pre-eminence abroad; those plans which, above all, will alleviate toil, adorn life, bless men, and honour God.

Let workmen, therefore, examine the machinery of their own nature; and seek, by the blessing of him who made us, to fulfil the ends he made us for; and let employers not only not stand in the way of this consum mation, but afford for it all facilities and encouragements, that the world, instead of being one great " Board of Trade," may subordinate commerce to the dignity and happiness of mankind.

THE MESMERIC MANIA OF 1851,

WITH A PHYSIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION OF THE PHENOMENA PRODUCED.

A Lecture, by John Hughes Bennett, M.D., F.R.S.E. Professor of the Theory of Physic, and of Clinical Medicine, in the University of Edinburgh.*

AMIDST the experimentalizing quackery of popular science, it is refreshing to meet with observations and enquiries conducted in the true spirit of scientific investigation.

Especially to find physiologists who take THE MIND into account, when reasoning about our complex nature,

We cannot but do good service by presenting our readers with some main points in this admirable pamphlet.

The preface contains many sensible and important observations, some of which we can corroborate from instances that have come under our own notice :

During the present year, (1851,) society in Edinburgh has been greatly agitated by a delusion, consisting in the supposition, that certain persons may be influenced by an external mysterious force, which is governed and directed by particular individuals. Fashionable parties have been converted into scenes of experiments on the mental functions.

"The result of this excitement has been an increased degree of nervousness in individuals.

"Several instances are known to me where intelligent young menstudents in this University-have, for a longer or shorter time been incapacitated from following their ordinary occupations, and obliged, from want of attention and mental power, to absent themselves from their classes. Some of these, from a feeling of the injury they have sustained, have very properly refused to allow any experiments to be tried on them; and the parents of very sensitive young persons, from the obvious detriment their health has undergone, have also forbidden a repetition of these

Occurrences.

"That a peculiar condition of the nervous system may be occasioned,

Edinburgh: Sutherland and Knox, George-street. London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co.; and S. Highley.

in which individuals otherwise of sound mind are liable to be temporarily influenced by predominant ideas, must be admitted by all who have seen anything of the disorder. Nor will the existence of such a condition appear after all very extraordinary to those who reflect on the singular phenomena occasionally presented in the states of reverie or waking dream, of ordinary somnambulism, ecstasy, trance, monomania, and other allied affections. In every case the symptoms consist of perversions of intelligence, sensation, or motion, identical in their character with what medical men have been long familiar. It is the manner in which they may be produced, and the frequency with which they are made to occur, that is new.

"To separate what is true from what is false, to strip the subject of the charlatanism which has been thrown around it, and offer a physiological explanation of the phenomena really produced, is the object of the following lecture."

After a concise description of "the general structure and functions of the nervous system," the Author proceeds to explain those mental causes -the reaction of the imagination on the body, by the presence in the mind of suggestive ideas, and the abstraction of the attention from the ordinary impressions of sensation :-to which, exclusively, the effects may be attributed.

"Dr. Henry Monro,* speaking of Monomania, says that 'in these cases neither the controlling agency of the will nor the reason is suspended on most subjects, though it is so on certain points; these people can guide their thoughts well enough on most questions, can see the full relations that cause bears to effect, and that mental impressions bear to external things, but they cannot properly control those impressions which are most strongly fixed on the mind. This state has very frequently a stage of contest and conscious difficulty at first, when the struggle between the morbid impressions and the faculties by which to control them is great; indeed, we may say that all morbid and excessive impressions which exclude all other considerations bear the rudimentary form of this affection, though insanity cannot be said strictly to be fully developed until the contest is decided by such a victory on the part of the morbid impressions that the moral liberty to exercise their reasoning faculties on these subjects is gone.'

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During the present year several itinerant lecturers have shown that the first stage of the process here so accurately described, viz., that in which certain persons cannot control those impressions which are most strongly fixed on the mind, may be produced artificially in about one out of twenty individuals of the entire population. Thus, if that number of persons be chosen indiscriminately, and directed to gaze steadily at any object for about ten minutes, a peculiar condition of the cerebral functions is produced in one or more (especially if they be young,) in which those affected may be made, not only to act upon any train of ideas which may be suggested to them, but motion and sensation may trolled in a variety of ways.t

* Remarks on Insanity, &c. 1851.

be con

+ The mode of producing this condition may be varied, but it is in all cases essentially the same. Thus Mesmer caused individuals to sit in a kind of trough, and they

"This peculiar condition manifests itself while the individual is gazing upon the object-in the first instance, by a mistiness of vision, succeeded in some by a lassitude and desire to sleep, in others, only by stiffness of the eyelids, and in a third class by deep drawn sighs, hurried respiration, heaving of the chest, or other signs of general excitement. If now such persons are repeatedly told that they cannot open their eyes, it will be found that they are unable to do so, especially if their attention be more strongly directed to the eye-lids by touching or pointing to them. But on receiving permission, or on being told to open them, this is done at

once.

