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115oofe$ b # P* fyiximtuTHE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.

i6mo, $1.25.ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.

New American Edition. With Introduction pre-pared expressly for it by the Author. i6mo,$1.25.

THE OCCULT WORLD.New American from the Fourth English Edi-

tion. With an Introduction written for theAmerican Edition by the Author, and Appen-dix. i6mo, $1.25.

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.,Boston and New York.


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THE RATIONALE OFMESMERISM

A. P.'SINNETTAUTHOR OF ESOTERIC BUDDHISM, THE OCCULT WORLD,

KARMA, ETC., ETC. m

FEB 29 1892.BOSTON AND NEW YORKHOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY(C6e Ifttoembe Pre??, tfamfcribor


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*N

Copyright, 1892,By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., IT. S. A.Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Company.


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CONTENTS

t?t

CHAPTER PAGEI. Old and New Theories ... 1

II. The Mesmeric Force 23III. The Real Literature of Mesmerism . 36IV. Side-Lights on Mesmeric Phenomena . 85V. Curative Mesmerism .... 104VI. Anesthetic Effects and Rigidity . . 128

VII. The Nature of Sensitiveness . . 140VIII. Clairvoyance 168IX. Mesmeric Practice 214

Index 229


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THERATIONALE OF MESMERISM.

CHAPTER I.OLD AND NEW THEORIES.

It is necessary at the outset that I shouldexplain why I am writing about mesmerismand not about hypnotism. Names are, afterall, but tickets put by conventional agree-ment upon things or branches of knowledge,and if, in the first instance, a hundred yearsago, when the matter began to attract noticein Europe, the word hypnotism had beenadopted to describe certain abnormal condi-tions of the human body and the humanfaculties, we need not, at this stage of theproceedings, have quarreled with the ex-pression. But, though it has become sostrangely popular quite recently, the termhypnotism merely represents, as regardsits actual origin, a misconception of the facts


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2 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.relating to the abnormal conditions justmentioned, coupled with a very unworthydisposition to slander the first important ex-ponent of all this knowledge in moderntimes and to cover a cowardly retreat fromdenials which had become no longer tenable.

In so far as the term hypnotism is con-sciously preferred by some modern investi-gators, that preference rests on the idea thatthe earlier belief in the days when nothingof the kind was spoken of except mesmer-ism, has been shown by later experience tobe scientifically erroneous. The early beliefwas that something in the nature of a subtlefluid passed from the mesmeric operator tothe subject; whereas some experimentalistsof the modern school have ascertained thatresults alleged to have been obtained bymesmerism can be brought about where nooperator takes part in the undertaking.Some people by simply working for them-selves apparatus of a suitable sort, by gaz-ing, for example, at the rapid flashes of arevolving mirror, or by merely concentratingtheir attention on a spot of bright light, willbe enabled to bring on a certain abnormal,or shall we say cataleptic, condition of theirnerves, which will in its turn superinduce


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OLD AND NEW THEORIES. 3anaesthesia, perhaps, or even some imperfectpsychic phenomena. But the discovery ofthese people does not in the smallest degreedisprove the other discovery of the earliermesmerists that a subtle fluid really doespass when an operator, properly qualifiedhimself, is at work, and the fact that this isso is proved by many more experimentaliststhan have endeavored to maintain the barehypnotic hypothesis. Further than this,many mesmerists of the higher order enter-tain no doubt concerning the existence ofthis fluid, for the simple reason that theycan see it.

Sight is a faculty which varies in its pen-etrative power in a greater degree even thantelescopes vary. A tolerably simple experi-ment to test this may be devised on the fol-lowing plan : If a spectrum from a ray ofsunlight be thrown upon a screen, every onewho is acquainted with the most elementaryfacts of optics will be aware that beyond thecolored band of light which is visible, thereare invisible rays, the presence of which canbe proved by means of photographic paper,and the chemical power of which, indeed, isconsiderably greater than that of the brightrays actually seen. It is perhaps not so


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4 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.generally known, however, that the powerof direct vision extends with some peoplemuch further in the direction of those so-called ultra-violet rays than is the case withothers. The majority of people, it is true,will come to a tolerably close agreement asto the distance along the colored band oflight on the screen which they can see, andif asked to mark the place at which the vio-let tinge absolutely ceases will mark placesthat are not very widely apart, but here andthere a small percentage of more peculiarlyendowed observers will be found to seegreatly beyond the usual stopping-place.

Just in the same way other visible pheno-mena of nature besides rays of violet lightmelt, so to speak, in others which are notordinarily visible, and the subtle fluid whichemanates from a mesmeric operator is veryclose to the border-land of the phenomenawhich every one can see, and therefore canbe discerned by, I should think, many morepeople than will be able to see to any con-siderable distance into the ultra-violet spec-trum. A well-known writer, Baron vonReichenbach, devoted himself especially tothis branch of mesmeric inquiry. He hasrecorded with patient care, for which a pig-


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OLD AND NEW THEORIES. 5headed generation inhabiting the earthabout the middle of this century gave himno gratitude, a long series of results obtainedwith a great many sensitives whom heemployed, all having to do with their powerof seeing visible emanations from humanfingers, as also from physical magnetic ap- 'paratus.

Baron von Reichenbach's experiments,properly followed up, would have been foundto constitute a complete demonstration ofthe theory of mesmerism, advanced by Mes-mer himself in the first instance, and unre-servedly adopted as entirely in harmonywith their own extensive observation andpractice by his immediate followers, de Puy-segur and Deleuze. But before the Baron'stime the whole subject had been discreditedby reason of the fierce incredulity it encoun-tered at the hands of the orthodox scientificworld at the beginning of the century. Inthe long history of human blundering therecan hardly be any example more remarka-ble than that afforded by the rejection ofmesmerism at this period. The facts illus-trating the reality of mesmerism issued intorrents from every centre of mesmeric ac-tivity, but the passive opposition of bigotry


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6 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.was not to be overcome. Hundreds ofpeople practiced mesmerism, employing itsolely as a curative agent; its highest psy-chic aspects being at that time little under-stood even by its warmest partisans, andthousands of people benefited by its applica-tion. But all the recognized societies andcorporations of science were arrayed in armsagainst it, and professional persecution wasthe lot of any medical man who identifiedhimself with the new discovery. This per-secution in the end stamped it out almostentirely. Some further details on this pointwill fall most naturally into their place whenI come to speak of the early literature ofmesmerism, but for the moment I pass on totrace the genesis of the modern view of thesubject in connection with which we have tocongratulate ourselves on the broad fact,that one of the most important avenues ofknowledge open to students of the naturalhistory of humanity is now again availablefor general use, but in connection withwhich, except for that broad fact, we have,as a generation, little to be proud of.Modern writers on hypnotism are almost

all building their conclusions on a negationof truth concerning the forces really at work


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OLD AND NEW THEORIES. 7in the production of mesmeric phenomena,and are committed for the most part to atheory which concentrates their attention al-most entirely on what is rather a disease ofthe science they deal with, than the scienceitself. Nor do I think it a satisfactory planfor people, who know something more of thescience in its loftier aspect, to divide therecords of the mind, and say hypnotismis one thing and mesmerism is another.Of course the experiments practiced at theSalpetriere are one thing and the healthyapplications of animal magnetism are an-other ; hypnotic suggestion is one thing, andthe culture of the higher faculties under truemesmerism is another. But people whoadopt the expression hypnotism meanthereby, or think they mean, to include inits range all that is real and genuine in thediscoveries of Mesmer, all that was not im-posture and charlatanry in the practice ofhis immediate successors. Psychic students,therefore, who really understand somethingof the forces set in action, whether intelli-gently by the mesmerist or unintelligentlyby the hypnotist, cannot handle the term ashaving a departmental significance. It is,as a term employed in connection with this


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8 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.subject, the flag of error, so to speak. Weought not to make peace with it at all.The general use of the term dates back toMr. Braid of Manchester, a surgeon who iscalled by MM. Binet and Fere the initiatorof the scientific study of animal magnetism.He was really a person who invented a

method of thinking which enabled people,thus inclined, to handle and talk about someof the phenomena of mesmerism, withoutsetting themselves in opposition to medicalorthodoxy, and without giving up the un-grateful cry that Mesmer was an impostor.For half a century the medical professionhad committed itself to the denial of patentfacts and the vilification of all who observedand reported them. Mr. Braid, by a boldmanoeuvre, possessed himself of some, at anyrate, among the facts, and, by putting aforged ticket upon them, justified himselfbefore the world for continuing to vilifytheir real discoverers for continuing toswim at ease with the stream of bigotryand so afforded his confreres an opportunityof escaping from the inconvenience of beingat war with notorious experience without in-curring the humiliation of confessing thatthey had previously been in the wrong.


