The International Magazine, Volume 4, No. 5, December 1851Various
History
The International Magazine, Volume 4, No. 5, December 1851
Various
Art, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- History -- Periodicals
The next day at 11, we once more mounted our horses, and bidding adieu
to our fair hostess, we left the town, the beauties of which have been
amply dilated upon by different writers. We pursued the same route as
that by which we came, and arrived at Gibraltar a few minutes after the
evening gun gave notice of the time to shut the gates of the fortress.
From Chamber's Edinburgh Journal.
VAGARIES OF THE IMAGINATION.
"Fancy it burgundy," said Boniface of his ale--"only fancy it, and
it is worth a guinea a quart!" Boniface was a philosopher: fancy can
do much more than that. Those who fancy themselves laboring under an
affection of the heart are not slow in verifying the apprehension:
the uneasy and constant watching of its pulsations soon disturbs the
circulation, and malady may ensue beyond the power of medicine. Some
physicians believe that inflammation can be induced in any part of
the body by a fearful attention being continually directed towards
it; indeed it has been a question with some whether the stigmata (the
marks of the wounds of our Saviour) may not have been produced on the
devotee by the influences of an excited imagination. The hypochondriac
has been known to expire when forced to pass through a door which he
fancied too narrow to admit his person. The story of the criminal who,
unconscious of the arrival of the reprieve, died under the stroke
of a wet handkerchief, believing it to be the axe, is well known.
Paracelsus held, "that there is in man an imagination which really
affects and brings to pass the things that did not before exist; for a
man by imagination willing to move his body moves it in fact, and by
his imagination and the commerce of invisible powers he may also move
another body." Paracelsus would not have been surprised at the feats
of electro-biology. He exhorts his patients to have "a good faith, a
strong imagination, and they shall find the effects." "All doubt," he
says, "destroys work, and leaves it imperfect in the wise designs of
nature: it is from faith that imagination draws its strength, it is
by faith it becomes complete and realized; he who believeth in nature
will obtain from nature to the extent of his faith, and let the object
of this faith be real or imaginary, he nevertheless reaps similar
results--and hence the cause of superstition."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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