"A very singular experiment consists in directing a person to lift some light object, such as a walking-stick, and then suggesting to him that it is very weighty, indeed getting heavier and heavier, so that he cannot hold it. It may then be observed, as the idea of weight gathers strength in his mind, that the muscles of his arms supporting the walking-stick become more and more rigid, exactly as if it were a ponderous bar of iron; all his strength at length is evidently exerted to hold it, but in vain, for it falls from his grasp, he appearing exhausted and out of breath from his previous exertion.

"In like manner, in this condition all the sensations may be increased, perverted, or destroyed, through the medium of suggestive ideas, communicated to the mind. By fixing attention on any part of the skin it may be made to feel hot or cold, tingling and painful, or benumbed and destitute of sensibility, according to the ideas communicated.

"Lastly, the taste may be affected, and plain water made to present to such a person the sweetness of honey, the bitterness of wormwood, or the acidity of vinegar.

"Such persons also may readily be conducted in imagination to various distant countries or cities, when they will act and talk as if they were really there.

"In the same way sleep is most readily induced, and may be made so sound that all ordinary stimuli will not awake them, and occasionally sensation is for the time annihilated. Yet it often happens that at the command of him who has been communicating the suggestive ideas, they immediately awake from a condition of sopor from which local painful applications would not arouse them.* Susceptible persons may be even commanded to sleep at a particular hour on a certain day, and awake at were directed to look at a wire placed in their hand. The Fakirs of India throw themselves into a trance by looking at the extremity of their own noses. Mr. Braid of Manchester holds an object a little above the eyes, so as to fatigue them sooner. Dr. Darling causes them to look at a small coin placed in the palms of their hands, whilst Mr. Lewis and others fix the attention of persons on themselves, or on the tips of their fingers extended towards their eyes.

All such persons go to sleep under the idea that the operator exercises over them a peculiar and exclusive influence. It is his voice, therefore, that is associated with his dreaming thoughts. Thus, a person impressed with the fear of having his house burnt down, has been known not to have awakened when various noises have been made, or pungent odours applied to his nostrils, but has started up immediately the word fire was whispered in his ear, or burning tinder placed under his nose. A signal lieutenant under Lord Hood, after harassing and prolonged duty, could not be aroused by the ordinary means without great trouble, until his comrades found out that on shouting the word "signal," he sprang up immediately as if for duty.—(Macnish.)

a particular time, and this they will do under the idea that at the hour named some peculiar influence is exerted on them.*

"Such are only some of the phenomena which may be produced in those affected with the nervous disorder under consideration. They admit of infinite modifications, but the symptoms are all referable to increase, diminution, or perversion of intelligence, sensation, or voluntary motion, variously combined, according to the endless train of suggestive ideas that may be communicated to the individual. It has always been found, that the more frequently those effects are occasioned in one person, the more really may they be again induced, and the more sensitive and nervous does the person become.

"Similar phenomena to those now described have occurred in all ages, produced in certain persons by predominant ideas, and variously modified according to the education, politics, or religion of the period.

"I consider it unnecessary to enter into any lengthened argument to refute the numerous hypotheses which ascribe these effects to external influences. I know of no series of well-ascertained facts capable of supporting such a doctrine. Lately, I have tried numerous experiments with the aid of those who believe in Animal Magnetism, all of which have only convinced me that no such principle exists, and that all the phenomena really occasioned depend on suggestive ideas communicated to the person affected. But while these theories scarcely merit attention, the facts

This fact has excited great astonishment, and it has been supposed that at the hour named, the operator magnifies them; thinks of them, and may even direct an influence from his body some 50 or 100 miles through the atmosphere to the individual affected. But all such persons have been TOLD to go to sleep, and consequently received the necessary idea, in the same manner that most of us having an important duty to perform, or a journey to make early in the morning retire to rest with an impression of the necessity of waking sooner than usual, and do so accordingly.