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OLD AND NEW THEORIES. 9Braid's theory of hypnotism was set forthin the first instance in a little volume from

his pen, published in 1843, under the titleNeurypnology; or the Eationale of Ner-vous Sleep, considered in relation to AnimalMagnetism. This was an expansion of anaddress Mr. Braid delivered at a meeting ofthe British Association held in Manchesterin 1842. The author avows that he was ledto his conclusions by certain phenomena hewitnessed at a seance conducted by M. La-fontaine, a mesmerist, but he writes ratherirritably to maintain the originality of hisviews that seem at once to have been referred,on their first enunciation, by his critics toprevious experimentalists, especially M.Bertrand and the Abbe Faria. He is spe-cially eager to make out that his processes arequite different from anything previouslyknown. He says, I have now entirely sep-arated hypnotism from animal magnetism.I consider it to be merely a simple, speedy,and certain mode of throwing the nervoussystem into a new condition which may berendered eminently available in the cure ofcertain disorders. He attended M. Lafon-taine's seance because he considered mes-meric phenomena a system of collusion


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10 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.or delusion, or of excited imagination, sym-pathy or imitation. . . . That night I sawnothing to diminish but rather to confirmmy previous prejudices. However, at thenext conversazione, six nights afterwards,one fact, the inability of a patient to openhis eyelids, arrested my attention. I con-sidered that to be a real phenomenon.He watched this case especially and feltassured he had discovered a cause. He atonce set to work with experiments of hisown to prove that the inability of thepatient to open his eyes was caused by para-lyzing the levator muscles of the eyelids,through their continued action during theprotracted fixed stare. Operating withsubjects of his own and constraining themto fatigue the muscles in question by a pro-longed upward gaze, he soon obtained thecomplete hypnotic trance, together with allthe now familiar symptoms rigidity of thelimbs at the command of the operator, greatexaltation of the senses, liability to halluci-nation, imposed by the operator, and cura-tive effects in cases of illness where the hyp-notic trance was induced with the curativeintention. There is something fairly ludi-crous and not a little contemptible in the


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OLD AND NEW THEORIES. 11way Mr. Braid calmly passes on to dealwith these phenomena as the results of hismethod and his discovery, when he sets outwith the assumption that everything of thesame kind accomplished by his predecessorswas imposture, and that he picked out frommesmerism the one fact that was true, thatpeople could not open their eyes if the leva-tor muscles were paralyzed by previous star-ing. One can hardly understand how vanitycould blind him to the glaring absurdity ofhis own position. If fatigue of the levatormuscles had anything to do with the matter,that cause would not extend to effects rang-ing beyond the eyelids. Mr. Braid droppedupon the curious facts of phreno-mesmerism,which show different propensities in a mes-merized subject stimulated to unwonted ac-tivity by touching the corresponding organsof the brain. Piety, benevolence, cupidity,can, by his own showing, be played upon inthis way with a subject who is hypno-tized, and yet he still keeps in the forefrontof his treatise on all experiments of this na-ture, his original silly guess that the state inwhich they become possible is due to thefatigue of certain muscles in the eyelids.Mr. Braid in reality must have been a


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12 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.mesmerist of considerable force, withoutknowing enough of the subject he arrogantlydespised to understand the methods bywhich his results were accomplished ; for heevidently obtained an extraordinarily largepercentage of successes with the people heexperimented on. But he has received somuch undue credit of late from modernwriters on the subject, especially in thiscountry, that it is worth while to show, inopposition to the indignant claim for origi-nality he puts forward, that there was no-thing original even in his misapprehensions.One of the best or least objectionablemodern books on the subject, Dr. Moll'sHypnotism (translated from the Ger-man), skims the history of mesmerism atthe outset, and says: The whole doctrinereceived a great impetus through the AbbeFaria. ... In 1814-15 he showed by ex-periments, whose results he published, thatno unknown force was necessary for the pro-duction of the phenomena; the cause of thesleep, he said, was in the person who was tobe sent to sleep; all was subjective. Thisis the main principle of hypnotism and ofsuggestion of which Faria, even then, madeuse in inducing sleep. Two other investiga-


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OLD AND NEW THEORIES. 13tors in France must be mentioned, Bertrandand Noizet, who paved the way for the doc-trine of suggestion in spite of much inclina-tion to animal magnetism.Thus Mr. Braid is glorified in modern ar-

ticles and books on hypnotism, as the manwho extracted the real truth of the subjectfrom the confusion left by foolish enthusi-asts or impostors in the beginning, and putus all on a scientific foundation, in spite ofthe fact that his view is not only a giganticblunder, absurdly at variance with the facts,even as reported by himself but even as ablunder, no better than a plagiary.The Manchester surgeon's reasoning would

have been blown to atoms by contemporarycritics if it had been opposed to instead ofchiming in with conventional prejudice.But fashion soon becomes an ample cloakfor bad logic, and, one after another, mod-ern writers, if drawn to the subject ofmesmeric phenomena at all, date their chro-nology from the year 1 of the Braidian era.Even the treatise on Hypnotism, by Al-bert Moll, of Berlin, though in some re-spects *the best of the recent volumes of theBraidian school, is infected with its funda-mental principle. I hope to show shortly


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14 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.that the real literature of mesmerism lies inthe background, behind the shower of occa-sional essays brought forth by the vogue ofDr. Charcot's experiments, but it maybe aswell, in the first instance, to complete theaccount I have just given of Braid's ownwork, by noticing some of those which followin his footsteps.Dr. Moll's book is not without merit as anepitome of the subject from the limited mod-ern standpoint. It contains a fairly reason-able and impartial though hasty survey ofthe rise and progress of mesmerism from thetime of Mesmer onward to the present day,also an account of the different methods em-ployed by different schools of mesmerists ininducing the various mesmeric phenomena.The writer chiefly errs in concentrating hisattention too much on recent results, and indealing with the phenomena of hypnotic sug-gestion as though they constituted an en-tirely new departure in human knowledge.He justly rebukes some modern scientistswho treat hypnotic experiments with con-tempt, but says so long as science does notexamine everything practically and withoutprejudice, the great delusions of which ani-mal magnetism, etc. , make use will continue


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OLD AND NEW THEORIES. 15to exist, thus himself treating with con-tempt the branches of his own subject withwhich he happens to be unacquainted. Inconclusion, he says : In spite of the progresswhich the exact sciences have made, we mustnot for a moment forget that the inner con-nection between the body and the mentalprocesses is utterly unknown to us. Underthese circumstances we should not refuse toexamine the apparently inexplicable . ' ' Cer-tainly the representatives of modern physicalscience are utterly without knowledge con-cerning the relations of mind and body, butthat is not true of all mankind, as occultstudents are aware, and the annals of thehigher mesmerism go far to point out hope-ful paths of investigation in that direction.But the value even of mesmerism as an aidto such researches may be reduced to zero,if we calmly ignore all that the greatest in-vestigators of the past have accomplished,and devote ourselves exclusively to the super-ficial phenomena rediscovered in the last fewyears by the hypnotists whose chosen desig-nation marks them out as people who havedeliberately elected to ignore the greatestwork done by their predecessors.Two French writers, MM. Alfred Binet


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16 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.and Charles Fere, the latter assistant phy-sician at the Salpetriere in Paris, have pub-lished in London a book in English which iscalled ''Animal Magnetism, perhaps sim-ply to avoid repeating the title Hypnotism,already so frequently used ; but it might justas well have been called by the expressionso popular for the moment. It is introducedto the reader as written in the environmentof the Salpetriere ; it is based^ on the notionthat there is but one hypnotism, and thatCharcot is its prophet.The keynote of the volume, as an inter-

pretation of the phenomena it deals with,may be found in the following sentencesfrom the beginning of an early chapter:As far as its mode of production is con-cerned, hypnotic sleep does not essentiallydiffer from natural sleep, of which it is infact only a modification, and all the causeswhich produce fatigue are capable of produ-cing hypnosis in those who are subject to it.

. . . Sensorial excitements produce hyp-nosis in two ways, when they are strongand abrupt, or when they are faint and con-tinued for a prolonged period.It is difficult to criticise such a theory asthis in moderate terms. It is difficult to get


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OLD ASD NEW THEORIES. 17behind the mind of a man who can thinkthat a condition in which people can suffera leg to be cut off without knowing it issomething akin to natural sleep and to beproperly described as only a modification ofit. Certainly in one sense death and hisbrother sleep are akin, but rather in poeticfancy than in the pages of sober science. Ifone thing is said to be a modification of an-other, the meaning surely is that it does notdiffer oreatlv from it in essential character.In the mesmeric trance not only do we meetwith astounding effects of anaesthesia. when a pinch of the arm would be enough towake anybody from natural sleep. ' butalso an entirely new condition of the intel-lectual faculties utterly cut off by oblivionbefore the subject comes out of the trance,from the waking consciousness. Who hasknown the natural sleep in which the sleeperis able to converse freely on recondite sub-jects quite unfamiliar to him in his wakingstate? and yet it is a common experience ofmesmerism that this is possible in the mag-netic trance. If MM. Binet and Fere hadsaid, In the narrow and limited phase ofmesmeric conditions, with which we arealone concerned, there is some analogy be-


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18 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.tween what we call hypnosis and ordinarysleep, the statement would hardly be accu-rate ; but when put forward on the basis of ageneral assumption that the so-called hyp-nosis embraces all that is true and real inmesmerism, it is nothing less than absurd.

