He detected many robberies in the same way. His rod moved whenever he passed over metals or water, or stolen goods; but he found that he could distinguish the track of a murderer from all the rest, by the horror and pain he felt. He made this discovery accidentally, as he was searching for water. They dug up the ground, and found the body of a woman that had been strangled.
I have myself met with three or four persons in whose hands the rod turned visibly; and there are numerous very remarkable cases recorded in different works. In the Hartz, there is a race of people who support themselves entirely by this sort of divination; and as they are paid very highly, and do nothing else, they are generally extremely worthless and dissipated.
The extraordinary susceptibility to atmospheric changes in certain organisms, and the faculty by which a dog tracks the foot of his master, are analogous facts to those of the divining-rod. Mr. Boyle mentions a lady who always perceived if a person that visited her came from a place where snow had lately fallen. I have seen one who, if a quantity of gloves are given her, can tell to a certainty to whom each belongs; and a particular friend of my own, on entering a room, can distinguish perfectly who has been sitting in it, provided these be persons he is familiarly acquainted with. Numerous extraordinary stories are extant respecting this kind of faculty in dogs.
Doubtless not only our bodies, but all matter, sheds its atmosphere around it; the sterility of the ground where metals are found is notorious; and it is asserted that, to some persons, the vapors that emanate from below are visible, and that, as the height of the mountains round a lake furnishes a measure of its depth, so does the height to which these vapors ascend show how far below the surface the mineral treasures or the waters lie. The effect of metals on somnambulic persons is well known to all who have paid any attention to these subjects; and surely may be admitted, when it is remembered that Humboldt has discovered the same sensibility in zoophytes, where no traces of nerves could be detected; and, many years ago, Frascatorius asserted that symptoms resembling apoplexy were sometimes induced by the proximity of a large quantity of metal. A gentleman is mentioned who could not enter the mint at Paris without fainting. In short, so many well-attested cases of idiosyncratic sensibilities exist, that we have no right to reject others because they appear incomprehensible.
Now, we may not only easily conceive, but we know it to be a fact, that fear, grief, and other detrimental passions, vitiate the secretions,[[9]] and augment transpiration; and it is quite natural to suppose that, where a crime has been committed which necessarily aroused a number of turbulent emotions, exhalations perceptible to a very acute sense may for some time hover over the spot; while the anxiety, the terror, the haste, in short, the general commotion of system, that must accompany a murderer in his flight, is quite sufficient to account for his path being recognisable by such an abnormal faculty, “for the wicked flee when no man pursueth.” We also know that a person perspiring with open pores is more susceptible than another to contagion; and we have only to suppose the pores of Jacques Aymar so constituted as easily to imbibe the emanations shed by the fugitive, and we see why he should be affected by the disagreeable sensations he describes.
The disturbing effect of odors on some persons, which are quite innoxious to others, must have been observed by everybody. Some people do actually almost “die of a rose in aromatic pain.” Boyle says that, in his time, many physicians avoided giving drugs to children, having found that external applications, to be imbibed by the skin, or by respiration, were sufficient; and the homeopaths occasionally use the same means now. Sir Charles Bell told me that Mr. F——, a gentleman well known in public life, had only to hold an old book to his nose to produce all the effects of a cathartic. Elizabeth Okey was oppressed with most painful sensations when near a person whose frame was sinking. Whenever this effect was of a certain intensity, Dr. Elliotson observed that the patient invariably died.
Herein lies the secret of amulets and talismans, which grew to be a vain superstition, but in which, as in all popular beliefs, there was a germ of truth. Somnambulic persons frequently prescribe them; and absurd as it may seem to many, there are instances in which their efficacy has been perfectly established, be the interpretation of the mystery what it may. In a great plague which occurred in Moravia, a physician, who was constantly among the sufferers, attributed the complete immunity of himself and his family to their wearing amulets composed of the powder of toads, “which,” says Boyle, “caused an emanation adverse to the contagion.” A Dutch physician mentions, that in the plague at Nimeguen, the pest seldom attacked any house till they had used soap in washing their linen. Wherever this was done it appeared immediately.
In short, we are the subjects, and so is everything around us, of all manner of subtle and inexplicable influences: and if our ancestors attached too much importance to these ill-understood arcana of the night-side of nature, we have attached too little. The sympathetic effects of multitudes upon each other, of the young sleeping with the old, of magnetism on plants and animals, are now acknowledged facts: may not many other asserted phenomena that we yet laugh at be facts also, though probably too capricious in their nature—by which I mean, depending on laws beyond our apprehension—to be very available? For I take it, that as there is no such thing as chance, but all would be certainty if we knew the whole of the conditions, so no phenomena are really capricious and uncertain: they only appear so to our ignorance and shortsightedness.
The strong belief that formerly prevailed in the efficacy of sympathetic cures, can scarcely have existed, I think, without some foundation: nor are they a whit more extraordinary than the sympathetic falling of pictures and stopping of clocks and watches, of which such numerous well-attested cases are extant that several learned German physiologists of the present day pronounce the thing indisputable. I have myself heard of some very perplexing instances.
Gaffarillus alludes to a certain sort of magnet, not resembling iron, but of a black-and-white color, with which if a needle or knife were rubbed, the body might be punctured or cut without pain. How can we know that this is not true? Jugglers who slashed and cauterized their bodies for the amusement of the public were supposed to avail themselves of such secrets.