Popular Superstitions, and the Truths Contained Therein: With an Account of MesmerismMayo, Herbert
History
Popular Superstitions, and the Truths Contained Therein: With an Account of Mesmerism
Mayo, Herbert
Mesmerism; Parapsychology and medicine; Superstition
5. In the last three steps, the apprehension of the entranced person
appears to have left his own being to the extent described, and to
have entered into relation with the mind or nervous system of another
person. Now, if the patient become still more lucid, his apprehension
seems to range abroad through space, and to identify material objects,
and penetrate the minds of other human beings, at indefinite distances.
6. At length the entranced person displays the power of revealing
future events—a power which, as far as it relates to things separate
from his own bodily organization, or that of others, seems to me
to show that his apprehension is in relation with higher spiritual
natures, or with the Fountain of Truth itself.
In the following pages I have given examples of those of the powers
here attributed to very lucid clairvoyantes, which I have not
previously instanced.
* * * * *
II. _Transposition of the Senses._—No doubt these phenomena, irregular
as they seem at present, follow a definite law, which has to be
determined by future observations and experiments. Mr. Williamson found
some of his clairvoyantes see with the back of the head, some with the
side of the head—some best at seven inches, others at as many feet
off. In the case which Mr. Bulteel reported to me, the lady read with
her hand and fingers; even when he pressed a note against the back
of her neck, she read it instantly: but in this case actual contact
was necessary. In the case of a governess, artificially brought to
the state of waking-trance by Mr. Williamson, the same faculty was
observed. With one hand she used to hold open the book to be read,
resting it against her chest, the pages being turned away from her:
the contents of these she read fluently, touching the words with the
forefinger of the other hand. In one very interesting case, which I
witnessed here in the autumn of 1849, the young lady, clairvoyant
through mesmerism, sitting in the corner of a sofa, something reclined,
would have seen, had she peeped through a linear aperture between her
seemingly closed eyelids, the lower half of things only. As it was,
the reverse was the fact; and when we asked her what she saw, she
told us the cornice and upper part of the room. Then, without saying
any thing, I raised my cap upon my stick to within her declared range
of trance-vision; she exclaimed, “Ah, Guilleaume Tell!” Her mother,
whom she heard speak, but had not hitherto seen, in this trance, she
recognised at once, when she stood up upon a chair. To read, in this
trance, appeared a very painful effort to her; but she was certainly
able to make out some words when she pressed a written paper against
her forehead. It was evident that she could now visually discern things
by some new faculty of apprehension localized there. To enable her
to see things at a few feet distance, they had equally to be placed
_opposite_ to her forehead. In another case, in which the girl, when
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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