In fact, the whole theory of the Charcotschool depends upon a studious disregard ofall the facts of experience that do not squarewith it. For instance, in the book before uswe read of manoeuvres which formerly ledto the belief that it is possible to magnetizefrom a distance, and then this belief is dis-posed of by the supposition that in such casesthe subject had been told to expect the effectfrom a distance at a certain time, and there-fore the results have only been due to sug-gestion in the waking state. In reality allthe records of mesmerism, both early andrecent, teem with illustrations of the way inwhich magnetic influence from a distancehas been successfully exerted upon personsquite unprepared to expect it. From dePuysegur's time down to some of the recentexperiments of the Society for Psychical Re-search, the fact has been substantiated overand over again, but it does not fit in with thefavorite Braid-Charcot hypothesis, so tantpis pour lesfaits as usual.


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20 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.the phenomena produced by the agency ofthe magnetic fluid were also susceptible ofbeing induced more or less imperfectlyin other ways as well. But latter-day inves-tigators have not been loyal to truth. Theyhave chosen for consideration only thosefacts and experiences which suited them andhave calmly ignored the rest. Incidentally,it is true, they have done a public servicethey have set afloat a general belief thatmesmerism after all is a reality, and but forthem perhaps it would only at this day havebeen a reality for isolated students of occultscience. But the limitations to which theirown theories and methods condemn theirthinking are deplorable, and stand at thismoment terribly in the way of any real pro-gress in the cultivation of the public mindalong the channels of research which mes-merism, correctly appreciated, opens out.The principle of study, which it is myforemost desire to impress on those who willlisten to me, is this: Let all who wish toread about mesmerism go back to the foun-tain-head of the subject and explore the vol-uminous writings of the early French school,of which I propose to speak more fully inthe next few pages. In that literature the


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OLD AND NEW THEORIES. 21real foundations of our knowledge of mes-merism were laid. There we shall find, it istrue, some traces of a most pardonable, ifnot praiseworthy, excitement and enthusiasmin reference to the wonderful beneficence ofthe new revelation which mesmeric discover-ies seemed to embody. There we shall readof some procedure in which we shall fail todiscern the true working of Mesmer's ownideas ; but at the time a prodigious excite-ment was operative with large numbers ofpeople deeply stirred by wonder and admi-ration, and many cures were worked throughthe influence of an overwhelming faith inassociation with an external ceremonial thatprobably had little, if any, objective effect.Similar results have been observed withinrecent years at Lourdes, and only the otherday at Treves, in connection with the exhi-bition of the Holy Coat. But personswho justly conceive that touching a HolyCoat, of which even the holiness is apocry-phal, would not do them any good, make amistake unworthy of the superior sense theytake credit for if they fail to realize th^tfullbelief in a Holy Coat or a holy anything is areal force within the organisms of the per-sons inspired by it. Mesmer's baquets and


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22 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.de Puysegur's magnetized trees may not haveworked in the same way as the passesand magnetic currents with which thoseearly experimentalists sought to coordinatethem. But they worked, and therefore thewriters in question honestly recorded thefacts concerning them, not yet havinglearned from Mr. Braid and the hypnotizersthat the way to put their inquiry on a scien-tific basis was to pick and choose amongthe experiences they acquired, so as onlyto father those which were calculated toplease a self-sufficient public opinion aroundthem.To put aside the writings and experiments

that relate to the present distorted revival ofmesmerism, under a misleading pseudonym,and to turn back to the pages of de Puyse-gur and Deleuze, Bicard, Gauthier, Teste,and du Potet, is like passing from an eviland stifling to a pure moral atmosphere.


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CHAPTER II.THE MESMERIC FORCE.

Before tracing our way back to the be-ginnings of modern mesmerism in the very-earliest years of the century, it may be wellto pause for a while about half-way back atthe stage attained by Baron von Reichen-bach. His researches may fairly be takenas the groundwork of a correct theory ofmesmerism. The book in which they are allbrought out, generally known to students ofthis sort of literature as Reichenbach's Re-searches, bears in reality a somewhat pon-derous title. It is called on the title pageof the English translation by Dr. Ashburner Physico-Physiological Researches on theDynamics of Magnetism, Electricity, Heat,Light, Crystallization, and Chemism intheir relations to Vital Force, by BaronCharles von Reichenbach. The author hadlighted on the discovery that sensitives in ill-ness could see luminous emanations or flamesissuing from the poles of magnets. At that


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24 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.time, as we shall see later on, the facultieswhich constitute a person what we now calla sensitive, were supposed to manifest them-selves during illness only, and they weresought for by inquirers among persons suf-fering from some form of sickness. Withthe painstaking care of a true man of sci-ence, Baron von Reichenbach repeated hisexperiments with magnets with a great num-ber of subjects, taking care of course to testthe reality of their power to see what theysaid they saw, by making them find out hismagnets in dark rooms, without having beentold where they had been placed, and inother ways. Then he found that the lumi-nous brushes or flames were to be seenemanating from crystals as well as from mag-nets. The experiments which brought outthese facts were elaborate and protracted,but soon acquired a new development al-most by accident.

Baron von Reiehenbach discovered thatluminous appearances, similar to thoseemanating from magnets and crystals, pro-ceeded from the human hand in a greatmany cases, and he dropped upon this factquite by chance in the first instance, withouthaving set out on this inquiry with any pre-


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THE MESMERIC FORCE. 25conceived theory. He was experimentingwith one of his sensitives with a magnet inthe dark, and she was playing with the lu-minous flame which she could perceive com-ing out of the ends, when he in the darknessput his hand between her and the magnet.She immediately began to play in the sameway with emanations from the hand, andspoke to the bystanders of five little flameswhich leaped up and down in the air. Shedid not see the hand itself, and at first sup-posed the five little flames to be some inde-pendent phenomenon. Other persons pres-ent then raised their hands before her, andfrom various fingers she saw a similar lightemitted more or less energetically. Thissensitive, Miss Keichel, appears to havebeen the first in connection with whom Baronvon Reichenbach broke down an erroneousbelief which had hitherto prevailed with allthe earlier mesmerists. As we shall seewhen coming to review the early literature,almost all the experimentalists, closely fol-lowing on Mesmer, became possessed of theidea that the clairvoyance they discovered intheir patients, and which almost always hadreference to the patients' illnesses, was ne-cessarily extinguished on the recovery of


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26 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.health ; and they thus drifted into a way ofsupposing that the power was in some waymorbid in its character, that it relatedexclusively to pathological conditions, andceased to be effective when these wereno longer present. In reference to MissReichel, Baron von Reichenbach announcesas a wonderful fact that even after she gotwell she continued to see the magnetic flames,the crystal light, and the flames on the handwhenever it was dark enough. On inquiryit appeared that she had possessed this fac-ulty even from childhood, and had two sis-ters who, like herself, saw these luminousappearances when other persons could seenothing.

Further experiments with other sensitivessoon enabled the Baron to generalize as aprinciple, and to declare, that fiery brushesof light issue from the points of the fingersof healthy men in the same manner as fromthe poles of crystals. Readers who maytake up the Baron's book now, especiallywith the object of getting information aboutthe vital mesmeric fluid, will be tantalized tofind how much more of his attention he de-voted to mechanical sources of the luminouseffect than to those having direct reference


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THE MESMERIC FORCE. 27to mesmeric energy. But the truth, is thatthis characteristic of his research gives itpeculiar importance at the present day tostudents of mesmerism as a science, becauseit links the vital energy of the human framewith other great forces in nature, and bringsour thinking into line with those great phi-losophical speculations which always seek forunity in nature. A very disjointed and il-logical conception of the cosmos is thatwhich regards anything in man as altogetherpeculiar to himself as a manifestation of na-ture. Just as his physique is related in va-rious ways to the matter around us out ofwhich it is built up by the subtle chemistryof living organisms, and just as philosophicalconvictions must force us to the conclusionthat the highest spiritual element in the hu-man soul has in some way a common originwith the Universal Spirit from whose energythe whole of what is called creation musthave proceeded, so also it is only reasonableto suppose that these intermediate forces withwhich we are now dealing, the vital forceswhich are something intermediate in theircharacter between matter and spirit, mustthemselves be related to some correspondingagent of wide diffusion through the universe.


