, were the properties of those herbs
or other objects which were believed in as remedial agents. In ancient
medicine, pharmacy was at one period only the application of the
dreams of astrology to the vegetable world. The herb which put an ague
or madness to flight, did so by reason of a mystic power imparted to
it by a particular constellation, the outward signs of which quality
were to be found in its colour or aspect. Indeed, it was not enough
that "a simple," impregnated with curative power by heavenly beams,
should be culled; but it had to be culled at a particular period of
the year, at a particular day of the month, even at a particular hour,
when the irradiating source of its efficacy was supposed to be
affecting it with a peculiar force; and, moreover, it had to be
removed from the ground or the stem on which it grew with a particular
instrument or gesture of the body--a disregard of which forms would
have obviated the kindly influence of the particular star, without
whose benignant aid the physician and the drug were alike powerless.
Medical practitioners smile now at the mention of these absurdities.
But many of them are ignorant that they, in their daily practice, help
to perpetuate the observance of one of these ridiculed forms. The sign
which every member of the Faculty puts before his prescriptions, and
which is very generally interpreted as an abbreviation for _Recipe_,
is but the astrological symbol of Jupiter.
[Illustration: _AN ACCIDENT_]
It was on this principle that a belief became prevalent that certain
objects, either of natural formation or constructed by the instruments
of art, had the power of counteracting noxious agents. An intimate
connection was supposed to exist between the form or colour of an
external substance and the use to which it ought to be put. Red
objects had a mysterious influence on inflammatory diseases; and
yellow ones had a similar power on those who were discoloured with
jaundice. Edward II.'s physician, John of Gaddesden, informs us, "When
the son of the renowned King of England lay sick of the small-pox, I
took care that everything round the bed should be of a red colour,
which succeeded so completely that the Prince was restored to perfect
health without a vestige of a pustule remaining." Even as late as
1765, this was put in practice to the Emperor Francis I. The earliest
talismans were natural objects, with a more or less striking external
character, imagined to have been impressed upon them by the planets of
whose influence they were especially susceptible, and of whose virtues
they were beyond all other substances the recipients. The amulet
(which differs little from the talisman, save in that it must be
worn suspended upon the person it is to protect, whereas the talisman
might be kept by its fortunate possessor locked up in his
treasure-house) had a like origin.
But when once a superstitious regard was paid to the external marks of
a natural object, it was a short and easy step to produce the
semblances of the revered characters by an artificial process, and
then bestow on them the reverential feelings which had previously been
directed to their originals. The ordinary course taken by a
superstition in its degradation is one where its first sentiment
becomes lost to sight, and its form is dogmatically insisted on. It
was so in that phase of feticism which consisted in the blind reliance
put on artificial talismans and amulets. The original significance of
the talisman--the truth which was embodied in it as the emblem of the
unseen powers that had produced it, in accordance with natural
operations--was forgotten. The rows of lines and scratches, and the
variegations of its colour, were only thought of; and the cunning of
man--ever ready to make a god for himself--was exerted to improve upon
them. In the multitude of new devices came inscriptions of mystic
numbers, strange signs, agglomerations of figures, and scraps from
sacred rituals--Abraxas and Abracadabra, and the Fi-fo-fum nonsense of
the later charms.
Creatures that were capable of detecting the influence of the
planetary system on that portion of Nature which is unquestionably
affected by it, and of imagining its presence in inanimate objects,
which, to use cautious language, have never been proved by science to
be sensible of such a power, of course magnified its consequences in
all that related to the human intellect and character. The instant in
which a man entered the world was regarded as the one when he was most
susceptible. Indeed, a babe was looked upon as a piece of warm and
pliant wax: and the particular planet which was in the ascendant when
the nurse placed the new child of Adam amongst the people of earth
stamped upon it a distinctive charactery. To be born under a
particular star was then an expression that meant something. On the
nature of the star it depended whether homunculus, squealing out its
first agonies, was to be morose or gentle, patient or choleric, lively
or saturnine, amorous or vindictive--a warrior or a poet--a dreamer or
a man of action.
Laughing at the refinements of absurdity at which astrology had
arrived in his day, the author of "Hudibras" says:--
"There's but the twinkling of a star
Between a man of peace and war;
A thief and justice, fool and knave,
A huffing officer and slave;
A crafty lawyer and a pickpocket,
A great philosopher and a blockhead;
A formal preacher and a player,
A learned physician and manslayer.
