Part 70

EV. And therefore forbid belief.—

ASTR.—Even those displayed before our learned bodies. Madame Celini Sauvage, you remember, in the presence of the committee, in Paris, was placed in somnambulism. Even while insensible to stimuli she formed, it is recorded, a correct judgment of the diseases of persons around her, especially in the person of M. Marc, one of the committee; and in that of a young lady, on whom M. Dupuytren had operated for dropsy, and had tried the effects of the milk of a goat which had been anointed with mercury. Madame, unconscious of this, prescribed the very same remedy. You remember the report, Evelyn.

EV. I remember, but believe it not.

CAST. And is it thus with all our legends? have you no more faith in your own order? There is the learned physician, Justin Kerner. You have not forgotten, Astrophel, his beautiful story of that most accomplished somnambule, the Prophetess of Prevorst, who seemed, as she said, to draw from the air a living principle, and whose very vitality, it was believed, was preserved by the magnetic influence. The body of this ethereal creature enfolded her spirit like a veil of film,—she was a very flower of light living on sun-beams. Her senses were lighted up by the minutest atom. A web of gossamer stung her waxen skin like a nettle. At the pale green light of a glow-worm, she fell into ecstatic sleep; and then, (as to my own Tasso,) came to her spectral visitants, with whom she conversed, and whose colourless forms were visible even to her earthly companions. This fair creature had, as the story goes, been some time dead, when her mother made passes over her cold face and lips; and lo! her eyes opened, and a tremor was on her lip. Were I Astrophel, methinks I would make a pilgrimage to Lowenstein, where her body lies. And now, Evelyn, if you will, reprove me for my wildness, but confess there must be a sort of truth in legends so circumstantial as these.

EV. A fair question, dearest Castaly. Yes, it is the crude or false interpretation of that sort of truth, a transient glimpse it may be, of some embryo principle, that leads to popular error. A baseless theory is raised on an isolated fact; and infantile science, bursting from its leading-strings ere it can crawl, topples headlong down the precipice, and splits on the rock of hypothetical presumption.

And then the confusion into which the mind is thrown by the definitions and conclusions of magnetizers, would make a very Babel of the fair field of philosophy. The least perplexing, perhaps, is that of the French savans who referred magnetism to the efforts of a fluid matter consisting of fire, air, and spirit, to preserve its equilibrium in certain bodies which were, as to their capacity for this fluid, in a state of plus and minus. There is nothing very unphilosophical in this; for the essence of magnetism is somewhat analogous to eccentric derangement of mind, a disturbance of that order or symmetry among the faculties and actions, by which one is highly excited and another is comparatively passive. In a word, Mesmerism is true in part: it may induce catalepsy, somnambulism, exalted sensation, apathetic insensibility, suspended circulation, even death. Clairvoyance and prophecy alone are the impositions as regards its effects, as the “blue flame” at the finger tips is of its nature.

One folly more. Mesmer himself vaunted to Dr. Von Ellikon, “twenty years ago I magnetized the sun;” &c. so that the miracle of Joshua was but a stroke of magnetism. Indeed, Richter, rector of the School of Dessau, affirms that all the miracles of the Testament were but the sequences of magnetic passes. And Kieser refers all to a “telluric spirit,” a sort of magic, of which the sun and moon are the grand reservoirs; nay, this influence is the real cause of sleep and waking.

IDA. So that we are mesmerized by the moon at night-fall, and unmesmerized by the sun at the opening of the dawn.

EV. Then there were some aphorisms of Wolfart about fiddling to the viscera with his magnetic medicine, and working them up, as it were, to a jig or a bolero. These are the visions of a madman. But surely the illusion regarding this mysterious fluid is confessed in Dupotet’s own notion of his own wondrous faculty, when he asserts his belief that animal magnetism is analogous to the royal touch, and the mysteries of Apollo, and Æsculapius, and Isis, the miracles of Vespasian, and the Sibylline prophecies.

ASTR. You sneer at this as you did at the blue flame; but Dupotet assures us that while he is magnetizing his patients, he feels a sensation at the points of his fingers resembling the aura from diffused electricity. Now is it not fair to ask if electro-magnetism may not reside in the animal as well as in the mineral, in man as well as in the torpedo and gymnotus. And why may there not be a condition of intercommunication or en rapport, a magnetic aura creeping through the nerves of each body?

We should not, therefore, make any hasty decision against the presence of an aura streaming from the fingers and directed by the will. Monsieur Deleuze said, in Paris, “I do not know if this be material or spiritual, nor to what distance it is impelled; but it is impelled and directed by my will, for if I cease to will, the influence instantly ceases.”

I remember Priestly opined that phlogiston in our bodies produced electricity, which was destined for our own purposes merely. But as the silurus and the torpedo possess the power of imparting theirs, although at the expense of their animal power, I presume to think that concentrated mind may impart our own nervous influence to others.

EV. I admire the acuteness of your question, Astrophel; but you are now come down from your clouds; you are descending unawares to physiology. There are, doubtless, many peculiar states of the nervous system at present inexplicable. I grant it is possible that the influence of the nervous energy may become so eccentric as to illustrate the phenomena of magnetism, if, as some believe, this influence depends on a subtle fluid analogous to light, heat, and electricity; the nerve conveying this fluid as the wire conducts the electric.