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28 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.Mesmer guessed at this with the inspirationof genius, and ridiculed as he was by thelearned folly of his time, the latest coordi-nation of all our knowledge having referenceto occult forces is steadily bringing us backto the position he took up. Let us profit,therefore, by von Reichenbaeh's researcheseven where they do not directly refer to man-ifestations of vital energy proceeding fromliving organisms. Especially let us profitby some very interesting and suggestive ex-periments he tried with sunlight as a sourceof energy discernible in the case of magnets.He wished to ascertain whether sunlight fall-ing on one end of a copper wire would su-perinduce any conditions in the other endwhen this should be examined in a dark roomby one of his sensitives. The copper wireby itself presented no appearance that couldbe remarked, but when the other end wasput out into the sunshine a crystallic lumi-nosity became perceptible in a weak degreeas emanating from the other end in the darkroom. The next experiment had to do witha superior arrangement of this apparatus.The wire was attached at one end to a plateof copper, and this plate of copper was ex-posed to the sunlight. Under these condi-


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THE MESMERIC FORCE. 29tions a powerful manifestation of the lu-minous energy, which Baron von Reichen-bach eventually calls the odic force, wasmanifested. The importance of this discov-ery which von Reichenbach checks in agreat many ways, and elaborates with a greatvariety of substances besides copper re-sides in the obvious reflection that the sun'slight is the great source of vital energywhich evokes organic conditions of matterfrom the inorganic world. The whole veg-etable creation is the first storehouse of vitalenergy, whatever it may be, and this itclearly derives directly from the sun's rays.That the animal kingdom derives its vitalforces from the translation of vegetable or-ganisms into those adapted to its own re-quirements is equally obvious, and the sun'slight must thus be regarded as indirectly thesource of animal life. How far it mightinfluence, refresh, or stimulate that life bydirect application is unknown to us, onlybecause modern science has been so denselyincapable of pursuing lines of thought whichdo not hinge directly on to any of its ownmaterial achievements.Among Baron von Reichenbach's experi-

ments, one long series which I must not stop


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30 THE MATIONALE OF MESMERISM.to recapitulate in detail, has reference to thepolar character of the odic force; distinctanalogies between the polar character ofordinary magnetism and that of the vitalenergy being elaborately traced.Von Reichenbach's first volume, though

published in the English translation in 1850,relates to a series of experiments which wereapparently concluded about the year 1848.Attacks of all kinds were of course leveledagainst him, and his results treated as incon-clusive. Recognizing himself that theyrested on a foundation which was narrow,considering the importance of the principlesto be established, being the result of experi-ments with five different sensitives, he setto work in the two following years to expandthem enormously. When his second volumewas brought out he was enabled to supply alist of sixty sensitive persons, men and w

to-men, mothers and maidens, children andaged persons, high, low, rich, and poor,with whom he had repeated the experiencesof his first investigation; and now he hadcome satisfactorily to the principle that ill-ness had nothing to do with the matter asregards the power of perceiving the odicfluid. Perfectly healthy and strong persons


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THE MESMERIC FORCE. 31are included in considerable numbers in hisnew list. It is little less than amazing thatsuch an enormous body of results as in thesetwo volumes von Reichenbach brought to-gether should have remained for half a cen-tury almost unnoticed by those who arrogateto themselves the title of natural philoso-phers, and that it should still be merely arecord of interest for an isolated few whoseintuitions and foresight enable them to dis-cern in the forces appertaining to other thanthe physical planes of nature, the possibili-ties of an advancement for human know-ledge that will far eclipse, some time in thefuture, the achievements of which the nine-teenth century has been so proud.Even before Eeichenbach's time some of

the early experimentalists of Mesmer's ownepoch had come into contact with the factthat luminous emanations could be seen inconnection with hands employed to projectthe mesmeric fluid, and even Bertrand, ofwhom, amongst others, I shall have to speakshortly, acknowledges that his sensitives as-sure him that they see a fluid emanatingfrom his own fingers, although he himself isnot disposed to believe them, and constructsan elaborate theory of his own almost as


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32 THE BATIONALE OF MESMERISM.illogical as some of those presented to us bythe most modern writers, to account for thealready enormous accumulation of mesmericexperience.

For the moment, of course, the mesmericfluid theory is altogether out of fashion, andthe most recent inquirers who have set towork within the last few years to rediscoverthe facts already included in books writtenfrom fifty to eighty years ago, have been con-spicuous illustrations of one very commonhuman frailty in reference to all advancesof knowledge. When, for the first time,their attention has been turned to a subjectneglected up till then, they have acted asthough their own conversion to an apprecia-tion of the facts constituted a sort of newdeparture for those facts. There is some-thing positively ludicrous to readers familiarwith the earlier books in the great library ofmesmeric literature, in the way the least in-telligent of modern students invariably treatthe whole subject, if they handle it at all, assomething which they, for the first time, atlast have ascertained to be really worth in-quiry, and in reference to which it is nowimportant that mankind should begin, incompany with them, to observe facts and lay


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THE MESMERIC FORCE. 33a foundation for reasoning. We have beenconfronted in the last few years with a del-uge of hypnotic literature, but most of thebooks written to amplify the hypnotic hypo-thesis could hardly, one would think, havebeen written if the authors had had the goodsense to acquaint themselves with all thathad been previously done in the line of theirown investigations. It seems, as I havesaid already, rather as though the object ofthe manoeuvre was to escape from an unten-able position, than to exhibit any new truth,when the first exponents of the hypnotictheory adopted the principle they represent.To identify those who were really the first

exponents of this principle might be difficultnow. Bertrand at all events anticipatedBraid by half a lifetime, though Braid was sosatisfied of his own originality that he ridi-cules, as we have seen, with the utmost pos-sible indignation, some contemporary criticswho endeavored to introduce him to hispredecessors in error. JPereant qui ante nosnostra dixerint.

Before leaving this branch of the subjectlet me add that Reichenbach's experiments,as will have been seen, lent a better justifi-cation than is generally supposed to exist


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34 THE BATIONALE OF MESMEBISM.for the habit into which early mesmericwriters fell of calling the mesmeric fluidmagnetism. This term has rather exas-perated modern scientific thinkers, who com-plain, not without apparent reason, that no-thing in the behavior or phenomena of whatis called animal magnetism bears any morerelation to the force known as magnetism inthe laboratories, than to gravitation or chem-ical affinity or any other force of nature welike to name. But first of all the whole lit-erature of this subject is so saturated withthe expression magnetism as applied to allthe phenomena with which mesmerists deal,that it would be hardly possible at the pres-ent day to comb it free of that expression;and, secondly, we have, at all events, nobetter term that can be employed to take itsplace. Further than this, so very close acorrespondence is observed by people whocan see beyond the ordinary boundary ofvisual perception, between the emanationsof physical magnets both of the permanentand electrically excited orders, and, on theother hand, the emanations proceeding fromthe fingers and head of a mesmerist, andobviously concerned in some way with theso-called magnetic trance of his subject,


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THE MESMERIC FORCE. 35that in the present state of our knowledge Ithink it would be a great mistake to quarreltoo hastily with the term animal magnet-ism. Personally, I believe that to be adesignation which much more accuratelydefines the great majority of mesmeric phe-nomena than any other we could employ.It certainly covers a hundred such pheno-mena for every one which fits in with thehypnotic hypothesis, and is therefore thebest abstract term to employ next after thestill more convenient, because non-connota-tive, expression derived from the name ofthe unfortunate and much abused Mesmer.


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CHAPTER HI.THE REAL LITERATURE OF MESMERISM.Mesmer himself Frederick AnthonyMesmer according to Picard, was born at

Weiler on the Rhine, in the year 1734. Hestudied medicine in his youth and settled asa doctor in Vienna, where he ultimately mar-ried advantageously. In 1766 he wrote adissertation on The Influences of the Plan-ets on the Human Body, which drew uponhim much ridicule and professional opposi-tion. The attempt to account for this in-fluence led him to make the experimentswhich introduced him to the facts with whichhis name has been since indissolubly associ-ated. At first he worked entirely with mag-nets, obtained some cures by this means, andwrote A Letter to a Foreign Physician onthe Magnetic Remedy. But he was muchpersecuted for his audacity. For the fur-ther development of his inquiries he estab-lished a private hospital in his own house forthe relief of destitute invalids. He soon


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REAL LITERATURE OF MESMERISM. 37came to the conclusion that the magneticrods with which his first experiments weremade, only served as conductors for a fluidemanating from his own person. To this heat once gave the name Animal Magnetism,and theorized boldly concerning its diffusionthrough nature. But he was accused of de-ceiving his public, and of having magneticrods concealed about his person an accu-sation which is very amusing, in view of thefact that, when he really used magneticrods, he was ridiculed for expecting to ob-tain curative results by such means. Hisreputation was assailed and his fortune im-paired. He sought some more favorabletheatre for the development of his experi-ments, and moved from Vienna to Paris in1777. Two years later he published a shorttreatise, entitled Memoire sur la decou-verte du Magnetisme Animal. The the-ory put forward rested on Mesmer's convic-tion that there exists a reciprocal influencebetween the heavenly bodies, the earth, andanimated beings. The medium of this in-fluence he conceived to be a very subtlefluid pervading the whole universe, whichfrom its nature is capable of receiving, prop-agating, and communicating every impulse