As if men from stars did suck
Old age, diseases, and ill-luck,
Wit, folly, honour, virtue, vice,
Travel and women, trade and dice;
And draw, with the first air they breathe,
Battle and murder, sudden death.
Are not these fine commodities
To be imported from the skies,
And vended here amongst the rabble
For staple goods and warrantable?"
Involved in this view of the universe was the doctrine that some
exceptional individuals were born far superior to the mass of their
fellow-creatures. Absurd as astrology was, still, its postulates
having once been granted, the logic was unassailable which argued that
those few on whose birth lucky stars had shone benignantly, had a
destiny and an organization distinct from those of ordinary mortals.
The dicta of modern liberalism, and the Transatlantic dogma that "all
men are by nature born equal," would have appeared to an orthodox
believer in this planetary religion nothing better than the ravings of
madness or impiety. Monarchs of men, whatever lowly station they at
first occupied in life, were exalted above others because they
possessed a distinctive excellence imparted to them at the hour of
birth by the silent rulers of the night. It was useless to strive
against such authority. To contend with it would have been to wrestle
with the Almighty--ever present in his peculiarly favoured creatures.
Rulers being such, it was but natural for their servile worshippers to
believe them capable of imparting to others, by a glance of the eye or
a touch of the hand, an infinitesimal portion of the virtue that dwelt
within them. To be favoured with their smiles was to bask in sunshine
amid perfumes. To be visited with their frowns was to be chilled to
the marrow, and feel the hail come down like keen arrows from an angry
sky. To be touched by their robes was to receive new vigour. Hence
came credence in the miraculous power of the imposition of royal, or
otherwise sacred hands. Pyrrhus and Vespasian cured maladies by the
touch of their fingers; and, long before and after them, earthly
potentates and spiritual directors had, both in the East and the West,
to prove their title to authority by displaying the same faculty.
In our own country more than in any other region of Christendom this
superstition found supporters. From Edward the Confessor down to Queen
Anne, who laid her healing hands on Samuel Johnson, it flourished; and
it was a rash man who, trusting to the blind guidance of human reason
dared to question that manifestation of the divinity which encircles
kingship. Doubtless the gift of money made to each person who was
touched did not tend to bring the cure into dis-esteem. It can be
easily credited that, out of the multitude who flocked to the presence
of Elizabeth and the Stuart kings for the benefit of their miraculous
manipulations, there were many shrewd vagabonds who had more faith in
the coin than in the touch bestowed upon them. The majority, however,
it cannot be doubted, were as sincere victims of delusion as those
who, at the close of the last century, believed in the efficacy of
metallic tractors, and those who now unconsciously expose their
intellectual infirmity as advocates of electro-biology and
spirit-rapping. The populace, as a body, unhesitatingly believed that
their sovereigns possessed this faculty as the anointed of the Lord. A
story is told of a Papist, who, much to his astonishment, was cured of
the king's evil by Elizabeth, after her final rupture with the court
of Rome.
"Now I perceive," cried the man, "by plain experience that the
excommunication against the Queen is of no effect, since God hath
blessed her with such a gift."
Nor would it be wise to suppose that none were benefited by the
treatment. The eagerness with which the vulgar crowd to a sight, and
the intense excitement with which London mobs witness a royal
procession to the houses of Parliament, or a Lord Mayor's pageant on
its way from the City to Westminster, may afford us some idea of the
inspiriting sensations experienced by a troop of wretches taken from
their kennels to Whitehall, and brought into personal contact with
their sovereign--their ideal of grandeur! Such a trip was a stimulus
to the nervous system, compared with which the shock of a galvanic
battery would have been but the tickling of a feather. And, over and
above this, was the influence of imagination, which in many ways may
become an agent for restoring the tone of the nervous system, and so
enabling Nature to overcome the obstacles of her healthy action.
Montaigne admirably treated this subject in his essay, "Of the Force
of Imagination"; and his anecdote of the happy results derived by an
unfortunate nobleman from the use of a flat gold plate, graven with
celestial figures, must have occurred to many of his readers who have
witnessed the beneficial effects which are frequently produced by the
practices of quackery.
