Fact and Fable in Psychology

by Joseph Jastrow

IX

It will be instructive at this point to retrace our steps and complete the survey of the antecedents of hypnotism by some account of a series of contributions, which, while they may represent the backward steps in the zigzag line of progress from obscure speculations to science, are nevertheless important historical factors in the continuity of the movement, and in the maintenance of the interest in this branch of psychological study. The fanciful doctrines, which Mesmer revived, originated in mediæval mysticism and superstition; and at no time, from then till now, have such extravagant systems and notions failed to attract an all too extensive class of intellectual malcontents, to whom the progress of knowledge seems absurdly slow and laborious. Before the establishment of the scientific theory of the relation of body and mind, the opportunity in this field for such speculations was endless, and it is to the vast history of pseudo-science that an account of these properly belongs. It is for the purpose of gaining a proper understanding of the various conceptions which were and are associated with hypnotism that an excursion into this barren area is here made. The fantastic schemes of Mesmer, Puységur, and Pétetin, and even of Braid, have already been noticed, and the seed sown by them still bears undesirable fruit. To J. P. F. Deleuze (1785-1835), author of influential works on mesmerism, may be accorded the doubtful honor of ranking as leader in the movement which continued the mystic and eccentric elements of animal magnetism. He accepted the combined marvels of mesmerism and somnambulism. He directed his efforts towards the elaboration of the paraphernalia of the baquet, the wand and passes, and the inculcation of most detailed cautions and regulations for the guidance of the operator. Every movement of the hand, and eyes, and head assumed special significance. The poles of the human frame must be considered, and no departure made from the prescribed manipulation. The process of demagnetizing is thus described:—

"When you wish to put an end to the sitting, take care to draw toward the extremity of the hands and toward the extremity of the feet, prolonging your passes beyond these extremities and shaking your finger each time. Finally, make several passes transversely before the face, and also before the breast, at the distance of three or four inches; these passes are made by presenting the two hands together, and briskly drawing them from each other, as if to carry off the superabundance of fluid with which the patient may be charged. You see that it is essential to magnetize, always descending from the head to the extremities, and never mounting from the extremities to the head." The magnetism is imparted to inanimate objects, and "one may magnetize a pitcher of water in two or three minutes, a glass of water in one minute. It is unnecessary to repeat here that processes pointed out for magnetizing water, like everything else, would be absolutely useless, if they were not employed with attention and with a determinate will." "The magnetizer who uses a wand ought to have one of his own, and not lend it to any person, lest it should be charged with different fluids—a precaution more important than it is commonly thought to be." It is this phase of the subject that found its way into Germany, and was most typically embodied in the writings of Wolfart, Kieser, and Ennemoser. For such mystics nothing seemed too absurd to find credence, nor too profound to find an explanation in animal magnetism.

It was through Deleuze's influence, also, that mesmerism was transplanted to America. As early as 1837, Charles Poyen lectured and wrote on animal magnetism in New England; he exhibited the usual phenomena, made the usual claims for supernatural faculties, and gave the usual fanciful expositions. It was, however, through Dods and Grimes, in 1850, that mesmerism became prominent in America, under the absurd name of "electro-biology." The popular interest which they aroused may be inferred from the fact that they were invited to exhibit before Congress, the signatures of Clay and Webster appearing in the letter of invitation. The absurdity of their writings is sufficiently evident in the following extracts: "Let two persons of equal brain, both in size and fluid, sit down. Let one of these individuals remain perfectly passive, and let the other exercise his mental and physical energies according to the true principles of mesmerizing, and he will displace some of the nervo-vital fluid from the passive brain and deposit it in his own instead. The next day let them sit another hour, and so on day after day, until the acting brain shall have displaced the major part of the nervo-vital fluid from the passive brain and filled up that space with its own nervous force, and the person will yield to the magnetic power and serenely slumber in its inexpressible quietude." "Your brain being magnetically subdued is worth hundreds of dollars to you. You are then ready for the day of distress." An ignorant young man is magnetized and forthwith converses with a "mental activity which put to blush men of superior education and intellectual endowments." An eminent lawyer is astonished at his learning and his quotations from legal authorities. He speaks Greek, Latin, French, Polish, all perfectly, and without accent; though when awake he knows no language but English. Grimes determined the function of parts of the brain from the answers of his somnambulist, and thus discovered that the corpus callosum is designed to equalize the flow of the nervous fluid. From the same source he received the assurance of the correctness of his phrenological views. "I then asked her concerning the location and uses of several new phreno-organs, which I supposed that I had discovered, and to my surprise she answered me without the least hesitation, and confirmed all my previous opinions, not even excepting those opinions which I had never mentioned to any one, and which she could only have known by clairvoyance."