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38 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.of motion. The reciprocal action is subjectto certain mechanical laws which have notyet been discovered. . . . The animal bodyexperiences the alternative effects of thisagent, which, by insinuating itself into thesubstance of the nerves, affects them imme-diately. Mesmer's suggestions to this ef-fect were treated by the men of science inParis at the time with contempt. One, in-deed, of the members of the medical facultyof Paris, Dr. D'Eslon, became a warm par-tisan of Mesmer's views. But, instead ofinquiring into them, the Faculty suspendedDr. D'Eslon for a year, and ordered that,at the expiration of this time, his nameshould be erased from the list of the society,unless he recanted his declaration of belief.The public meanwhile became interested tosome extent in the new ideas, as the fameof various magnetic cures had been spreadabout. Various persons testified to the factthat Mesmer had cured them, but the pub-lic journals ridiculed him, and the medicalprofession reviled him. In 1781 he pub-lished a work entitled Precis Historiquedes Faits relatif au Magnetisme Animal.The opposition he encountered only stimu-lated his own enthusiasm, and led him to


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REAL LITERATURE OF MESMERISM. 39proclaim magnetism as a panacea. He de-clared there is but one health, one disease,one remedy. An unfortunate private mis-understanding between himself and Dr.D'Eslon led him to move from Paris to Spa.Ultimately he returned to Paris, and thentook a step which has led to much animad-version on his character. He established asecret society, under the name of The Har-mony, where he initiated pupils into themystery of his process, taking from themfees of a hundred louis d'or each. By thismeans he is said, according to Mr. J. C.Colquhoun, a relatively recent writer onmesmerism, to have realized a considerablefortune. M. Deleuze, a leading writer onthe subject, justifies his action in this matterby pointing out that his whole professionalprospects were merged in his magnetic dis-coveries, which had ruined him as an ordi-nary doctor. He took the fees from wealthypeople, and is said to have remitted themwhen would-be pupils were less prosperous.Morever, admits Mr. Colquhoun, it is verydoubtful whether he really acquired the largesums he is alleged to have received. .

In 1784 a Koyal Commission of orthodoxsavants was appointed to inquire into the


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40 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.claims advanced on behalf of the theory ofanimal magnetism. The report was unfa-vorable, after an inquiry which the represen-tatives of the new science declared to havebeen improperly conducted ; though one em-inent physician (de Jussieu) refused to sub-scribe to the report of his colleagues, and,after a great deal of attention paid to thesubject, published an independent reportof his own, entirely favorable to Mesmer.Even the general body of the Commissionersadmitted the effects produced by the mag-netic treatment, but repudiated Mesmer'stheory of a fluid, and preferred hypothesesconcerning sensitive excitement, imagina-tion, and imitation.Mesmer eventually retired in disgust to

Switzerland, and died at an advanced age in1815, closing his career, as he had begun it,by practicing magnetic cures gratuitouslyfor the benefit of the poor. Beyond a cer-tain fancy for surrounding his mode of lifein Paris with a flavor of mystery and theat-rical effect, it is difficult to find any circum-stances in Mesmer's life that afford the slight-est color for the offensive terms in which hehas constantly been spoken of, even by somestudents and adherents of his great subject.


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REAL LITERATURE OF MESMERISM. 41During Mesmer's life the phenomena ofanimal magnetism, to which attention was

chiefly called, were those connected with thecure of disease. Many societies were formedas branches of that first set on foot, andwhile on the one hand the orthodox medicalscientists of the day continued to treat withcontempt the belief of those who declaredthat such and such results were accom-plished, the volume of experience rolled onfor all who paid attention to the work inprogress. A very ludicrous aspect is thusput, for students of mesmeric literature, onthe ignorant conceit of the dominant major-ity, who were all the while denying the pos-sibility of that which was actually occurring.After the foolish bigotry of the doctors atlarge had thus been at war with the plainfacts of the case for more than forty years,medical mesmerism at last received a grudg-ing recognition from orthodox science in1831. At this date a committee of the med-ical section of the French Koyal Academy ofSciences was appointed to examine into thealleged phenomena of animal magnetism.The report made by this committee, afterlong and careful investigations, constitutesa remarkable record of experiments on the


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42 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.physical phenomena of the mesmeric state;it also goes at length into cases in which pa-tients under medical mesmeric treatmentwere clairvoyant in their trances, and accu-rately prophetic concerning the subsequentcourse of their maladies. The report,signed by nine members of the Academy, isapologetic in regard to its assurance that thealleged phenomena were true ; but the mem-bers say in effect, How can we help our-selves? We have taken every possible pre-caution to guard ourselves from mistakes,and we cannot resist complete conviction.An English translation of this report, byMr. J. C. Colquhoun, was published in1833.From this date the reality of the phenom-

ena of mesmerism, as far as those are associ-ated with its aspects as a curative agent, asa method of producing anaesthesia, and as ameans of producing abnormal mental statesin which a mesmerized subject may foreseethe future progress of his own disorder,must be regarded as finally established, al-though scientific and educated men up to ourown day maintain an attitude of incredulityon the subject, which puts them, for betterinstructed persons, on the intellectual level


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REAL LITERATURE OF MESMERISM. 43of the African savage, who does not believein ice. Since 1831, moreover, the experi-ence which has accumulated on our handsconcerning the higher and more purely psy-chic phenomena of the mesmeric state issuch that the same remark really appliesto every one, however cultivated along somelines of mental activity, who remains in anattitude of incredulity concerning the typi-cal phenomena of clairvoyance and mesmericthought transfer.As far back as 1808, Dr. Petetin published

in Paris a book called Electricite Ani-male, of which the well-known later writeron the same subject, Dr. Esdaile, says:Dr. Petetin 's cases alone are sufficient toestablish the reality of natural clairvoyance.Plentiful testimony will be found in this bookconcerning the powers of mesmeric subjectsof a certain kind to read the contents ofclosed letters and books, and to exercisemany other faculties of perception quite in-dependently of the ordinary sense.Among the earliest of Mesmer's disciples,the Marquis Chastenet de Puysegur has leftvoluminous writings on the subject of hisown prolonged and varied practice as a cur-ative mesmerist. The edition of his works


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44 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.before me is in four volumes, the last dated1809, but this is a second edition, and Igather that the first must have appeared in1807. This is entitled Memoires pourservir a l'histoire et a l'etablissement duMagnetisme Animal. The second volumeis a general continuation of the first, and thethird is more especially devoted to Ee-cherches, experiences, et observations physi-ologiques sur l'homme dans l'etat de som-nambulisme naturel et dans le somnambu-lisme provoque par l'acte magnetique. Thefourth volume, published in 1812, is entitledLes Fous, les Insenses, les Maniaques et lesFrenetiques, ne seraient-ils que des Somnam-bules desordonnes. The whole collectionof writings embodies an immense accumu-lation of experiences with persons clairvoy-ant during illness in respect to their ownmaladies. No recent writings on mesmerismin its medical aspect have an equal valuewith these, for de Puysegur, working withstraightforward and earnest faith in his ownpower of alleviating suffering with the helpof Mesmer's glorious discovery, attainedbrilliant successes, and above all for laterstudents of the subject has done unrivaledservice in investigating the prophetic and


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REAL LITERATURE OF MESMERISM. 45clairvoyant faculties of mesmeric patients,not only in reference to their own but in re-spect also of other persons' ailments. Onthis development of their powers he says: Of all the facts of magnetism the most in-explicable, and above all the least conceiv-able, is, without doubt, that of the visionpossessed by patients in a perfect state ofsomnambulism in reference to the sufferingsof others and the knowledge which theyshow of the remedies and measures neces-sary for their cure. . . . Anyhow, althoughthere is no known phenomena (in otherbranches of science) to which one can com-pare the faculty the fact is neverthelessreal, as certain as the other manifestationsof somnambulism already recognized.De Puysegur gives full details of the cases

both of this and of the simpler kinds ofclairvoyance in reference to the patients'own illnesses that he had the opportunityof dealing with, and they are both numerousand remarkable. It seems strange that henever apparently investigated the extent towhich the clairvoyant perceptions he evokedcould be directed to other subjects besidesthose having to do with physical illness, butin the beginning mesmerism was introduced


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46 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.to the world in reference almost exclusivelyto its medical aspects, and it was reservedfor later inquirers to bring its psychologicalimportance into view. De Puysegur neverseems to have expected the clairvoyance ofhis patients to be prolonged beyond theperiod of their recovery.