"These apes' tricks," says Montaigne, "are the main cause of the
effect, our fancy being so far seduced as to believe that such strange
and uncouth formalities must of necessity proceed from some abstruse
science. Their very inanity gives them reverence and weight."
And old Burton, touching, in his "Anatomy of Melancholy," on the
power of imagination, says, quaintly:--
"How can otherwise blear eyes in one man cause the like affection in
another? Why doth one man's yawning make another man yawn? Why do
witches and old women fascinate and bewitch children; but, as Wierus,
Paracelsus, Cardan, Migaldus, Valleriola, Cæsar Vanninus, Campanella,
and many philosophers think, the forcible imagination of one party
moves and alters the spirits of the other. Nay more, they cause and
cure, not only diseases, maladies, and several infirmities by this
means, as 'Avicenna de Anim. 1. 4, sect. 4,' supposeth in parties
remote, but move bodies from their places, cause thunder, lightning,
tempests; which opinion Alkindus, Paracelsus, and some others approve
of."
In this passage Burton touches not only on the effects of the
imagination, but also on the impression which the nervous energy of
one person may create upon the nervous sensibility of another. That
such an impression can be produced, no one can question who observes
the conduct of men in their ordinary relations to each other. By
whatever term we christen it--endeavouring to define either the cause
or its effect--we all concur in admitting that decision of character,
earnestness of manner, enthusiasm, a commanding aspect, a piercing
eye, or a strong will, exercise a manifest control over common
natures, whether they be acting separately or in masses.
Of the men who, without learning, or an ennobling passion for truth,
or a high purpose of any kind, have, unaided by physical force,
commanded the attention and directed the actions of large numbers of
their fellow creatures, Mesmer is perhaps the most remarkable in
modern history. But we will not speak of him till we have paid a few
minutes' attention to one of his predecessors.
The most notable forerunner of Mesmer in this country was Valentine
Greatrakes, who, in Charles the Second's reign, performed "severall
marvaillous cures by the stroaking of the hands." He was a gentleman
of condition, and, at first, the dupe of his own imagination rather
than a deliberate charlatan. He was born on the 14th of February,
1628, on his father's estate of Affane, in the County of Waterford,
and was, on both sides, of more than merely respectable extraction,
his father being a gentleman of good repute and property, and his
mother being a daughter of Sir Edward Harris, Knt, a Justice of the
King's Bench in Ireland. The first years of his school-life were
passed in the once famous Academy of Lismore; but when he had arrived
at thirteen years of age his mother (who had become a widow), on the
outbreak of the rebellion, fled with him and his little brothers and
sisters to England, where the fugitive family were hospitably
entertained by Mr. Edmund Harris, a gentleman of considerable
property, and one of the justice's sons. After concluding his
education in the family of one John Daniel Getseus, a High-German
minister of Stock Gabriel, in the County of Devon, Valentine returned
to Ireland, then distracted with tumult and armed rebellion; and, by
prudently joining the victorious side, re-entered on the possession of
his father's estate of Affane. He served for six years in Cromwell's
forces (from 1650 to 1656) as a lieutenant of the Munster Cavalry,
under the command of the Earl of Orrery. Valentine's commission was
in the earl's regiment; and, from the time of entering the army till
the close of his career is lost sight of, he seems to have enjoyed the
patronage and friendship of that nobleman's family.
When the Munster horse was disbanded in 1656, Valentine retired to
Affane, and for a period occupied himself as an active and influential
country gentleman. He was made Clerk of the Peace for the County of
Cork, a Register for Transplantation, and a Justice of the Peace. In
the performance of the onerous duties which, in the then disturbed
state of Ireland, these offices brought upon him, he gained deserved
popularity and universal esteem. He was a frank and commanding
personage, of pleasant manners, gallant bearing, fine figure, and
singularly handsome face. With a hearty and musical voice, and a
national stock of high animal spirits, he was the delight of all
festive assemblies, taking his pleasure freely, but never to excess.
