The phenomena of mesmeric cures find their full explanation in the
theory just enunciated. For since the construction and preservation of
the organism, and of every organ in particular, is owing to specific
scents, we may fairly look upon disease in general as a disturbance of
the specific scent of the organism, and upon disease of a particular
organ of the body, as a disturbance of the specific scent pertaining to
that particular organ. We have been hitherto in the habit of holding
the protoplasm responsible for all phenomena of disease. We have now
come to learn that what acts in the protoplasm are the scents; we shall,
therefore, have to look to them as the ultimate cause of morbid
phenomena. I have mentioned before the experiment of Mons. Ligeois,
showing that odoriferous substances, when brought in contact with water,
move; and that the motion of one odoriferous substance may be
inhibited, or arrested altogether, by the presence of another
odoriferous substance. Epidemic diseases, and the zymotic diseases in
particular, have, then, most likely their origin in some local odours
which inhibit the action of our specific organic odours. In the case of
hereditary diseases, it is most likely the transmission of morbid
specific odours from parent to offspring that is the cause of the evil,
knowing, as we do, that in disease the natural specific odour is
altered, and must, therefore, have been altered in the diseased parent.
Now comes the mesmeriser. He approaches the sick with the strong
determination to cure him. This determination, or effort of the will,
is absolutely necessary, according to the agreement of all mesmerisers,
for his curative success. Now an effort of the will is a mental
operation, and is, therefore, accompanied by tissue disintegration. The
effort being purely mental, we may say it is accompanied by
disintegration of cerebral and nervous tissue. But disintegration of
organic tissue means, as we have seen before, disengagement of specific
scents; the mesmeriser emits, then, during his operation, scents from
his own body. And as the patient's sufferings are supposed to originate
from a deficiency or alteration of his own specific scent, we can well
see how the mesmeriser, by his mesmeric or odoriferous emanations, may
effect a cure. He may supply the want of certain odoriferous substances
in the patient, or he may correct others by his own emanations, knowing,
as we do, from the experiment of Mons. Ligeois, that odorant matter does
act on odorant matter.
One remark more and I have done. By the Esoteric Doctrine we are told
that the living body is divided into two parts:
1. The physical body, composed wholly of matter in its grossest and most
tangible form.
2. The vital principle (or Jiva), a form of force indestructible, and,
when disconnected with one set of atoms, becoming attracted immediately
by others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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