"Electro-biology" made its way into England, and there found a place among the endless forms of absurdity and pseudo-science then prevalent. A few illustrations are powerless to give any adequate notion of the extent and variety of the extravagant pretensions with which animal magnetism was saturated in the years following Braid's observations. The diabolic origin of mesmerism was discussed by pulpit and press; a pamphlet, entitled "Dialogue between a Mesmerist and a Christian," maintained that the two faiths were incompatible. It was generally urged that mesmerism favored materialism, and in 1856 the Catholic Church issued an edict against the practice. The skepticism of the medical profession found expression in extreme and certainly unscientific statements. Dr. Buchanan (1851) of Glasgow, holding that the alleged condition was the result of acting and trickery, proposed the experiment of telling a hypnotized boy that he could not move, and then applying the birch; this, he felt confident, would satisfactorily refute the whole doctrine, and if, in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, the boy did not scamper off, though his feet were mesmerized, he promised to recant "and to believe in mesmerism ever after." There is unfortunately no record of the acceptance of this test, which, in comparison with the hypnotic anæsthesia of surgical operations then performed, would have been easily met. From the following comment of a medical journal, in 1843, one may infer that the controversy did not always recognize the politesses of discussion. "The mesmero-mania has nearly dwindled in the metropolis into servile fatuity, but lingers in some of the provinces with the gobe-mouches and chaw-bacons, who, after gulping down a pound of fat pork, would, with well-greased gullets, swallow such a lot of mesmeric mummery as would choke an alligator or boa-constrictor."

The two writers to be presently cited are selected as illustrations of the truth that the possession of intellectual attainments in other directions does not insure against such gross errors as are about to be noticed, and the second, moreover, serves as a type of the compilations of the period, to which the reader may be referred for further instances. The reputation of Miss Harriet Martineau insured general attention to her "Letters on Mesmerism" (1845). Miss Martineau was cured of a long-standing illness by magnetic treatment, the operator being a noted mesmerist, Spencer T. Hall. The magnetizing process gave rise to peculiar sensations which were attributed to the action of the magnetic fluid. "My head has often appeared to be drawn out, to change its form according to the traction of my mesmerist, and an indescribable but exceedingly agreeable sensation of transparency and lightness through a part or whole of the frame has followed." Miss Martineau was thus made a convert to mesmerism, and initiated experiments of her own, finding in her maid, J., a somnambule of unusual powers. She maintained her health by following the prescriptions given by the somnambule, and the latter exhibited the many varieties of marvels with which we have become familiar. The spontaneous or suggested utterances of the somnambule upon matters relating to her exalted condition were unquestioningly accepted. "Do the minds of the mesmerist and the patient become one?" "Sometimes, but not often."—"Is it, then, that they taste, feel, etc., the same things, at the same moment?" "Yes."—"Will our minds become one?" "I think not."—"What are your chief powers?" "I like to look up and see spiritual things; I can see diseases, and I like to see visions."—"Can the mind hear otherwise than by the ear?" "Not naturally; but a deaf person can hear the mesmerist when in the sleep; not anybody else, however."—"How is it that you can see without your eyes!" "Ah! that is a curious thing. I have not found it out yet."

From the "Letters to a Candid Inquirer on Animal Magnetism," by William Gregory, M.D., F.R.S.E., professor of chemistry in the University of Edinburgh, selections appropriate to our present purpose may be made almost at random. Some writing is placed in the hands of the somnambule, and from this she pictures the writer, tells of the lady's recent ailments, her surroundings, her travels, and her condition; and when the lady herself is presented she immediately recognizes her as the subject of her vision. A lost watch is recovered and the thief detected by the same means; the whereabouts of absent friends traveling in distant lands is determined by placing a sample of their handwriting or a lock of their hair in the somnambule's hands. The somnambule transports herself to past times, and details the events of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, as she witnesses them. In her magnetic vision she follows, day by day, the adventures of Sir John Franklin, who was then in the Arctic regions. She frequently spoke of his occupations, and, when asked the time of day, found it either by looking at a timepiece in the cabin or by consulting Sir John's watch; and from the difference in time indicated by the somnambule the longitude of Sir John Franklin's location and the directions of his movements were calculated. "On a Sunday afternoon in February, 1850, she said it was about 10 A.M. there, and described the captain, Sir John, as reading prayers to the crew, who knelt in a circle with their faces upward, looking at him and appearing very sorrowful. She even named the chapter of St. Mark's gospel which he read on that occasion." Although we are naïvely told that, "as a general rule, we ought to verify the vision before admitting it as an instance of genuine clairvoyance," yet in this case the somnambule's assertions had been so uniformly verified that it seemed unnecessary to question the correctness of her mental Arctic explorations.

All the varieties of supernatural conditions—conscious lucidity, conscious clairvoyance, sympathetic clairvoyance, sympathetic retrovision, direct clairvoyance, mental traveling, introvision and prevision, spontaneous retrovision—were formulated and added their quota to the general mystery. The doctrine of cross-magnetism, or the disturbing influence of different magnetizers, was developed, and became a favorite mode of accounting for failures of all kinds. Extravagant doctrines originating in other fields of pseudo-science were incorporated into magnetism; the magic mirror or crystal was one of these. The notion is doubtless very ancient,—compare the shew-stone of Dr. Dee (1527-1608),—and was revived by Baron Du Potet, who drew a black magic circle on the floor with a piece of charcoal; this the subject approached, stared at it fixedly, and seemed fascinated by it; grew excited, breathed hard, moved to and fro, and then saw visions in the magic mirror. "It was no dream nor nightmare; the apparitions were actually present. A series of events were unrolled before him, represented by signs and figures which he could understand and gloat over, sometimes joyful, sometimes gloomy, just as these representations of the future passed before his eyes! Very soon he was overcome by delirium, he wished to seize the image, and darted a ferocious glance towards it; he finally started forward to trample on the charcoal circle, the dust from it arose, and the operator approached to put an end to a drama so full of emotion and terror."

"Darlingism" was a term brought forward by one Darling, who used a disc, said to be made of zinc and copper, to put his subjects to sleep. Like electro-biology, it was merely a new name for the same phenomena exhibited in connection with absurd theoretical notions. The phrenological manifestations, so unfortunately countenanced by Braid, continued to be exhibited by others in connection with the hypnotic state. Clairvoyance continued to be regarded as one of the most essential tests of the mesmeric condition, and took a prominent part in public exhibitions. Somewhat later it was incorporated into the equipment of spiritualism, and this movement probably exerted a mystic influence upon mesmerism.

The investigations of Baron Reichenbach added a new class of sensitives. Reichenbach announced the doctrine of an "odic" force or "odyle," streaming forth from magnets and from the human frame, and affecting the human system; certain sensitives could see these emanations, and magnetized subjects at once become "odic" sensitives. The doctrine that certain persons are sensitive to metals was an ancient one. It reappeared in the myths that were woven about Casper Hauser, the wild boy of Nuremberg (1828), who gave evidence of his unusual origin by shuddering in the presence of a needle, and evidencing intense agony in passing a hardware shop. Miss Martineau's J. holds a piece of steel so tightly that no one can wrench it from her, but touch the steel with gold and it falls from her hands at once. The following citation will show how this movement was utilized in mesmeric practices: "But to ascertain whether he (a Major Buckley, a mesmerist) can obtain conscious clairvoyance, he makes slow passes from his own forehead to his own chest. If this produces a blue light in his face, strongly visible, the subject will probably acquire conscious clairvoyance. If not, if the light be pale, the subject must first be rendered clairvoyant in the sleep. Taking those subjects who see a very deep blue light, he continues to make passes over his own face, and also over the object, a box or a nut, for example, in which written or printed words are inclosed, which the clairvoyant is to read. Some subjects require only a pass or two to be made clairvoyant, others require many. They describe the blue light as rendering the box or nut transparent, so that they can read what is inside. If too many passes be made by Major B., the blue light becomes so deep that they cannot read, and some reverse passes must be made to render the light less deep. Major Buckley has thus produced conscious clairvoyance in eighty-nine persons, of whom forty-four have been able to read mottoes contained in nut-shells, purchased by other parties for the experiment."

It must not be supposed that these practices have entirely disappeared. In a work published as late as 1869 we may read such sentences as, "the clairvoyance of an idiot in a state of somnambulism would inspire me with more confidence if I were sick than the greatest geniuses which grace modern medicine;" and again, "it never could be imagined with what tact, accuracy, and precision, somnambulists account for anything that takes place in them. They are literally present at the performance of all their organic functions; they detect in them the slightest disorder, the minutest change. Then of all this he forms a clear, exact, and mathematical idea. He could tell, for instance, how many drops of blood there are in his heart; he knows, almost to a gramme, how much it would require to satisfy his appetite at the moment; how many drops of water would be necessary to satisfy his thirst, and his valuations are inconceivably exact. Time, space, forces of all kinds, the resistance and weight of objects, his thoughts, or rather his instinct measures, he calculates, appreciates all these matters by a single glance of the eye." In the lectures and cheap compendiums telling "How to Mesmerize," and giving "The Whole Art of Mesmerism," by which the traveling mesmerists of yesterday, if not of to-day, extend their fame, one may find these very same doctrines side by side with garbled accounts of recent discoveries in hypnotism. But we have already dwelt too long upon the aberrations of the human intellect, in which the ludicrous and the solemn are so curiously combined.