Indeed, Valentine was a devout man, not ashamed, in his own household,
and in his bearing to the outer world, to avow that it was his
intention to serve the Lord. But, though he had all the purity of
Puritanism, there was in him no taint of sectarian rancour or
uncharitableness. When an anonymous writer aspersed his reputation, he
responded--and no one could gainsay his words--with regard to his
public career:--"I studied so to acquit myself before God and man in
singleness and integrity of heart, that, to the comfort of my soul,
and praise of God that directed me, I can with confidence say I never
took bribe nor reward from any man, though I had many and great ones
before me (when I was Register for Transplantation); nor did I ever
connive at or suffer a malefactor to go unpunished, if the person were
guilty of any notorious crime (when I had power), nor did I ever take
the fee belonging to my office, if I found the person were injured, or
in want; nor did I ever commit any one for his judgment and conscience
barely, so it led him not to do anything to the disturbance of the
civil peace of the nation; nor did I take anything for my fee when he
was discharged--for I bless God he has taken away a persecuting spirit
from me, who would persuade all men to be Protestants, those
principles being most consonant to Truth and the Word of God, in my
judgment, and that profession which I have ever been of, and still
am.... Yet (though there were orders from the power that then was, to
all Justices of the Peace, for Transplanting all Papists that would
not go to church), I never molested any one that was known or esteemed
to be innocent, but suffered them to continue in the English quarters,
and that without prejudice. So that I can truly say, I never injured
any man for his conscience, conceiving that ought to be informed and
not enforced."
On the Restoration, Valentine Greatrakes lost his offices, and was
reduced to the position of a mere private gentleman. His estate at
Affane was a small one; but he laboured on it with good results,
introducing into his neighbourhood a more scientific system of
agriculture than had previously been known there, and giving an
unprecedented quantity of employment to the poor. Perhaps he missed
the excitement of public business, and his energies, deprived of the
vent they had for many years enjoyed, preyed upon his sensitive
nature. Anyhow, he became the victim of his imagination, which, acting
on a mind that had been educated in a school of spiritual earnestness
and superstitious introspection, led him into a series of remarkable
hallucinations. He first had fits of pensiveness and dejection,
similar to those which tormented Cromwell ere his genius found for
itself a more fit field of display than the management of a brewery
and a few acres of marsh-land. Ere long he had an impulse, or a
strange persuasion in his own mind (of which he was not able to give
any rational account to another), which did very frequently suggest to
him that there was bestowed on him the gift of curing the King's Evil,
which for the extraordinariness of it, he thought fit to conceal for
some time, but, at length communicated to his wife, and told her,
"That he did verily believe that God had given him the blessing of
curing the King's Evil; for, whether he were in private or publick,
sleeping or waking, still he had the same impulse; but her reply was
to him, that she conceived this was a strange imagination." Such is
his statement.
Patients either afflicted with King's Evil, or presumed to be so, were
in due course brought before him; and, on his touching them, they
recovered. It may be here remarked that in the days when the Royal
Touch was believed in as a cure for scrofula, the distinctions between
strumous and other swellings were by no means ascertained even by
physicians of repute; and numbers of those who underwent the
manipulation of Anointed Rulers were suffering only from aggravated
boils and common festering sores, from which, as a matter of course,
nature would in the space of a few weeks have relieved them.
Doubtless many of Valentine's patients were suffering, not under
scrofulous affections, but comparatively innocent tumours; for his
cures were rapid, complete, and numerous. A second impulse gave him
the power of curing ague; and a third inspiration of celestial aura
imparted to him command, under certain conditions, over all human
diseases. His modes of operation were various. When an afflicted
person was laid before him, he usually offered up a prayer to God to
help him, to make him the humble instrument of divine mercy. And
invariably when a patient derived benefit from his treatment, he
exhorted him to offer up his thanks to his Heavenly Father. After the
initiatory supplication the operator passed his hands over the
affected part of the sick person's body, sometimes over the skin
itself and sometimes over the clothes. The manipulations varied in
muscular force from delicate tickling to violent rubbing, according to
the nature of the evil spirits by which the diseased people were
tormented. Greatrakes's theory of disease was the scriptural one: the
morbific power was a devil, which had to be expelled from the frame in
which it had taken shelter. Sometimes the demon was exorcised by a few
gentle passes; occasionally it fled at the verbal command of the
physician, or retreated on being gazed at through the eyes of the
mortal it tormented; but frequently the victory was not gained till
the healer rubbed himself--like the rubber who in our own day makes
such a large income at Brighton--into a red face and a copious
perspiration. Henry Stubbe, a famous physician in Stratford-upon-Avon,
in his "Miraculous Conformist," published in 1666, gives the
following testimony:--
"_Proofs that he revives the Ferment of the Blood._--Mr Bromley's
brother, of Upton upon Severne, after a long quartane Ague, had by a
Metastasis of the Disease such a chilnesse in the habit of the body,
that no clothes could possibly warme him; he wore upon his head many
spiced caps, and tenne pounds weight of linen on his head. Mr
Greatarick stripped him, and rubbed him all over, and immediately he
sweat, and was hot all over, so that the bath never heated up as did
the hand of Mr Greatarick's; this was his own expression. But Mr
Greatarick causing him to cast off all that multitude of caps and
cloaths, it was supposed that it frustrated the happy effect, for he
felt the recourse of his disease in some parts rendered the cure
suspicious. But as often as Mr Greatarick came and rubbed him he would
be all in a flame againe for half-an-hour: the experiment whereof was
frequently practised for five or six dayes at Ragly."
Greatrakes himself also speaks of his more violent curative exertions
making him very hot. But it was only occasionally that he had to
labour so vehemently. His eye, the glance of which had a fascinating
effect on people of a nervous organization, and his fantastic
ticklings, usually produced all the results required by his mode of
treatment.
The fame of the healer spread far and wide. Not only from the most
secluded parts of Ireland, but from civilized England, the lame and
blind, the deaf, dumb, and diseased, made pilgrimages to the Squire of
Affane. His stable, barn, and malt-house were crowded with wretches
imploring his aid. The demands upon his time were so very many and
great, that he set apart three days in the week for the reception of
patients; and on those days, from six in the morning till six in the
evening, he ministered to his wretched clients. He took no fee but
gratitude on the part of those he benefited, and a cheering sense that
he was fulfilling the commands of the founder of his religion. The
Dean of Lismore cited him to appear before the ecclesiastical court,
and render an account of his proceedings. He went, and on being asked
if he had worked any cures, replied to the court that they might come
to his house and see. The judge asked if he had a licence to practise
from the ordinary of the diocese; and he replied that he knew of no
law which prohibited any man from doing what good he could to others.
He was, however, commanded by the court not to lay his hands again on
the sick, until he had obtained the Ordinary's licence to do so. He
obeyed for two days only, and went on again more earnestly than ever.
Let a charlatan or an enthusiast spread his sails, the breeze of
fashion is always present, and ready to swell them. The Earl of Orrery
took his quondam lieutenant by the hand, and persuaded him to go over
to England to cure the Viscountess Conway of a violent headache,
which, in spite of the ablest physicians of England and France, she
had suffered from for many years. Lord Conway sent him an urgent
invitation to do so. He complied, and made his way to Rugby, in
Warwickshire, where he was unable to give relief to his hostess, but
was hospitably entertained for a month. His inability to benefit Lady
Conway did not injure his reputation, for he did not profess to be
able to cure every one. An adverse influence--such as the sins of a
patient, or his want of faith--was enough to counteract the healing
power. In the jargon of modern mesmerism, which _practically_ was only
a revival of Greatrakes's extravagances, the physician could affect
only those who were susceptible. But though Lady Conway was beyond the
reach of his mysterious agency, the reverse was the case with others.
The gentry and commonalty of Warwickshire crowded by thousands to him;
and he touched, prayed over, and blessed them, and sent them away
rejoicing. From Rugby he went to Worcester, at the request of the Lord
Mayor and Aldermen of that city; and from Worcester he was carried up
to London. Lord Arlington commanded him to appear at Whitehall, and
mumble in his particular fashion for the amusement of Charles II. A
man who could cure gout by a touch would have been an acquisition to
such a court as then presided over English manners.
In London he immediately became a star. The fashion of the West, and
the wary opulence of the East, laid their offerings at his feet. For a
time he ruled from Soho to Wapping. Mr. Justice Godfrey gave him rooms
for the reception of patients in his mansion in Lincoln's-inn-Fields;
and thither flocked the mob of the indigent and the mob of the wealthy
to pay him homage. Mr. Boyle (the brother of the Earl of Orrery), Sir
William Smith, Dr. Denton, Dr. Fairclough, Dr. Faber, Sir Nathaniel
Hobart, Sir John Godolphin, Dr. Wilkins, Dr. Whichcot, and Dr.
