IMAGINATION AND NERVOUS EXCITEMENT. MESMER.
At a very early date the effects of magnetic influences, and the
ordinary phenomena of nervous excitement, were the source of much
confusion and perplexity to medical speculators, who, with an unsound
logic that is perhaps more frequent than any other form of bad
reasoning, accounted for what they could not understand by pointing to
what they were only imperfectly acquainted with. The power of the
loadstone was a mystery; the nervous phenomena produced by a strong
will over a weak one were a mystery:--clearly the mysterious phenomena
were to be attributed to the mysterious power. In its outset animal
magnetism committed no other error than this. Its wilder extravagances
were all subsequent to this assumption, that two sets of phenomena,
which it has never yet been proved are nearly allied, were connected,
the one with the other, in the relation of cause and effect, or as
being the offspring of one immediate and common cause.
To support this theory, Mesmerism called into its service the old
astrological views regarding planetary influence. But it held also
that the subtle fluid, so transmitted to the animal life of our
planet, was capable of being passed on in greater or less volumes of
quantity and intensity. Nervous energy was only that subtle fluid
which was continually passing and repassing in impalpable currents
between the earth and the celestial bodies; and when, by reason of the
nervous energy within him, any one exercised control over another, he
was deemed only to have infused him with some of his own stock of
spiritual aura. Here was a new statement of the old dream which had
charmed the poets and philosophers of buried centuries; and as it was
a view which did not admit of positive disproof, it was believed by
its excited advocates to be proved.
One of the first British writers on animal magnetism was William
Maxwell, a Scotch physician, who enunciated his opinions with a
boldness and perspicacity which do him much credit. The first four of
his twelve conclusions are a very good specimen of his work:--
"_Conclusio 1._--Anima non solum in corpore proprio visibili, sed
etiam extra corpus est, nec corpore organico circumscribitur.
"_Conclusio 2._--Anima extra corpus proprium, communiter sic dictum,
operatur.
"_Conclusio 3._--Ab omni corpore radii corporales fluunt, in quibus
anima sua præsentia, operatur; hisque energiam et potentiam operandi
largitur. Sunt vero radii hi non solum corporales, sed et diversarum
partium.
"_Conclusio 4._--Radii hi, qui ex animalium corporibus emittuntur,
spiritu vitali gaudent, per quem animæ mutationes dispensantur."
The sixty-fifth of the aphorisms with which Maxwell concludes his book
is an amusing one, as giving the orthodox animal-magnetic view of that
condition of the affections which we term love, and also as
illustrating the connection between astrology and charms.
"_Aphorism 65._--Imaginatione vero producitur amor, quando imaginatio
exaltata unius imaginationi alterius dominatur, eamque fingit
sigillatque; atque hoc propter miram imaginationis volubilitatem
vicissim fieri potest. Hinc incantationes effectum nanciscuntur, licet
aliqualem forsan in se virtutem possideant, sine imaginatione tamen
hæc virtus propter universalitatem distribui nequit."
Long before animal magnetism was a stock subject of conversation at
dinner-parties, there was a vague knowledge of its pretensions
floating about society; and a curiosity to know how far its principles
were reconcilable with facts, animated men of science and lovers of
the marvellous. Had not this been the state of public feeling, the
sensations created by Sir Kenelm Digby's sympathetic cures,
Greatrake's administrations, Leverett's manual exercises, and
Loutherbourg's manipulations, would not have been so great and
universal.
But the person who turned the credulity of the public on this point to
the best account was Frederick Anthony Mesmer. This man did not
originate a single idea. He only traded on the old day-dreams and
vagaries of departed ages; and yet he managed to fix his name upon a
science (?), in the origination or development of which he had no part
whatever; and, by daring charlatanry, he made it a means of grasping
enormous wealth. Where this man was born is uncertain. Vienna,
Werseburg in Swabia, and Switzerland, contend for the honour of having
given him to the world. At Vienna he took his M.D. degree, having
given an inaugural dissertation on "The Influence of the Planets upon
the Human Body." His course of self-delusion began with using magnets
as a means of cure, when applied externally; and he had resolutely
advanced on the road of positive knavery, when, after his quarrel with
his old instructor, Maximilian Hel, he threw aside the use of steel
magnets, and produced, by the employment of his fingers and eyes,
greater marvels than had ever followed the application of the
loadstone or Perkins's tractors. As his prosperity and reputation
increased, so did his audacity--which was always laughable, when it
did not disgust by its impiety.
