POWER OF MAGNETISM AND SUGGESTION.
The suggestion of Du Prel as to the hypnotic teaching in France, that an idea impressed on the mind of the hypnotized will be realized in the body is the basis of a great deal of therapeutic philosophy. It is true in practice just to the extent of human impressibility. A cheerful physician or friend, by encouraging words impresses the idea of recovery and thus sometimes produces it. Judicious friends never speak in a discouraging manner to the invalid. The success of mind cure practitioners is based on this principle. They endeavor to impress on the patient’s mind the idea of perfect health, but they know too little of the whole subject to know how to place the patient in that passive and receptive condition in which the results are most promptly and certainly produced.
Such methods are limited in their effect in proportion to human impressibility and cannot possibly supersede all use of remedies which reach thousands of cases in which mental operations would be entirely futile. But the power of animal magnetism over all diseases and infirmities of mind and body has been so often demonstrated that its neglect is a deep disgrace to the medical colleges. A correspondent of the Daily Telegraph gives the following illustration of its power over drunkenness:
“About eighteen months ago I was conversing with my friend B., who is an enthusiastic believer in mesmerism, and has repute as an amateur practitioner. My contention was that his favorite science (?) had contributed absolutely nothing to the world’s good to cause its recognition by either scientists or philosophers. ‘Can you give me,’ said I, ‘one instance in which you have conferred an actual benefit by the practice of your favorite art?’ He related several, from which I selected the following:—‘There lives by my parsonage,’ said my friend B., ‘a man who for many years, had been a confirmed drunkard. Repeatedly were his wife and children forced to flee from him, for when in his drunken frenzies, he attempted to murder them. Again and again have I striven to induce him to flee from his horrible vice, but my efforts were always futile. One day he called to see me when he was suffering acutely from the effects of drink. I resolved to place him under mesmeric influence. This I did, and while subject to me made him promise not to touch strong drink again, and if he attempted to break his pledge, might the drink taste to him filthy as putrid soapsuds. I then restored him to his normal state, and he left me. He kept his unconsciously given promise. In the course of a couple of years this man raised himself from a condition of poverty to the comfortable position of a thriving market gardener. ‘Not a fortnight since,’ resumed my friend, ‘my neighbor’s wife laughingly said to me, ‘There is no fear of my husband ever drinking again, sir. You know he has to be in the market very early in the morning with his vegetables. Yesterday morning, while he was drinking a cup of coffee at the hotel an old mate said to him, ‘Why don’t you drink some spirits; are you afraid?’ To show his mate that he was not afraid, he ordered a glass of brandy, but no sooner did he put it in his mouth than he spat it out again, saying the ‘filthy stuff tasted like rotten soapsuds.’ My friend B. said, that, till he told me, to no one had he mentioned the fact, and that what he did to his poor neighbor he did in order to see if it were possible to use mesmerism as a remedial agent in cases of drunkenness.”
The power of control over the impressible condition (which is so easily developed into hypnotism) has been recently illustrated in France, and reports of the phenomena published in the London News, concerning which Mr. Charles Dawbarn has published the following in the Banner of Light:
“According to the reports published in the Daily News of London, Eng., an attempt has been made by physicians in Paris, France, to determine the duration of an hypnotic influence. Some of my readers may not be aware that ‘hypnotism’ is a word coined by the medical faculty to replace the term ‘mesmerism,’ which they consider disreputably associated with spiritualism. These physicians seem to have had some very fine sensitives upon whom to operate. The first experiment was upon a lady of some means, but having a mother and sister dependent upon her for support. The hypnotizer first established his influence in the usual manner, and then told the lady he wished her to go to a lawyer the next day, and make her will in his favor. She protested, but finally gave way. All memory of this promise seemed to be lost as soon as she returned to her normal condition. But next day she went to a lawyer, and although he begged her to remember her mother and sister, the will was made just as suggested by the physician. She was an affectionate daughter and told the lawyer she was impelled to leave her property to a stranger by an influence which she could not resist.
“A second experiment with another sensitive was then tried. This time the poor girl promised to poison a friend next day, she carried away with her a dose prepared by the doctor. Not knowing why, and like the other sensitive, under an influence she could not resist, she gave her friend the harmless drug in a glass of milk, and thus enacted the part of a murderer.
“These experiments have the novelty of having been made by the regular faculty; but thousands of Spiritualists have proved the truth of an hypnotic influence lasting long after the apparent release of the sensitive. We know, or ought to know, that the hypnotic condition can be induced without visible passes; and many of us have seen a sensitive under influence sitting quietly, showing no sign of her slavery to the will of another. We may go yet a step further and assert that men and women, visible and invisible, are constantly psychologizing each other, although we only use the term “sensitive” when the effect is visible to our dull senses.
“But Spiritualists as a whole have been converted by the phenomena appealing to their outward senses, and know little and care little for effects that can only be traced by shrewd, careful and scientific experiment. Yet such facts as come to the surface in those experiments with sensitives in France, are keys with which to unlock some of life’s darkest mysteries, and expose the harsh treatment of many mediums.
“Many of us have been greatly troubled by the conduct of our mediums, and often puzzled by their careful prepared attempts at fraud. Mediums we have met and loved, because they have given us proof after proof of the ‘gates ajar’ for angel visitors, have been presently detected in frauds that required days of careful preparation. We have cried, ‘Down with the frauds!’ and insisted that they should return to wash-tub and spade for an honest living.
“We have omitted to keep in view that one who is a medium Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays must also be a medium Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and we have neglected to learn the lessons of our own experience. I was talking recently to a gentleman of prominence, twice sheriff of his county, who was narrating with glee how he had mesmerised a young man, and then told him, ‘At noon to-morrow you will be lame, and it will last two hours.’ Of course it happened much to the poor fellows perplexity, but my friend would have been surprised to discover that therein was the entire case of the French sensitives and of our poor mediums.
“A very important thought is that an hypnotic influence need not spring from any verbal expression. We all carry with us an influence which strikes every sensitive we meet; and if we sit with her when she is, of course, specially passive, she must receive a yet more marked influence. There is a photographic curiosity now often exhibited which, I think, illustrates the thought I want to emphasize. A family or a class can be photographed, one by one, at exactly the same focus and on the same negative, with a result that you have a clear and distinct face, not of any one’s personality, but that actually combines the features of the whole into a new individual unlike any of the sitters.”
“This is the very influence we cast upon a sensitive when she sits for us in a miscellaneous circle. We cannot say that any one of us has powerfully affected her, but we know the entire influence has got control and possession, and that influence follows her, too often with irresistible power.”
The publication of a work on animal magnetism by Binet and Féré of Paris prompts the following sketch of the subject by the Boston Herald, a newspaper which pays great attention to anything foreign or anything from the old school profession, but ignores that which is American and original. The reader will observe that the writers are all in the dark, unable to explain the phenomena they describe.