J. P. F. Deleuze was a voluminous, andone of the earliest, writers on mesmerism.He published several books on the subject,amongst others a critical history of animalmagnetism. He himself was a Frenchman,born in 1753. He was attracted to the sub-ject of mesmerism by reading accounts ofmagnetic cures in 1785, and subsequentlyaccomplished many such cures himself. Hewas a naturalist attached to the Jardin desPlantes. In his Histoire Critique duMagnetisme Animal (Paris, 1813), he veryeffectually rebuts the accusations of imposeture brought against Mesmer. This ex-traordinary man, he says, gifted with anenergetic character, was carried away by thewonderful successes he obtained into an ex-aggerated belief in the range of his discov-ery, but the attitude of incredulity, on theother hand, in regard to his achievementsM. Deleuze shows to be altogether unten-


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REAL LITERATUBE OF MESMERISM. 47able. Not only were his numerous pupilsconvinced of the reality of his treatment, butthe assurances and proofs furnished by per-sons who had been cured themselves, andwho had taken part in establishing societiesfor the cure of others, were such that no op-position or ridicule could arrest the progressof so useful and well-established a discovery.M. Deleuze himself, since he had occupiedhimself with magnetism, could attest that hehad known more than three hundred personswho were occupied with it like himself, andwho had produced or experienced its vivideffects. M. Deleuze deplores that Mesmerhad not the magnanimity to make publichis discoveries for the good of mankind with-out deriving pecuniary benefit from them,but points out that after all he had spentmoney to acquire the right of practicing asdoctor, and by all ordinary considerationswas entitled to take money for teaching pu-pils. M. Deleuze devotes himself chiefly toestablishing the reality of the magnetic influ-ence as a curative agent by records of casesand protracted arguments, and in his sec-ond volume gives an interesting summary ofthe books on the subject that had appearedup to the date at which he wrote. His


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48 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.Practical Instructions on Animal Magnet-ism were published in 1825, and have beentranslated into English. The book is de-scribed by the translator as the result of aconsummate experience. In 1836 an earlieradmirer of Deleuze's work had written: Anew era has commenced for magnetism.Authentically recognized by the Royal Acad-emy of Medicine in 1831, and regarded bythe commission as a very curious branch ofpsychology and natural history, it has takenrank among positive truths. The risinggeneration will be prompt to cultivate thenew field laid open to them. What surerguide can they take than the man who, bythe superiority of his intelligence, the saga-city of his conclusions, and the example ofhis own life, has so powerfully contributedto the triumph of this noble discovery.

Deleuze says that his object is to giveplain and simple instructions for people whowish to practice magnetism. It is not theobject of this work, he writes, to con-vince men who, otherwise well-informed,still doubt the reality of magnetism. Heemploys the expression, the magnetic fluid,he says, because he believes in the existenceof such a fluid, though its nature is un-


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REAL LITERATURE OF MESMERISM. 49known. The directions which he gives gointo great detail in regard to manipulationand passes, and most later handbooks of mes-merism seem to have derived their inspira-tion very largely from this code of rules.The author also discusses the accessorymeans by which magnetic action may be in-creased, namely, mesmerized water, woolenand cotton cloths, plates of glass, etc. Thepurpose in view is almost exclusively to in-struct the reader in methods of mesmerismto be employed for the cure of disease, andthe book is entirely concerned with such di-rections, or with criticisms on various modesof mesmerizing, the risks to be avoided, andthe methods that may be employed for de-veloping and fortifying one's self in mag-netic power. A voluminous appendix,added to an American edition of the workby the translator, Mr. Hartshorn, gives animmense quantity of testimony collectedby him concerning curious and remarkablecases of mesmerism.

J. J. A. Ricard, a Paris professor, is athoroughly satisfactory exponent of mes-meric experience, who published in 1841 avolume entitled Traite theorique et pra-tique du Magnetisme Animal. He must


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50 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.have been himself a mesmerist of most un-usual force, and evidently combined withthis attribute characteristics which, properlyhandled, would have made him himself asensitive of great value, for he appearsto have been a spontaneous somnambulist,capable on some occasions of writing longstrings of verses in his sleep, in referenceto the production of which he retained norecollection whatever in his waking state.However, this fact crops up merely inci-dentally ; his book is devoted entirely to therecord of his work, which chiefly has to dowith curative mesmerism directed by thepathological clairvoyance of his patients, forwith him it seemed as if almost every onewho approached could be thrown into a mag-netic trance. There is something very puz-zling to modern practical students in the im-mense advantage apparently enjoyed by theearly mesmerists, as compared with our-selves, in reference to the prevalent condi-tion of people around them. In the presentday we may be able to get results whichwhen obtained are fully as good in all re-spects as those described by the early Frenchwriters ; but the persons with whom such re-sults are procurable seem to be dotted here


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REAL LITERATURE OF MESMERISM. 51and there about the world, by ones and twos,whereas such mesmerists as M. Ricard seemalways to have been puzzled if they did notsucceed with the premier vejiu. Their rec-ords of distinct successes run into percentageslike seventy-five or eighty of the total num-ber of persons with whom they made experi-ments. Ricard treats with scorn the pre-tenses of some disputants to account formesmeric phenomena by imagination, fas-cination, and other vague hypotheses in con-flict with the simple and, to him, undeniablytrue theory of mesmeric fluid. The falsityof their judgment he thinks may easily bedemonstrated, and he records a case in whichin order to prove the reality of his own po-sition he magnetizes one of his patients at adistance, and puts him to sleep without anyexpectation on his part that the experimentwas going to be tried. For psychologicalstudents, however, Ricard' s book has claimsjon their interest which far transcend its im-portance as, what it certainly is also, a veryadvanced and intelligent treatise on curativemesmerism. Ricard appears to me to havebeen the first experimentalist, or at allevents the first writer, who gets entirely freeof the belief that clairvoyance is a merely


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52 THE BATIONALE OF MESMERISM.pathological condition, and to whom the daz-zlingly interesting phenomenon of clairvoy-ance, having to do with other states of na-ture, presents itself in the light of its realimportance. He gives a very full accountof his first experience in this region of in-quiry with a girl named Adele Lefrey, whoexhibited a new kind of lucidity at the con-clusion of some curative treatment receivedat her mesmerist's hands. It may be worthwhile here to translate a short passage illus-trative for all who have themselves beenprivileged to work with sensitives qualifiedto discern higher states of nature, of whatmay be called the inevitable routine of im-pressions such people go through in the firstinstance. M. Ricard's Adele said to himwords conveying exactly the same ideaswhich I have heard uttered by sensitivesunder my own influence, young girls towhom the A B C of mesmerism as a branchof knowledge was wholly unknown. M.Eicard writes : She was near the comple-tion of her cure, when, in the midst of somenew medical instructions which she was giv-ing, she said to me in a singular tone, 'Youhear what he orders me? ' 'Who,' I asked,'is ordering you anything?' 'Why, mon-


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REAL LITERATURE OF MESMERISM. 53sieur, do you not hear him? ' 'No, I neitherhear nor see any one/ 'Ah, that is true,'she replied, 'you sleep while I am awake.''What do you mean? You dream, my dearchild ; you pretend that I sleep, when I havemy eyes open and I can appreciate all thatpasses before me, while I know that I actu-ally hold you in command by my magneticinfluence, and that it only depends upon mywill to bring you back to the state you werein recently. You believe yourself awake be-cause you speak to me, and you have to acertain extent your free will, although youcould not open your eyelids, and might beplunged in an instant into the most profoundslumber. You do not reflect upon what youare saying.' 'You do not understand me,monsieur, but that is nothing surprising.''You are asleep,' I replied.x 'I am, on the v/^ ^5/contrary, as completely awake as we shall allbe some day in the future. I will explain my-self more clearly ; all that you see at presentis gross, material; you distinguish apparentforms; the real beauties escape you. Howcould it be otherwise? Your spirit iscramped, obscured, by the exterior impres-sions that your material senses give you.It can only reach out feebly, while my cor-


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54 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.poreal sensations are actually annihilated,while my soul is almost disintegrated fromits ordinary fetters. I see what is invisibleto your eyes, I hear what your ears cannothear, I understand what for you is incom-prehensible. For example, you do not seewhat emanates from yourself and comes tome when you magnetize me; I, on the con-trary, see it very clearly; at each pass youdirect towards me I see a little column offiery dust which comes from the end of yourfingers and seems to incorporate itself in me.Then when you isolate me I seem surroundedby an atmosphere of this fiery dust, whichis often the reason why objects of which Iseek to distinguish the forms take a ruddytinge for me. I hear, when I desire it, asound that is made at a distance, soundswhich may arise a hundred leagues fromhere. In a word, I am not obliged to waittill things come to me, I can go to themwherever they are, and appreciate them morecorrectly than any one could who is not in asimilar state to that in which I find myself. '

This is a perfectly sound and correct ex-position of the state in which the liberatedEgo of the sensitive finds itself. Phrases ofprecisely similar import have, as I say, been