+ The various movements and manipulations of the so-called animal magnetists are wholly at variance with what should be practised if their own theory was true. For whilst their actions are highly suggestive to the mind, they are never directed in such a manner as to stimulate those muscles which are necessarily called into action, as they ought to be, did any stimulating influence flow from their fingers. For instance, when they wish to close the jaws, the hands are never directed towards the temporal muscles, but to the mouth or larynx. When a person is bent forward or made to sit down, the hands are passed from above downwards or forwards, so as to suggest the action, but never directed to the large flexor muscles by the contraction of which the action is performed. In the same manner, when a limb or the trunk is extended, it is not the extensor muscles which are principally operated on, but motions are made to represent the act of entension itself. If the hand or elbow is to be bent, they point to the joints, and not to the muscles of the forearm or arm the contraction of which produces the effect. Indeed, to operate scientifically, according to their own principles, requires a considerable knowledge of anatomy, which is by no means necessary for success as a magnetiser."

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All the experiments made before me (and they have been numerous,) having for their object to prove the influence of the silent will, have failed. Hence I conclude, that the motions, passes, and other acts of the so-called "animal magnetists," are only useful in fixing the attention, and communicating suggestive ideas. I have been confirmed in these views by carefully watching the proceedings of Mr. Lewis. His gestures are most expressive, and he conveys ideas by means of pantomimic action of the most perfect kind. Circumstances have convinced me that in the excitement of the moment he himself is often unconscious of his own proceedings. Indeed, on stating to him my belief that the effects were owing to suggestive ideas, he opposed the notion on the ground that he always told the person to do the very opposite of what he wanted them to do. In fact, when he wished a person to rise from a chair, he always told them to sit down, but

themselves are highly important, and demand the careful consideration of the physiologist and medical practitioner. Let us, then, examine into what can reasonably be advanced in explanation of these nervous phe

nomena.

"We have seen that sensation may be defined to be the consciousness of an impression, and we know that the mind strongly intent upon an object is unconscious of those impressions which are going on around— so that no sensation results from them.

"Hence wounds are not felt in battle, blows and falls are unheeded during the excitement of intoxication or of nitrous oxide gas, and many Indian warriors and religious enthusiasts, intent on particular trains of thought, have not suffered from any of the supposed torments which were inflicted on their bodies. These facts, then, offer a sufficient explanation to the physiologist of the occasional insensibility of somnambulists or others labouring under some predominant idea.

"Whilst, however, an individual may be unconscious of impressions unconnected with his particular train of ideas, everything in relation to these is often perceived with extraordinary readiness. The abolition of sensation with regard to general impressions seems to be counterbalanced by an exquisite sensitiveness relative to the one impression either actually made or suggested. Dr. Holland has very ably pointed out the effects of mental attention on the bodily organs,* showing that there are few persons who do not experience irritation or some imaginary feeling in parts to which their attention is much directed. If at night, owing to some unusual position, we feel a beating at the heart or at the temples, we easily imagine there is something alarming; the respirations are altered, if we think about them; if we suppose the mouth is dry, we immediately swallow the saliva, and render it so; if we fancy we have a cough, we cough immediately, and clear the air passages; and if we suppose any source of irritation exists on the skin, we involuntarily apply our hand to and rub the part. Nothing is more common for medical students, when first studying individual diseases, than to imagine themselves to be the victims of each in succession. Then, in certain conditions of the system, it is well known that actual pain may be produced in a part by fixing our attention upon it. Hypochondriacs are martys to these erroneous impressions. Supposed pains in the limbs or stomach prevent their walking or eating, and their health suffers from want of exercise or want of food. Sir Benjamin Brodie has given some singular cases where so-called nervous pains of this description have actually led to tenderness and swelling of the integuments covering the part.†

in a tone of voice, and accompanied by such gestures, as pretty clearly indicated what were his real intentions. On several occasions, he endeavoured to act on others by what he named the silent will, looking at them steadily, and standing motionless. It generally happened, however, that his own efforts were of a kind which unconsciously caused him to rise on tiptoe, elevate his head, or throw out by gesture some hint, which was immediately seized by the person operated on. Here it may be well to mention, that any one can see through the eyelids, although they be so close together as to appear shut to those looking at them. The truth of this may be readily proved by experiment. *Medical Notes and Reflections, Chap. 5. + On Local Nervous Affections. 1837.

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