Part 68

Under this interesting disposition for magnetic union, the eyes of the maiden being fixed on the magnetizer intensely, his hands were passed before her body, his fingers thus forming natural conductors, by which the magnetic fluid was conveyed from the positive to the negative magnetic body. Then came the wonders of this influence. The patient was warmed by the benevolence of the magnetizer, who felt an aura or tingling in the part corresponding to any painful part of the patient’s body which was relieved or cured. Indeed, Bertrand assures us that many told him they saw a blue fluid streaming from his fingers when he magnetized them.

The secret of this is closely analogous to the effect of brooding over sorrow: the mind of the patient is concentrated on the spot to which the passes are directed; and, as we know that disease can be excited thus by imagination (especially in the hypochondriac), so it is a truth that this concentration may remove disease and pain, especially by the superaddition of faith.

ASTR. But the magnetizer, as they said, was not always in a state to operate, and required a certain training. So it was observed that Casper Hauser’s cat did not follow him after he had eaten meat; his magnetic and somnambulant qualities were destroyed by animal food, although they were so abundant in his wilder state,—as his history will thus illustrate to those who believe it:

“As I came into the room, and the door of the deceased person was opened, which I did not know, I felt a sudden dragging on both sides of my breast, as if any one wished to pull me into the room. As I went on and proceeded towards the sick person, a very strong breath blew on me from behind, and the pulling which I felt before in my breast I now felt in my shoulders. I went towards the window; the sick person followed me. At the time that I wished to ask a question of Mr. Von Gutter, I felt a trembling in my left foot, and it became unwell. She went back again, and that trembling left me. She seated herself under the canopy and said, ‘Will not the gentleman sit down?’ Hereupon Mr. Professor Hensler said to her, she should see me. So as she drew nigh to me, within two or three steps, I was still more unwell than before, and I felt pains in all my limbs. Mr. Professor Hensler told her that I was the man who had been wounded (that is, by the attempt which had been made to assassinate him); at the same time she noticed my scar, and pointed towards it; then came the air strong upon my forehead, and I felt pain in it, also my left foot began to tremble greatly. The sick person seated herself under the canopy, and said that she was ill; and I also said that I was so unwell that I must sit down. I sat down in the other room: now the other foot began to twitter. Although Mr. Von Gutter held my knees, I could not keep them still. Now a violent beating of my heart came on me, and there was a heat in all my body: that beating of the heart left me afterwards; and I had a twittering in my left arm, which ceased after some minutes, and I was again something better. This condition lasted until the next morning, then I had a headache again and a twittering in all my limbs, still not so violent. In the afternoon, about three o’clock, it came again something less, and left me earlier: then I was quite well again.”

“The Somnambulist was greatly affected by the presence of Hauser. I heard that, afterwards, when she was asleep, she had said these words,—‘That was a hard struggle for me.’ She felt indisposition from this process even on the next day.”

EV. The first sensation from magnetism is usually that of slight vertigo,—a state of musing or reverie succeeding, the mind being lulled into abstraction, as it is by the rippling of water, the busy hum of bees, or the murmuring of the Æolian-harp. I would explain this feeling by the term, confusion of the senses; for a certain period must elapse ere an external object make an impression on the mind. When, therefore, objects or sounds become extremely rapid, the perception is confused, and the mind, left as it were to itself, cannot follow the impressions so as to associate them, and thus the magnetic ecstacy ensues.

ASTR. But Monsieur de Paysegur, who first excited magnetic somnambulism, magnetized trees and ropes, by which he converted those who clung to them into sleep-walkers. Dr. Elliotson, also, mesmerized a sovereign, by merely looking on it; and a girl, who intuitively selected it from a heap of others, was instantly struck with coma.

EV. The last is a very frail experiment. Paysegur often failed in his illustrations, and then the cunning juggler explained this, by affirming that the trees counter-magnetized each other. Now, whatever may be the influence imparted by this traction, the phenomena of excited somnambulism are similar precisely to those spontaneously occurring. Magnetic sleep, or ecstasis, is its precursor; and there is a total unconsciousness of it when awake. Here is one of those close analogies that are the most potent arguments on which the question of magnetism rests. For, in all the states alluded to, the interval of ecstacy is a blank. And, as in the cases of intense alarm, as you remember, the mesmeric ecstacy will cause a sensitive girl to forget the present, while the scenes of youth and infancy pass vividly before her memory.

Now the effects of the passes of magnetism are referred to six degrees,—the chief conditions being those of sleep, somnambulism, and clairvoyance. The essence of the last, it seems, is combined with a blending of one’s own feeling and nature with those of others;—a reuniting, in fact, of body and soul once separated from that individual whole, which some philosophers, as Hecker, believed the whole human race to be. You observe my fidelity, Astrophel.

It must be confessed, that some of the experiments at which I have myself assisted exhibit very strange results. In some, there is the propensity to chatter nonsense,—a system of one form of hysteria, of which the analogy is perfect. One little jade created much amusement, by inserting supernumerary syllables, thus—opporwaytuniwhatsty.

The insensibility of the nostril to the most powerful ammonia is a very imposing fact; one which must strike us more than that of insensibility of the eye to light, or the ear to sounds. For the faculty of perception may be often suspended in either of those organs of sense, if attention be powerfully diverted to another point, or, as it is by the abstraction of magnetic ecstacy, not directed to any.

So that I do not wonder when thoughtless proselytes believe these effects to be miraculous, or credit the assertions of Pereaud, in his “Antidæmon of Mascon,” that,—“The devil causeth witches to fall into ecstacies, so that a man would say their souls were out of their body.” Or those of Bodin, in his “Theatre of Universal Nature,” that “those that are rapt of the devil feel neither stripes nor cuttings.”

