Mesmer has been well avenged by Charcot, the great professor
who fills the chair in the clinical ward of the Saltpetriere for
the nervous diseases of women. Not only, indeed, has this
illustrious physician shown that the charlatan whom the elder
Dumas introduced with such telling effect into his novels, "La
Comtesse de Charny" and "Le Docteur Balsamo," was no mere
charlatan, but a number of Charcot's disciples have proved the
truth of what Dumas seemed to draw from his rich imagination.
Dr. Charcot, who is a cautious man, has publicly admitted
hypnotic suggestion. He thinks extraordinary curative effects,
so far as the consciousness of pain goes, are to be derived from
hypnotism, which is Mesmerism with a new Greek name. But he
always exhorts laics not to dabble in it, and medical men to
keep their hypnotic lore to themselves. This is charming after
the way in which the profession of which Charcot is really a
bright light treated Mesmerism. Mesmer was an empiric. But he
nevertheless got at the truth.
Homoeopathy was tabooed because it was not orthodox, by that
Sanhedrim known as the Faculty of Medicine. Animal magnetism was
long ignored on the ground that charlatans had taken it up and
that no doctor who had self-respect could follow them. Mesmerism
was treated with no less contempt until a new name was given it,
and Charcot declared that there was not only something but a
good deal in it deserving the attention of scientists.
Dr. Luys last Tuesday made a communication to the Academy of
Medicine on this subject which electrified the members present.
It was on the action, both at a distance and by direct contact,
of certain medicated or fermented substances on hypnotic
subjects. The latter were all women who could not possibly have
got their cue beforehand, and were being observed, while Dr.
Luys operated, by a jury of scientists above all suspicion of
having lent themselves to any trickery. Alcohol when put to the
nape in a tube no larger than a homoeopathist's vial and
hermetically sealed produced exactly the same effect as if
imbibed at a bar. Absinthe, haschish, opium, morphine, beer,
champagne, tea and coffee were in succession tried with their
characteristic effects. But "the cup which cheers but not
inebriates" was found too exciting for French neuropaths.
Valerian caused the deepest sadness. The thoughts of the patient
were centred in a grave. She was impelled irresistibly to stoop
down and scratch the ground, and thought herself in a cemetery
exhuming a deceased relative whom she loved. Under the illusion
she fancied herself picking up bones belonging to his skeleton,
which she handled with tender reverence, and when there was an
imaginary mound of them formed she placed, with deep-drawn sighs
and tears and genuflections, a cross above them. Under the
influence of haschish everything looked rosy and gayety
prevailed. The subject was a young girl, very fond of the drama.
She fancied herself on the stage and playing a part which suited
her to perfection. It was in a bouffe opera and she sang her
score admirably. The sentiments were expressed with delicate
feeling. Dr. Luys can, according to the substances he uses, run
through the whole gamut of human passions and emotions.
What is most strange is that no trace of the fictitious world in
which the hypnotized subject has been wandering, remains when
real consciousness is restored. It is very rare for even the
idea of having been in dreamland to survive the awakening from
the hypnotic trance. Dr. Luys says that hypnotic suggestion
sometimes has periods of incubation more or less long. The
subject is at first gently drawn to do a certain thing or
things, and then the drawing becomes an irresistible impulse.
They are first as if tempted and then as if possessed. They can
no more help themselves than a man who had got to the verge of
Niagara Falls in a boat could help going over.
Dr. Roger moved that the Academy name a Commission to inquire
into hypnotic suggestion, near and at a distance. Dr. Bronardel
supported him. He said, "All that Dr. Luys has alleged and shown
cannot fail to make a noise throughout the world. Nobody save
MM. Burot and Bourru have gone so far as Dr. Luys. He not only
forces on the attention of the Academy the question of
hypnotism, but of persons being affected by poisonous substances
which do not penetrate, or it may be even touch, their bodies.
This is from a legal point of view a great danger. A great
social responsibility is involved in the matter. It is the duty
of the Academy to have the experiments of Dr. Luys repeated,
with others that bear upon them."
Hypnotism, or animal magnetism, has been a little more than a
hundred years despised and rejected by the doctors. It was
discovered by a Viennese, Mesmer, who belonged to that curious
branch of the Freemasons, the Illuminati. When he told Stoerck,
the head of the Faculty of Medicine at Vienna, of his discovery,
that learned owl begged him not to discredit that body by
talking of anything so absurd. He persisted. Sarcasm and then
persecution obliged him to go abroad, and he came to Paris in
1778. The world of fashion and the court went crazy about him.
He then set up in the Palais Royal, where, it must be said, in a
way that was worthy of a charlatan, he worked his discovery. M.
Le Roy, of the Academy of Medicine, thought him on the scent of
a great truth. But the other doctors were of the bats' eyes
sort, and hunted Mesmer down. He went to stay at Creteil, where
he applied his method and made his famous magnetic pail, which
interested M. d'Eslon, head doctor to the Comte d'Artois--later
Charles X. He wrote about the magnetic pail. The Academy of
Medicine warned him to be more cautious in speaking of quack
inventions, and threatened to expel him from membership if he
did not retract what he had written. That body even made a new
rule to this effect: "No doctor declaring himself in favor of
animal magnetism, either in theory or practice, can be a member
of this society."
Mesmer, hearing the police had their eye on him, went to Spa.
But the ladies took his part with such ardor that the king named
a commission to inquire into his discovery. Its members, too,
were owls. They reported that "the magnetic fluid of which
Mesmer speaks does not exist." Jussieu stood out against the
owls and he only. He said: "All your efforts will not prevent
this truth from making its way. They can only prevent this
generation from profiting by it."
I should add that the influence gained by the hypnotic operator
remains after the subject awakes from the trance. Its action
then reminds one of the characters in the legends of olden times
who sold their souls to Satan. The Emperor of Brazil is very
anxious to study hypnotism, or, at least, to dip into it when he
comes back to Paris.
The reader will observe in the foregoing letter and in all medical
literature Mesmer is spoken of as a "charlatan" and "empiric."
Charlatan is an opprobrious term, but "empiric" literally means one
who follows experience instead of dogma, and should therefore be an
honorable designation; but as the medical profession has always been
dogmatic, and therefore hostile to empiricism, or fidelity to
experience, it has made empiricism an opprobrious term. Dr. Mesmer was
neither an ignoramus nor a quack, but a graduated physician, although
his title is generally omitted. He had more enthusiasm than
philosophy, but he was far in advance of his contemporaries, who had
neither, and deserves to be honorably remembered.