On one occasion, Dr. Egg Von Ellekon asked him why he ordered his
patients to bathe in river, and not in spring water? "Because," was
the answer, "river water is exposed to the sun's rays." "True," was
the reply, "the water is sometimes warmed by the sun, but not so much
so that you have not sometimes to warm it still more. Why then should
not spring water be preferable?" Not at all posed, Mesmer answered,
with charming candour, "Dear doctor, the cause why all the water which
is exposed to the rays of the sun is superior to all other water is
because it is magnetized. I myself magnetized the sun some twenty
years ago."
But a better story of him is told by Madame Campan. That lady's
husband was attacked with pulmonary inflammation. Mesmer was sent for,
and found himself called upon to stem a violent malady, not to gull
the frivolous Parisians, who were then raving about the marvels of the
new system. He felt his patient's pulse, made certain inquiries, and
then, turning to Madame Campan, gravely assured her that the only way
to restore her husband to health was to lay in his bed, by his side
one of three things--a young woman of brown complexion, a black hen,
or an old bottle. "Sir," replied Madame Campan, "if the choice be a
matter of indifference, pray try the empty bottle." The bottle was
tried, but Mons. Campan grew worse. Madame Campan left the room,
alarmed and anxious, and, during her absence, Mesmer bled and
blistered his patient. This latter treatment was more efficacious. But
imagine Madame Campan's astonishment, when on her husband's recovery,
Mesmer asked for and obtained from him a written certificate that he
had been cured by Mesmerism!
It is instructive to reflect that the Paris which made for a short day
Mesmer its idol, was not far distant from the Paris of the Reign of
Terror. In one year the man received 400,000 francs in fees; and
positively the French government, at the instigation of Maurepas,
offered him an annual stipend of 20,000 francs, together with an
additional 10,000 to support an establishment for patients and pupils,
if he would stay in France. One unpleasant condition was attached to
this offer: he was required to allow three nominees of the Crown to
watch his proceedings. So inordinately high did Mesmer rate his
claims, that he stood out for better terms, and like the dog of the
fable, by endeavoring to get too much, lost what he might have
secured. Ere long the Parisians recovered something of common sense.
The enthusiasm of the hour subsided: and the Royal Commission,
composed of some of the best men of science to be found in the entire
world, were enabled to explain to the public how they had been fooled
by a trickster, and betrayed into practices scarcely less offensive to
modesty than to reason. In addition to the public report, another
private one was issued by the commissioners, urging the authorities,
in the name of morality, to put a stop to the mesmeric mania.
Mesmer died in obscurity on the 5th of March, in the year 1815.
Animal magnetism, under the name of mesmerism, has been made familiar
of late years to the ears of English people, if not to their
understandings, by the zealous and indiscreet advocacy which its
absurdities have met with in London and our other great cities. It is
true that the disciples have outrun their master--that Mesmer has been
out-mesmerized; but the same criticisms which have been here made on
the system of the arch-charlatan may be applied to the vagaries of his
successors, whether they be dupes or rogues. To electro-biologists,
spirit-rappers, and table-turners the same arguments must be used as
we employ to mesmerists. They must be instructed that phenomena are
not to be referred to magnetic influence, simply because it is
difficult to account for them; that it is especially foolish to set
them down to such a cause, when they are manifestly the product of
another power; and that all the wonders which form the stock of their
conversation, and fill the pages of the _Zoist_, are to be attributed,
not to a lately discovered agency, but to nervous susceptibility,
imagination, and bodily temperament, aroused by certain well-known
stimulants.
They will doubtless be disinclined to embrace this explanation of
their marvels, and will argue that it is much more likely that a table
is made by ten or twelve gentlemen and ladies to turn rapidly round,
without the application of muscular force, than that these ladies and
gentlemen should delude themselves into an erroneous belief that such
a phenomenon has been produced. To disabuse them of such an opinion,
they must be instructed in the wondrous and strangely delicate
mechanism of the human intellect and affections. And after such
enlightenment they must be hopelessly dull or perverse if they do not
see that the metaphysical explanation of "their cases" is not only the
true one, but that it opens up to view far more astonishing features
in the constitution of man than any that are dreamt of in the vain
philosophy of mesmerism. It is humiliating to think that these remarks
should be an appropriate comment on the silliness of the so-called
educated classes of the nineteenth century. That they are out of
place, none can advance, when one of the most popular pulpit orators
of London has not hesitated to commit to print, in a work of religious
pretensions, the almost blasphemous suggestion that table-turning is a
phenomenon consequent upon the first out-poured drops of "the seventh
vial" having reached the earth.