Thus an influence, which is apparently physical, may be, in reality, mental, for there is usually consciousness of the contact. M. Bertrand believed that the mind alone of the patient was acted on, and this is strengthened by the experiments of the Abbé Faria, who produced many of these phenomena by merely exclaiming to his sensitive visitors, “Dormez.”

ASTR. Well, you are drawing the influences of mind and body very closely together, Evelyn. If animal magnetism be not the universal influence of sensitive beings, what is personal sympathy?

EV. It is not that mysterious freemasonry of the senses which may impart a superhuman knowledge, or confer a power of personal recognition. Yet we are required to believe such stories.

ASTR. And are there not many well attested? There was a Monsieur de la Tour Landrie, a nobleman of France, who so powerfully influenced a young shoemaker by whom he was measured, that the youth fell into a senseless syncope, and profuse hæmorrhage succeeded it. This influence was repeated, and excited so deep an interest in the mind of the noble, that he instituted an inquiry regarding his birth and fortunes. And the result was, that Monsieur de la Tour discovered in the humble mechanic the son of his sister, the Baronne de Vesines.

The thrill of feeling with which the lover touches the lip of his mistress, the intense delight with which the mother presses her infant to her bosom, are illustrations of that power to which I allude. It is the magnetic touch of beauty which sends the fires of passion not only through the bounding heart of youth, but even through the icy veins of the stoic. “He that would preserve the liberty of his soul,” said Socrates, “must abstain from kissing handsome people.” “What, then,” said Charmides, “must I be afraid of coming near a handsome woman? Nevertheless, I remember very well, and I believe you do so too, Socrates, that being one day in company with Critobulus’s beautiful sister, who resembles him so much, as we were searching together for a passage in some author, you held your head close to that beautiful virgin, and I thought you seemed to take pleasure in touching her naked shoulder with yours.” “Good God!” replied Socrates, “I will tell you truly how I was punished for it for five days after. I thought I felt in my shoulder a certain tickling pain as if I had been bit by gnats, or pricked with nettles; and I must confess, too, that during all that time I felt a certain hitherto unknown pain at my heart.”

EV. So that “the crime,” like that of Sir Peter Teazle, “carried its punishment along with it.” But you must see that the mind of Socrates first appreciated beauty, ere this influence was imparted to him. Imagination is not certainly idle here, yet I grant, that if the charm of substantial beauty or endearment be wanting, poesy will ever be but a cold and joyless sentiment.

ASTR. Then there is another mysterious sympathy, the fascination of the evil eye, or fascino. There were, both in Africa and in Illyria, writes Aulius Gellius, certain families believed to possess the power of destroying trees, flowers, and children, and this by merely praising them; and Plutarch and Pindar refer to the credence of the Greeks on this point, who were wont to invoke the Fate Nemesis against this fascination of an evil eye.

I think, too, traces of this credence may be found in Ovid, and Horace, and Pliny.

EV. Yes, and in modern Italy the professors of the art are yet termed jettatori, or eye-throwers. But Valletta, an Italian author, conscious of the truth, boldly disclaims for his countrymen the notion of demoniac influence, referring it to physical impression, somewhat resembling the fascination of the eye of the rattlesnake, that drops, as we are told, the bird from the branch into its mouth. In that exquisite sympathy between mind and body (the sequence of an influence on sensibility, or on the senses) consists the secret of all this.

You remember the effects of intense impression on the mind in the excitement of catalepsy, and indeed in causing instantaneous death: this is intense influence on the sensibility. The effects of deep impression on the sight or touch, by the passes of magnetism, are magnetic ecstacies: this is intense influence on the senses. So that all your mysteries are the result of this influence passing through the brain to the body; and the vaunted miracles of Mesmer, and Bertrand, and Dupotet, are, as I have said, impositions, chiefly as regards the nature of their influence. And, like these, the doctrines of Fludd the Seeker, of the Abbé Nollet, of Lavater, of Nicetas the Jesuit, and the quaint ideas of many other visionaries, which you may read in their writings, are really explicable by the laws of physiology.

When the magnetiser asserts that a patient should possess a disposition to be acted on, he unwarily divulges his own secret; for this is nothing more than blind faith in a promise. And this credulity is most characteristic of that disordered condition of a nerve, acute sensibility, in which the slightest causes may effect a seeming wonder. Nay, even disease and death were so induced during the manipulations of Hensler and Emmelin.

This also is the secret of that influence imparted by the touch of a seventh son; or of the hand of a criminal hanging on the gallows; or the revolting precept of Pliny, that an epileptic should drink the blood of a dying gladiator, as it gushes from his wound; or the stroking of Valentine Greatrex; the sympathetic powder of Sir Kenelm Digby; the tractors of Perkins; of chiromancy, rhabdomancy, and of other curiosities recorded in tracts and journals.

In my professional life, I have seen the same influence, though infinitely less in degree, imparted by an implicit confidence in the blessings of our science. Even Bertrand honestly confesses its power.

A lady was thrown into deep sleep by the touch of a magnet, sent by him in an handkerchief from the distance of three hundred miles. But the same effect was produced by the contact of unmagnetized cambric; and Bertrand allows, that where an ignorance of his intention existed, even the magnetized talisman was powerless over his patient.

I could tell you tales of bits of wood effecting all the wonders of the metallic tractors of Perkins; and cubes of lead, and those of nickel, fraught, as a learned doctor had declared, with magnetic virtues; but I spare you.