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
V. _The Od-Force is the usual channel of establishing mesmeric
relation._—I take it for granted that the Od-force—the existence and
some of the properties of which have been inductively ascertained by
Von Reichenbach—is the same agent with that which Mesmer assumed to
be the instrument in his operations. Then, in support of the above
proposition, I cite two instances. Mr. Williamson, at my request,
mesmerised and entranced the Rev. Mr. Fox at Weilbach, in the autumn of
1847. It was the second sitting, and Mr. Fox was beginning to pass from
the initiatory stage of trance into trance half-waking. Mr. Williamson
addressed him, and he returned an answer. Other parties in the room,
including myself, then addressed Mr. Fox, and he seemed not to hear one
of us. Then Mr. Williamson gave me his hand, and I again spoke to Mr.
Fox; he then heard me, and spoke in answer. When, having left go Mr.
Williamson’s hand, I spoke again to Mr. Fox, he heard me not. On my
renewing contact with Mr. Williamson, Mr. Fox heard me again. He heard
me as long as I was brought into relation with him, and that relation
was clearly due to the establishment of an Od-current between myself
and Mr. Williamson, with whom Mr. Fox was already in trance-relation.
Every one who has seen something of Mesmerism will recognise in the
above story one of its commonest phenomena.
But a more conclusive instance still has been already mentioned in
Letter X. M. Petetin made a chain of seven persons holding hands, the
seventh holding the hand of a cataleptic patient, who at that time
heard by her fingers only. When Dr. Petetin spoke to the fingers of the
first, _i. e._ the most remote, person of the chain, the cataleptic
person heard him as well as if he had spoken to her own fingers. Even
when a stick was made to form part of the circuit, the cataleptic still
heard Dr. Petetin’s whisper, uttered at the other end of the chain.
_Not so, however, if one of the parties forming the chain wore silk
gloves._
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