Biographies of distinguished scientific men. First seriesArago, F. (François)
History
Biographies of distinguished scientific men. First series
Arago, F. (François)
Scientists -- Biography
A young man was taken to Franklin's garden at Passy, and when it was
announced to him that Deslon, who had taken him there, had magnetized a
tree, this young man ran about the garden, and fell down in convulsions,
but it was not under the magnetized tree: the crisis seized him while
he was embracing another tree, very far from the former.
Deslon selected, in the treatment of poor people, two women who had
rendered themselves remarkable by their sensitiveness around the famous
rod, and took them to Passy. These women fell into convulsions whenever
they thought themselves mesmerized, although they were not. At
Lavoisier's, the celebrated experiment of the cup gave analogous
results. Some plain water engendered convulsions occasionally, when
magnetized water did not.
We must really renounce the use of our reason, not to perceive a proof
in this collection of experiments, so well arranged that imagination
alone can produce all the phenomena observed around the mesmeric rod,
and that mesmeric proceedings, cleared from the delusions of
imagination, are absolutely without effect. The commissioners, however,
recommence the examination on these last grounds, multiply the trials,
adopt all possible precautions, and give to their conclusions the
evidence of mathematical demonstrations. They establish, finally and
experimentally, that the action of the imagination can both occasion the
crises to cease, and can engender their occurrence.
Foreseeing that people with an inert or idle mind would be astonished at
the important part assigned to the imagination by the commissioners'
experiments in the production of mesmeric phenomena, Bailly instanced:
sudden affection disturbing the digestive organs; grief giving the
jaundice; the fear of fire restoring the use of their legs to paralytic
patients; earnest attention stopping the hiccough; fright blanching
people's hair in an instant, &c.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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