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
Secondly, The mind of the patient thus entranced enters into relation
with, or is attracted towards, the mind or person of the mesmeriser.
I remember witnessing a most decisive instance in which the operation
of this attraction was singularly manifested. The place was Dr.
Elliotson’s waiting-room; the patient, a young man whom Mr. Simpson
had entranced. Mr. Simpson then moved about the room, standing still
at several points in it in succession. The young man seemed attracted
towards Mr. Simpson, to whom he drew near each time he stopped; then
he pressed against Mr. Simpson, jostling him out of his place, which
he planted himself in—his countenance bearing an expression of huge
delight at what he had achieved. But in half a minute he began to look
anxious and uneasy; and again—his eyes being shut all the while—he
set off in search of Mr. Simpson, and repeated the same scene. There
exists, it would appear, an attraction between the (mind of the?)
entranced person and (that of?) his mesmeriser, or (that of?) any
other person with whom the entranced person has secondarily come into
relation.
Then, thirdly, It may be presumed that, in phenomena which are purely
mental, space and distance go for nothing. But if this supposition be
admitted, it would be as easy for a mesmeriser to entrance by a mental
effort a sensitive and habituated patient at a hundred miles off as
at the end of the same room. The phenomenon thus viewed is wholly
exoneural. The one mind is supposed to be actually sensitive to the
influence of the other. Each of the two minds, though in different
degrees, energizes, it may be imagined, beyond its bodily frame. And
the mind of the patient feels the force of the mesmeriser’s will acting
upon it, and slips as it were at once, by the accustomed track, out of
the normal into the abnormal psychico-neural relation.
Still I cannot get rid of a lurking notion that, in the phenomena
last considered, the Od-force contributes an element of physical or
physico-dynamic influence. For, putting for the moment aside the idea
of mental action, what is to prevent two living bodies, that may be in
Od-relation, or in exact Od-unison, from physically influencing one
another at indefinite distances?
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