Cudworth, were amongst his most vehement supporters of the sterner
sex. But the majority of his admirers were ladies. The Countess of
Devonshire entertained him in her palace; and Lady Ranelagh frequently
amused the guests at her routs with Mr. Valentine Greatrakes, who, in
the character of _the lion_ of the season, performed with wondrous
results on the prettiest or most hysterical of the ladies present. It
was held as certain by his intimate friends that the curative property
that came from him was a subtle aura, effulgent, and of an exquisitely
sweet smell, that could only be termed the divine breath. "God," says
Dr. Henry Stubbe, "had bestowed upon Mr. Greaterick a peculiar
temperament, or composed his body of some particular ferments, the
effluvia whereof, being introduced sometimes by a light, sometimes by
a violent friction, should restore the temperament of the debilitated
parts, re-invigorate the blood, and dissipate all heterogeneous
ferments out of the bodies of the diseased by the eyes, nose, mouth,
hands, and feet. I place the gift of healing in the temperament or
composure of his body, because I see it is necessary that he touch
them. Besides, the Right Honourable the Lord Conway observed one
morning, as he came into his Lordship's chamber, a smell strangely
pleasant, as if it had been of sundry flowers; and demanding of his
man what sweet water he had brought into the room, he answered,
_None_; whereupon his Lordship smelled upon the hand of Mr.
Greaterick, and found the fragrancy to issue thence; and examining his
bosom, he found the like scent there also." Dean Rust gave similar
testimony; and "Sir Amos Meredith, who had been Mr. Greaterick's
bed-fellow," did the like.
Amongst the certificates of cures performed, which Greatrakes
published, are two to which the name of Andrew Marvell is affixed, as
a spectator of the stroking. One of them is the following:--
"MR NICHOLSON'S CERTIFICATE.
"I, Anthony Nicholson, of Cambridge, Bookseller, have been
affected sore with pains all over my body, for
three-and-twenty years last past, have had advice and best
directions of all the doctors there; have been at the bath
in Somersetshire, and been at above one hundred pounds
expense to procure ease, or a cure of these pains; and have
found all the means I could be advised or directed to
ineffectual for either, till, by the advice of Dr Benjamin
Whichcot and Dean Rust, I applyed myself to Mr Greatrake's
for help upon Saturday was sevenight, being the latter end
of March, and who then stroked me; upon which I was very
much worse, and enforced to keep my bed for five or six
days; but then being stroked twice since, by the blessing of
God upon Mr Greatrake's endeavours, I am perfectly eas'd of
all pains, and very healthy and strong, insomuch as I intend
(God willing) to return home towards Cambridge to-morrow
morning, though I was so weak as to be necessitated to be
brought up in men's arms, on Saturday last about 11 of the
clock, to Mr Greatrake's. Attested by me this tenth day of
April, 1666. I had also an hard swelling in my left arm,
whereby I was disabled from using it; which being taken out
by the said Mr Greatrake's, I am perfectly freed of all
pain, and the use thereof greatly restored.
"ANTHONY NICHOLSON.
"In the presence of Andrew Marvell, Jas. Fairclough, Tho.
Alured, Tho. Pooley, W. Popple."
There were worse features of life in Charles the Second's London than
the popularity of Valentine Greatrakes; but his triumph was of short
duration. His professions were made the butts of ridicule, to which
his presence of mind and volubility were unable to respond with
effect. It was asserted by his enemies that his system was only a
cloak under which he offended the delicacy of virtuous women, and
roused the passions of the unchaste. His tone of conversation was
represented as compounded of the blasphemy of the religious enthusiast
and the blasphemy of the profligate. His boast that he never received
a fee for his remedial services was met by flat contradiction, and a
statement that he received presents to the amount of £100 at a time
from a single individual. This last accusation was never clearly
disposed of; but it is probable that the reward he sought (if he
looked for any) was restoration, through Court influence, to the
commission of magistrates for his county, and the lost clerkship of
the peace. The tide of slander was anyhow too strong for him, and he
retired to his native country a less honoured though perhaps a not
less honest man than he left it. Of his sincerity at the outset of his
career as a healer there can be little doubt.
Valentine Greatrakes did unconsciously what many years after him
Mesmer did by design. He in his remarkable career illustrated the
power which a determined man may exercise over the will and nervous
life of another.
As soon as the singular properties of the loadstone were discovered,
they were presumed to have a strong medicinal effect; and in this
belief physicians for centuries--and indeed almost down to present
times--were in the habit of administering pulverized magnet in salves,
plaisters, pills, and potions. It was not till the year 1660 that it
was for the first time distinctly recorded in the archives of science,
by Dr. Gilbert, of Colchester, that in a state of pulverization the
loadstone no longer possessed any magnetic powers. But it was not till
some generations after this that medical practitioners universally
recognized the fact that powder of magnet, externally or internally
administered, was capable of producing no other results than the
presence of any ordinary ferruginous substance would account for. But
long after this error had been driven from the domains of science, an
unreasonable belief in the power of magnets applied externally to the
body held its ground. In 1779-80, the Royal Society of Medicine in
Paris made numerous experiments with a view to arrive at a just
appreciation of the influence of magnets on the human system, and came
to the conclusion that they were medicinal agents of no ordinary
efficacy.
Such was the state of medical opinion at the close of the last
century, when Perkins's tractors, which were supposed to act
magnetically, became the fashion. Mr. Perkins was a citizen of
Connecticut, and certainly his celebrated invention was worthy of the
'cutest people on the 'varsal earth. Barnum's swindles were modest
ventures by comparison. The entire world, old and new, went
tractor-mad. Every valetudinarian bought the painted nails, composed
of an alloy of various metals (which none but Perkins could make, and
none but Perkins sell), and tickled with their sharp ends those parts
of his frame which were regarded as centres of disease.
The phenomena apparently produced by these instruments were
astounding, and misled every observer of them; until Dr. Haygarth of
Bath proved by a process to which objections was impossible, that they
were referable not to metal points, but to the mental condition of
those who used them. "Robert Thomas," says Dr. Haygarth in his
interesting work, "aged forty-three, who had been for some time under
the care of Dr. Lovell, in the Bristol Infirmary, with a rheumatic
affection of the shoulder, which rendered his arm perfectly useless,
was pointed out as a proper object of trial by Mr. J. W. Dyer,
apothecary to the house. Tuesday, April 19th, having everything in
readiness, I passed through the ward, and, in a way that he might
suspect nothing, questioned him respecting his complaint. I then told
him that I had an instrument in my pocket which had been very
serviceable to many in his state; and when I had explained to him how
simple it was, he consented to undergo the operation. In six minutes
no other effect was produced than a warmth upon the skin, and I feared
that this _coup d'essai_ had failed. The next day, however, he told me
that 'he had received so much benefit that it had enabled him to lift
his hand from his knee, which he had in vain several times attempted
on Monday evening, as the whole ward witnessed.' The tractors I used
being made of lead, I thought it advisable to lay them aside, lest,
being metallic points, the proof against the fraud might be less
complete. Thus much, however, was proved, that the patent tractors
possessed no specific power independent of simple metals. Two pieces
of wood, properly shaped and painted, were next made use of; and in
order to add solemnity to the farce, Mr. Barton held in his hand a
stop-watch, whilst Mr. Lax minuted the effects produced. In four
minutes the man raised his hand several inches; and he had lost also
the pain in his shoulder, usually experienced when attempting to lift
anything. He continued to undergo the operation daily, and with
progressive good effect; for on the twenty-fifth he could touch the
mantel-piece. On the twenty-seventh, in the presence of Dr. Lovell and
Mr. J. P. Noble, two common iron nails, disguised with sealing-wax,
were substituted for the pieces of mahogany before used. In three
minutes he felt something moving from his arm to his hand, and soon
after he touched the board of rules which hung a foot above the
fire-place. This patient at length so far recovered that he could
carry coals and use his arm sufficiently to help the nurse; yet,
previous to the use of the spurious tractors, he could no more lift
his hand from his knee than if a hundredweight were upon it, or a nail
driven through it--as he declared in the presence of several
gentlemen, whose names I shall have frequent occasion to mention. The
fame of this case brought applications in abundance; indeed, it must
be confessed that it was more than sufficient to act upon weak minds,
and induce a belief that these pieces of wood and iron were endowed
with some peculiar virtues."
The result of Dr. Haygarth's experiments was the overthrow of Perkins,
and the enlightenment of the public as to the real worth of the
celebrated metallic tractors. In achieving this the worthy physician
added some interesting facts to the science of psychology. But of
course his influence upon the ignorant and foolish persons he
illuminated was only transient. Ere a few short years or even months
were over, they had embraced another delusion--not less ridiculous,
but more pernicious.