So that the honour of the magnetic monomania must at last be conceded to the fallen angel.

IDA. And are all these wonders worked only to excite curiosity?

ASTR. I believe there is some good in it. Is it not certain, that during this state of magnetic sleep, operations have been performed without creating pain? The lady on whom Mons. Chopelain operated, talked coolly and unconsciously during its performance. And Jules Cloquet, in Paris, amputated the breast of a lady who had been put into an ecstacy or state of apathetic trance by a mesmerizer.

EV. It is, I believe, quite true that she was perfectly unconscious of the operation. But even this is not safe. Pain is given us as a warning against extreme injury; that by our complaint or suffering, the surgeon’s mind may be on its guard. For the body is so far in disorder when it is chilled by this apathetic spell, that it may sink under fatal injuries, although they may be endured by the mind unconscious of its peril or its state. As a very curious antitype to these cases, it is stated in a medical gazette, that a young lady fell down in an hysterical fit and was insensible for two days. As a puffy swelling arose, she was trephined, but there was no disease of the brain. In two days after this, she awoke and expressed all the steps of the operation, of which she had been painlessly sensible.

ASTR. And in this state of ecstasis, is there not strange havoc played with the senses, by their seeming displacement or transference?

The philosophers will tell us that the ganglia in the abdomen become as it were little brains, and the plexusses and the nerves of the skin become, like those of the senses, capable of imparting the idea of visible objects to those ganglia and of rendering a slight whisper distinctly audible. This is all very fine, and very material; but this straining at explanation is itself a proof of mystery. Van Ghest records the case of Mademoiselle B——, a young lady who was magnetized: she assured him that while she was intently looked upon, she felt her eyes and brain leave her head, and become fixed in her stomach, in which situation she saw acutely; but if she was in the slightest degree disturbed, the eyes and their sense seemed to return to her head.

The stories recorded in the book of the Rev. Chauncey Townsend are not less curious than this.

EV. Although I take the metaphysics of a divine with reservation, his facts may not be doubted. For there are other powerful impressions that will produce phenomena as curious. The arm of a young man in the “Ospidale della Vitta,” at Bologna, in 1832, was grasped by a convulsive patient. Violent spasms succeeded, and he lost the senses of taste, smell, and sensibility of the skin, but he could hear if the voice was applied on the stomach; and could, at that spot, discriminate between different substances.

Another patient in the same hospital was subject every third day to violent convulsions, during the continuance of which, he lost entirely the use of all his senses, and could neither hear, see, nor smell. His hands also became so firmly clenched, that it would be impossible to open them without breaking the fingers. Nevertheless, Dr. Ciri, the physician under whose charge he was placed, discovered that the epigastric region, at about two fingers breadth above the navel, received all the impressions of the senses, so as to replace them completely. If the patient was spoken to whilst the finger was placed on this spot, he gave answers, and even, when desired, opened his hands of his own accord. If any substance or matter was placed there, he could describe its form and quality, its colour and smell. As long as the finger was kept on the stomach, the convulsion gradually diminished until it entirely disappeared; but if the finger were placed on the heart, the convulsion returned with increased violence, and continued as long as the finger was kept in that position. If a flute was played while the finger was kept on the stomach, the patient heard the music; but if the finger was taken away, and placed on the heart, and then taken back again to its former position, the man asked why they played by intervals; yet the flute had never ceased. These experiments were all made in the presence of the professors and students of the hospital.

I will not counsel you, Astrophel, as to the extent of your belief in these strange tales, but extreme exaggeration often lessens the interest which scientific minds would take in these curiosities.

These pictures are correct in their outline, but the artists have not spared their colours. They will remind us, who are learned in legends, of that illusive monomania among the monks of Mount Athos, who believed that they could at pleasure attain a celestial vision by communing devoutly with the Deity, while their attention or their sight were directed to the umbilicus! And they were therefore called “Omphalopsychians.” We discover also very close analogies to this mental concentration, in the acuteness with which one sense is endowed on the failure of another. The delicacy of touch in the blind is often extreme; I knew a blind lady who played an excellent rubber, passing her finger lightly over the card spots; and more curious still are the cases of Miss M’Avoy, of Stanley the organist, and of Professor Saunderson. De Luc tells us of a lady, who read distinctly by passing her fingers over the page, even of a strange book. In Laura Bridgman, an American girl, an inmate of the Institution of Boston since 1837, the whole faculty of perception was concentrated in the one sense of touch. At the age of two, sight, and hearing, and smelling, and almost taste, deserted her. To this interesting creature, through the acuteness of her sense of touch in tracing letters, has been imparted so much knowledge, that the moral sentiments and the congenial affections of the heart are now beautifully displayed in her character. If by the dumb alphabet, or finger-talking, conversation is commenced with her, she follows the fingers with her arm with extreme rapidity, so that scarce a letter escapes her. Such are the wonders of this child’s intelligence, that her mind has been cited as illustrative of innate sentiment; but the very facility is enough to explain her actions.

Le Cat writes of a blind sculptor at Voltera, who modelled features most faithfully by the touch.

A French gentleman lost the integrity of every sense, but sensation remained in half of his face, on which he received the correspondence of his friends by their tracing on it letters or forms.

In Mr. Eschke’s establishment at Berlin, conversation was carried on by tracing letters on the clothes of the back.

A Bolognese, on witnessing a woman in acute hysteria, became occasionally convulsed, and impenetrably deaf; if, however, the slightest whisper was breathed to the pit of the stomach, he heard distinctly.

From Andral’s Lectures, to please you, Astrophel, I will select this fragment: