V
Before the commissioners had completed their examination, the aspect of animal magnetism was, in the hands of a French nobleman, undergoing an entire change. The Marquis A. M. J. Chastenet de Puységur, born in 1752, came of a distinguished family, and himself took an important part in the Revolution; his death was the result of a romantic but imprudent act of devotion to the royalist cause, on the occasion of the coronation of Charles X. in 1825. He was one of Mesmer's select pupils, and himself a good subject at the baquet; and likewise remained a firm supporter of the doctrines of animal magnetism. He had constructed a baquet at his estate at Buzancy, and was applying the "Mesmeric" practices among his dependents. It happened on the fourth of May, 1784, that he had magnetized his subject, Victor, in the usual way, when (to continue with his own words) "what was my surprise to see at the end of a quarter of an hour this man sleeping peaceably in my arms without convulsion or pain.... He spoke and seemed occupied with his own thoughts.... I perceived that these were affecting him unpleasantly, and I stopped them and suggested pleasanter ones, which indeed was not difficult. Soon I saw that he was happy, imagining that he had drawn a prize or was dancing at a fête, etc.; these ideas I fostered, and thus forced him to move about on his chair as if dancing to a melody, which I made him repeat aloud, by humming it myself." Upon awakening, Victor remembered nothing of what had happened. In this observation there are clearly recognizable an altered mental condition, a sleep-like unconscious state, loss of memory upon awakening, and suggestibility of sensations, ideas, and movements,—all important characteristics of a true hypnosis. Indeed, this may be considered as the first clearly recorded and uncomplicated production of the condition which made possible the study of hypnotism.
The phenomena thus presented might readily have been the starting-point of a scientific investigation of this peculiar state, had not a subsequent observation unfortunately directed the experiments into a different channel. When Victor was again thrown into this "magnetic crisis" or sleep,—as Puységur at first termed it,—he began to speak, describing his ailments, directing what should be done to effect his cure, and giving similar prescriptions, when questioned in regard to the treatment of others. This strange condition, which by its analogy to sleep-walking came to be termed "artificial somnambulism," was destined to mark a turning-point in the history of the topic. It was evident, almost from the outset, that the baquet and the other paraphernalia, the crises, pain, and contortions were rendered quite unnecessary. The patients had become their own physicians, prescribing such simple remedies as were familiar to them by use or hearsay, and predicting the time of appearance and the nature of the symptoms, such as they had witnessed about the baquet or in everyday life. Within two months of the first observation, 62 cures had been effected under Puységur's direction, 300 patients were in attendance, and 10 somnambulists had been discovered; before the close of the year (1784) Puységur published a volume detailing his cures, his correspondence, and his theory of animal magnetism.
From the point of view of modern hypnotism, Puységur's position is a most important one, more important, indeed, than that of Mesmer. His literary productions and his personal activity in the formation of the Loges d'Harmonie (organizations devoted to the study of animal magnetism) were the most influential factors in keeping alive the study of these phenomena after Mesmer's downfall, and in their revival after the long interruption of the Revolution. Puységur's views were at first identical with those of Mesmer; he believed in the magnetic fluid and the baquet and the crises; but his practices gradually dispensed with all these manipulations and regarded the action of the will upon the somnambules as the essential and sufficient method of effecting a cure. His conceptions were extremely fanciful, and the point of view of his later writings is considerably at variance with that of his earlier compositions. "Some day," he predicts, "after five or six thousand years of existence upon earth, mankind will admit that there is a fluid, or rather a conserving agent of their existence and their health, which they can utilize ... and direct for the benefit of their fellow-men by the simple action of their wills." This universal magnetism is regarded as acting directly through the human will; "croyez et veuillez" is his motto. The tree likewise acts upon the patients connected with it, through the magnetic action imparted to it by the will of the magnetizer. Puységur regarded what he termed the instinctive electro-magnetism of man as analogous to the force by which the chick imparts movement and life to the germ upon which she broods. It was, however, his practical influence, and not that of his decidedly fantastic views, which guided the progress of the antecedents of hypnotism. The contributions of his successors, as of his predecessors, cannot deprive him of the credit of discovery of the hypnotic condition and of the first clear appreciation of its importance. But the progress which Puységur's discovery had brought about was almost at once lost by the extravagant claims which were soon made for the somnambules in their prediction and direction of the course of disease. They came to be regarded as possessed of supernormal powers by which they could perceive the anatomical conditions of their patients; they predicted the future, or rather they were impressed in advance with a sensation of what was to happen—"presentiment" or "optique preliminaire"; they traveled in spirit to distant times and places; they were en rapport with the magnetizer, hearing and obeying him alone, and interpreting his unexpressed thoughts and wishes; their remedies were declared infallible, and Puységur himself, after thirty years of experience, records that he had met with no case of a wrong prediction. The valuable discovery of an artificially induced condition, recognizable by definite physiological and psychological changes, was at once engulfed in a senseless search for the wonderful and the pursuit of fantastic theories.