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REAL LITERATURE OF MESMERISM. 55given to me more than once ; and I ventureto say that any one in whom the faculty ofclairvoyance, in reference to other planes ofnature, is possible will, on first entering intothat state, if questioned, take the same viewof the position.Under the title Archiv fur den Thieris-

chen Magnetismus, an immense collectionof writings on mesmerism in all its branches,as then understood, was published in Ger-many in 1817. This work is in twelve vol-umes, edited by Dr. von Eschenmayer, Dr.Kiefer, and Dr. Nasse. It consists of nar-ratives of experiments and magnetic cures,and careful critical essays, including specu-lations on the meaning of clairvoyant previs-ion which show a more intelligent attitude ofmind on the part of the German writers ofthat date than was common in England.Baron du Potet, sometimes called de Sen-nevoy, after an ancestral domain, is to beranked among the early French writers onmesmerism, though he lived to within a fewyears ago. He was born at Sennevoy, inthe Department of the Yonne, in 1796. Hehas given us a sketch of his own career atthe beginning of one of his later books, andit appears that he was first attracted to the


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56 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.study of human magnetism in 1815. Thewhole subject burst upon him as a revela-tion. En sortant de ce premier entretienhe says, fetais magnetiseur. He at onceobtained the mesmeric trance with the twopersons on whom he first tried his hand. Hebecame acquainted with Deleuze and de Puy-segur. He undertook the cure of some pa-tients; dazzled with the results he enteredhimself regularly for the study of medicine.As a mesmerist he rapidly distanced histeachers. He boldly confronted the ridiculeand opposition of conventional science. Hegave gratuitous courses of instruction inmesmerism from the year 1826, and at thesame period began to write on the subject.He published a Journal called the Propa-gateur du Magnetisme; also in 1838, inLondon, a volume entitled An Introduc-tion to the Study of Animal Magnetism.This is an admirable book. It shows us theauthor still unable to believe that the tena-city of ignorant prejudice could hold outagainst an overwhelming demonstration ofthe truth. Hitherto, he says, there hasbeen a disinclination to entertain this inves-tigation, but 1 trust the evidence now ad-duced will tend to dispel the prejudice that


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REAL LITERATURE OF MESMERISM. 57can only have arisen from the science nothaving been yet fairly represented. Thebook opens with a good review of the historyof the subject. Speaking of Mesmer, theBaron says : Surrounded as he was by en-emies, both public and private, his unassum-ing manners, his manifest sincerity, his ear-nest yet silent enthusiasm, and, above all,his benevolent disposition, conciliated forhim the esteem of persons of almost all ranksand pretensions. Later on the Baron goesinto a full and detailed description of thephysical and psychical phenomena of mes-merism as illustrated by his own experience.His records are of great instructive valueand would alone be sufficient to establish thereality of clairvoyance as a fact in nature,even if they were not, as they are, merelyone set of such experiences among a greatnumber.The only fault that can be found with du

Potet's books is, that their style is a littleinflated or bombastic. In this respect he is,however, the product of French and notEnglish literary traditions, and throughouthe is immensely impressed with the prodi-gious spiritual importance of the discoverieswith which he is dealing. As he himself


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58 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.says, lie felt a new philosophy forming itselfin his mind around these germs 5 it was neb-ulous and undefined, but stupendous. Hewas filled with ideas that he felt to be toofar advanced for his generation. He onlyventured in 1845 to give them some expres-sion in a work entitled Essai sur l'enseigne-ment philosophique du Magnetisme. Butthough this volume is relatively timid andreserved, the author was quickly outgrowingthe limits of magnetic practice as familiar tohis predecessors. He was becoming some-thing more than a mesmerist an occultist,and eventually, under somewhat too theat-rical or sensational a title, he printed animportant quarto called La Magie De-voilee, which was never published, in theordinary sense of the word, but deliveredto a few persons under definite pledges takenfrom them in regard to the use they wouldmake of it. The experiments described inthis book, though startling and almost en-tirely of psychological interest, do not reallyoutrun those related in the Animal Mag-netism in scientific value for the studentof mesmerism. The Baron seems to havebeen himself almost alarmed by the powerhe acquired over all kinds and conditions of


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REAL LITEBATUBE OF MESMEBISM. 59people by causing them to look at signs andfigures lie drew with charcoal upon the floor.He got these signs from books on mediaevalmagic, and was apparently inclined to at-tach too much objective importance to thediagrams themselves, thinking that otherpeople would be able to obtain his results byfollowing the same procedure, and that pow-ers of a dangerous character might thus beacquired through his teaching by personsof evilly disposed nature if his instructionswere carelessly disseminated. He did notrealize how far the magic lay in his ownmagnetic force how little of it had to dowith the signs.

In 1840 Baron du Potet published an-other volume called A Course of Magnet-ism in Seven Lessons, and in the course ofhis addresses to his pupils, in themselves anumerous body, to whom he dedicates thisvolume, he indulges in some very scornfullanguage concerning the obstinate incredu-lity exhibited by the scientific world at largein regard to the accumulated facts of mes-meric experience.M. Alexandre Bertrand seems to have

been the first writer who quarreled withthe straightforward theory of the magnetic


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60 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.fluid adopted by Mesmer, de Puysegur andDeleuze. In 1826 he published a treatiseentitled Du Magnetisme Animal enFrance, in which he promulgated a theoryof his own on what he calls VExtase thecondition of those whom the earlier writersdescribed as somnamhules. This is not awork of any value in itself, and is chieflyremarkable as showing how very little orig-inality there was in Mr. Braid's later claimto have put the whole subject on a new andscientific footing. M. Bertrand incidentallyadmits that his own somnamhules bear testi-mony to the reality of the fluid. Many ofthese, he says, declare in fact that they seethe fluid by means of which I exert an effectupon them coming out from my fingers.The patients with whom he worked wouldalso declare that they discerned a peculiartaste in water that he had magnetized, andexperienced pronounced effects from objectshe had magnetized, such as a handkerchief,a glove, or a piece of money. For all this,however, he found a sufficient explanationin the theory that they had been possessedwith such ideas before going to sleep ; andfor him magnetism is une pure cliimere.That which he conceives to be a reality is


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REAL LITERATURE OF MESMERISM. 61Vextase a condition into which humancreatures are capable of falling, altogetherdistinct from any states that had been pre-viously recognized. The argument amountsto nothing in itself, explains nothing, and isonly carried on by disregarding the largerpart of the phenomena admitted as facts andrequiring to be brought within the area ofany genuine mesmeric theory.M. Aubin Gautier is one of the early

writers who must by no means be overlooked.He seems to have written, to begin with, in1840 a volume entitled Introduction auMagnetisme, a volume written in a veryreverent spirit, and on the basis of muchcareful research in ancient history, aimed atshowing the wide diffusion of magnetism inone shape or another as a psychologicalagent in Egypt, Greece, and Rome. M.Gautier seems to have been amongst thosefrom the first who took the subject seriouslyand in the spirit of an occult student.Whoever expects to find these pages amus-ing, he says in the beginning, deceiveshimself strangely. The study and practiceof magnetism demand an unheard of pa-tience, silence, and self-control.The book is more a review and a specula-


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62 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.tion than a narrative. It rests, of course,in complete reliance on the mesmeric fluidtheory, and only fails in bringing out reallyscientific conceptions because the writer wasnot himself in possession of those side lightson mesmerism which I propose to deal withdirectly, and without which the various phe-nomena themselves can never be coordinated.

In 1842 M. Gautier published his His-toire du Somnambulisme, again sweepingthe wide areas of ancient history for illus-trations of his theme. This volume, in-cluding many narratives of more modernorigin, gives a full account of M. Pigeaire 'sexperience with the Academie de Medecineof Paris. M. Pigeaire was a country doctorwho discovered fine clairvoyant faculties inthe youngest of his daughters, Leonide, agedten years. No experimentalists in thosedays seemed to have realized the lengths aclairvoyant faculty could reach to when prop-erly cultivated, so that the only experimentstried with the girl had to do with recogniz-ing objects and reading from books whenblindfold. Her powers in this directionwere brought to high perfection in a longseries of private and domestic seances.When at last M. Pigeaire decided to claim


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REAL LITERATURE OF MESMERISM. 63on his daughter's behalf a prize which hadbeen offered by a member of the Academiede Medecine, the family genius was broughtout of her retirement and introduced inParis to a great number of learned obser-vers. The prize in question had been offeredby Dr. Burdin to any one who could readwithout the use of the eyes, of the sense oftouch, or of light. The Academie de Mede-cine was to arbitrate on any claims thatmight be made. While the Pigeaire familywere staying in Paris they seemed to havegiven a series of private entertainments atwhich Leonide's faculties were exhibited,and a large number of persons distinguishedin science, literature, and social rank signedrecords of the successful experiments.When the time came, however, for M. Pi-geaire to interview the committee appointedby the Academie de Medecine, he foundthem perfectly unprepared to investigate andadjudicate upon what actually took place, andonly willing to deal with Mile. Leonide ifshe would conform precisely to their ownarrangements and conditions, among whichwere that she should wear a peculiar kind ofhelmet mask which they had constructed,and let one of their number keep his hands


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64 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.on her eyelids all the time. In all its detailsthe story is instructive to any one interestedin looking back on the thoroughly unscientificattitude of mind taken up by the represen-tatives of physical science in those days intheir dealings with mesmerism. But I canhardly give space here to all the ramifica-tions of the story. M. Pigeaire tried tomake his surly inquisitors understand thatthe whole psychic condition of his daughterrequired delicate and gentle treatment, thattheir own proposals were calculated to throwher into convulsions rather than into theclairvoyant state, that the bandages he em-ployed, using masses of cotton wool to coverthe eyes completely, were of such a kindthat any pretense of distrusting their efficacywas ridiculous, but all to no purpose. Thecommittee refused even to look at his band-ages, and after he left them in disgust sentin a report, the general drift of which wasthat the proposed experiments had been de-clined except under conditions which thecommittee did not conceive bore evidenceof bona fides.

In their zeal to discredit the subject thecommittee even ventured upon some state-ments that were positively false, wishing to


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REAL LITERATURE OF MESMERISM. 65lead the reader into the belief that they hadinterviewed the proposed clairvoyante. Butnowhere in 1838 was any scientific body pre-pared to observe the conditions of fair playor common honesty in dealing with the rep-resentatives of mesmerism.

In telling the story, however hastily, oneshould not omit to mention one concludingincident. A group of those persons who hadwitnessed the earlier series of preliminaryseances with Leonide, took M. Pigeaire'spart very warmly. They raised a consider-able guarantee fund and publicly offered aprize ten or twelve times greater than thatoriginally offered by the Academy, to anymember of that body who should be able toread a single word of print when his eyeshad been bandaged on the plan adopted withMile. Leonide by her father. It is need-less to say nobody took up the challenge,and that the whole incident thus constitutesa very round and complete illustration of thegross dishonesty with which the high author-ities in medicine in Paris conducted thewar against the new discovery.A year or two later, in 1845, M. Gautierpublished a third book called a Traite pra-tique du Magnetisme et du Somnambulisme.


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66 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.This is a well-arranged and well-indexedtreatise on magnetism in all the branchesthen studied, and though very imperfectlydivining the real potentialities of psychicmesmerism, is even to this day a solid bookof careful record and earnest thinking, im-measurably better worth attention than anyof the recent volumes that play up to thefashionable errors of the moment.M. L. A. Cahagnet seems to have been

one of the very few French writers of thisperiod thoroughly alive to the psychic pos-sibilities of clairvoyance. He undertook aprolonged series of mesmeric seances withclairvoyants whose attention he directed toother planes of existence, and these are re-corded in a book entitled Arcanes de laVie Future Devoilee. The value of thestatements made by his clairvoyants in ref-erence to the future life will of course be va-riously estimated by different readers, butfrom the point of view of mesmeric science,the facts concerning the mental phenomenaexhibited by the subjects under treatmentare of the highest interest. An Englishtranslation of this book has been publishedin America.

Dr. Esdaile's Mesmerism in India is a


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REAL LITERATURE OF MESMERISM. 67record of the author's extraordinary successin the application of mesmerism to his sur-gical practice at the government hospital inCalcutta, of which he was in charge- Thebook was published about 1842. It includesnot only minute surgical reports of frightfuloperations performed upon the mesmerizedpatients of the hospital without any suffer-ing or consciousness of what was takingplace on their part, but also corroborativetestimony from a great many of the mostdistinguished people resident at Calcutta atthe time, who were called in by Dr. Esdaileto be present at these wonderful perform-ances.A later work by the same author, Nat-ural and Mesmeric Clairvoyance, publishedin 1852, includes, besides a quantity offresh testimony connected with the medicalaspects of mesmerism, an epitome of evi-dence extracted from the Zoist, and fromother sources, on the subject of clairvoyanceexhibited during the mesmeric state. Inthis book Dr. Esdaile also recounts theprogress of his own struggle at Calcutta inthe effort to press the importance of mes-merism upon the attention of the other doc-tors of the place, who would only plod along


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68 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.the beaten path. This narrative is, in somerespects, the history of Mesmer's own careerover again. Instead of being treated by hisprofessional brethren as a benefactor of hu-manity, Esdaile was opposed and vilified byall the devices that prejudice and professionaljealousy could suggest, and while it was no-torious that he was daily performing painlessoperations on patients under mesmerism, theother doctors continued to torture their ownunfortunate victims rather than confess thatthey had been in error in resisting the useof the new curative agent.

Dr. Esdaile's remarkable works are notthe only records of capital operations per-formed without pain to the patient with thehelp of mesmerism. A paper read beforethe Eoyal Medical and Chirurgical Societyof London, in 1842, and published as anindependent pamphlet, gives full details con-cerning a case in which Mr. Ward, a sur-geon attached to St. Bartholomew's Hospi-tal, had, about that time, amputated a man'sleg above the knee while he, the patient, re-mained completely unconscious of the opera-tion in a mesmeric sleep, put upon him bythe influence of Mr. Topham, a barristerinterested in the practice of mesmerism.


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REAL LITERATURE OF MESMERISM. 69The pages of the Zoist, to which I willrefer directly, are laden with reports ofother similar cases.

Dr. Scoresby, the Arctic voyager andwell-known writer on various branches ofmaritime science, was a careful experimenterin mesmerism, and a work of his calledZoistic Magnetism records a great deal ofhis work. He had only a limited experi-ence of the higher phenomena, but a veryextensive familiarity with the physical phe-nomena of the mesmeric state, includingthose on the border-land between the lowerand higher, having to do with the transferof sensation from the mesmerizer to the sub-ject. His book was published in 1849, andis interesting for students of the science forits careful observation in regard to the po-larity of different parts of the human bodyin respect to the emanations of its animalmagnetism.An interesting Report upon the Phe-nomena of Clairvoyance or Lucid Somnam-bulism, from Personal Observation, waspublished in 1843 by Edwin Lee, Fellowof the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society,and of many other societies abroad of a sim-ilar character. The cases here described


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TO THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.have reference altogether to clairvoyance onthe physical plane, that is to say, to the ob-servation by the clairvoyants concerned, ofdistant places and houses, and also of ob-jects in their own immediate neighborhood,which they had no means of cognizingthrough the usual senses. Mr. Lee alsowrote about the same time a book on Ani-mal Magnetism, containing a comprehen-sive review of similar experiments by otherobservers.Another work well worth notice is entitled

Facts in Mesmerism, with Reasons for aDispassionate Inquiry into it, by the Rev.Chauncy Hare Townsend, first published in1839. This opens with a dedication to Dr.Elliotson, from whose experiments, the au-thor says, the greater part of the Englishworld have derived their ideas of mesmer-ism. He quotes Dr. Wilson, of the Mid-dlesex Hospital, who having been present ata lecture at Dresden, when several fish in alarge tub of water were stunned by an elec-tric shock, tried the effect of mesmerizingthe water. The fish revived. The incidentsuggested the proposal that great use mightbe made of mesmerized water in medicine.In a preface to his second edition Mr. Town-


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HEAL LITERATURE OF MESMERISM. 71send says: I now cast my mite into thetreasury of evidence that is accumulating infavor of mesmerism with a deep regret thatprejudice should yet stand in the way of somuch alleviation of human suffering as it iscalculated to afford. The book consists ofa patient record of the author's own experi-ments, which were largely concerned withinteresting phenomena of sleep waking,as Dr. Elliotson called it, or mesmeric clair-voyance of the simpler kind. Mr. Town-send began with incredulity, but was drawninto serious inquiry in 1836. He worked atthis for a long time and with a great num-ber of subjects. His records include agreat variety of facts in thought and sensa-tion transference, and in connection with thedevelopment, by a mesmerized person, ofperceptive faculties in nerve-centres notusually betraying these. He also throwsout a good deal of intelligent speculationconcerning the media through which mes-meric effects are wrought. Though pridinghimself on keeping his experiments and in-vestigations on a relatively humble level,and testing the faculties of his subjects byapplying them to the commonplace facts oflife, Mr. Townsend treats with contempt


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72 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.the imagination theory as really too ab-surd to merit a serious refutation. A thou-sand times I have seen mesmeric patientsplaced under circumstances where the actionof imagination was plainly impossible.And later on he writes : An elastic ethermodified by the nerves, and the conductionof which depends on their condition ; whichcan be thrown into vibration mediately bythe mind of man and immediately by thenervous system, which manifests itself whenthrown out of equilibrium, and producesmental eifects through unusual stimulationof the brain and nerves, cannot but be al-lowed to be a cause which answers to all theconditions that we desire to unite, and whichis sufficient to account for the phenomenathat we have been considering.The Zoist was a magazine, published,

I believe, under the editorship of Dr. Elliot-son, to collect and diffuse information con-nected with two sciences Cerebral Physi-ology and Mesmerism. The science ofmesmerism, says the inaugural article inthe first number, brought out in A

rationale of mesmerisim

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