Next in importance to the discoveries of Puységur were those of Dr. Pétetin, of Lyons. His general position is much the same as that of Puységur; for "animal magnetism," he substituted an "animal electricity," (such was the title of his posthumous volume, 1808); and he claimed to have found that the intervention of poor electric conductors opposed the appearance of certain of the phenomena of the somnambulic state. In a work published in 1787, he described a new condition characterized by a fixed rigidity of the limbs, to which he gave the name (still applied to it) of "catalepsy," and which continues to be one of the characteristic modifications artificially produced by hypnotization. Dr. Pétetin describes how his subject, when magnetized, became insensible to external stimuli, how her pulse slackened, her muscles became fixed, and how she would maintain any position in which she was placed with statue-like rigidity. Dr. Pétetin was also the first to record the automatic repetition by the subject of the movements of the operator; the recollection when re-magnetized of what had happened in a previous somnambulic condition, but had been forgotten in the normal interval; and he also recorded the production of what is now known as a negative hallucination. When he had suggested to his subject that whoever would touch a certain candlestick would disappear from her sight, the subject no longer saw the individual thus spirited away. But as in the case of Puységur, so also in that of Pétetin, he became known not for his most careful and significant observations, but for those which administered to the love of the marvelous, and which were in essence totally erroneous. Pétetin's contribution to the aggregate of error in which this study was to be merged was the memorable "transposition of the senses." The same subject who brought to his notice the cataleptic condition led him into this extravagance. This subject while magnetized began to sing vociferously; while engaged in changing her position during her catalepsy, his chair slipped, and he fell toward her, exclaiming, "Oh, how unfortunate that I cannot stop this singing." "Oh, doctor," she replied, "do not worry, I won't sing any more;" and she stopped at once. Presently the singing was resumed, and no words of the doctor could stop it, until he spoke to her in the attitude previously assumed by the accidental fall, with his head near her stomach. In this position she heard him and obeyed, but gave no heed to his commands when he shouted them into her ear. And thus was originated the transposition of the senses; for Pétetin at once concluded, in accordance with the remarkable sensibilities attributed to somnambules, that his subject heard through her stomach. By further experiments he became convinced that tastes and odors could be similarly perceived, and that his subject could read what was written on a card applied to her stomach. He also credited the various other exalted and marvelous mental faculties of his subjects, and added to the prevailing mystery and supernatural tendency of the period. His historical influence was but slight; he was regarded as a mesmerist, and was chiefly remembered by his introduction of the transposition of the senses into the traditional system of artificial somnambulism. It is interesting to note that the detection of error in another's work does not protect against a similar error in one's own; Puységur, while accepting with implicit faith the extravagances of his own subjects, was able to recognize that unconscious suggestion lay at the basis of Pétetin's observations. If at first, he remarks, Pétetin had happened to suppose that his cataleptics could speak only during the wane of the moon in May, they would have been dumb for eleven and a half months.