If Descartes, a Frenchman and a scientist, could, in the midst of civilization, firmly believe that such a universal remedy had been found, and that if possessed of it he could live at least five hundred years, why are not the Orientals entitled to the same belief? The master-problems of both life and death are still unsolved by occidental physiologists. Even sleep is a phenomenon about whose cause there is a great divergence of opinion among them. How, then, can they pretend to set limits to the possible, and define the impossible?
From the remotest ages the philosophers have maintained the singular power of music over certain diseases, especially of the nervous class. Kircher recommends it, having experienced its good effects in himself, and he gives an elaborate description of the instrument he employed. It was a harmonica composed of five tumblers of a very thin glass, placed in a row. In two of them were two different varieties of wine; in the third, brandy; in the fourth, oil; in the fifth, water. He extracted five melodious sounds from them in the usual way, by merely rubbing his finger on the edges of the tumblers. The sound has an attractive property; it draws out disease, which streams out to encounter the musical wave, and the two, blending together, disappear in space. Asclepiades employed music for the same purpose, some twenty centuries ago; he blew a trumpet to cure sciatica, and its prolonged sound making the fibres of the nerves to palpitate, the pain invariably subsided. Democritus in like manner affirmed that many diseases could be cured by the melodious sounds of a flute. Mesmer used this very harmonica described by Kircher for his magnetic cures. The celebrated Scotchman, Maxwell, offered to prove to various medical faculties that with certain magnetic means at his disposal, he would cure any of the diseases abandoned by them as incurable; such as epilepsy, impotence, insanity, lameness, dropsy, and the most obstinate fevers.[357]
The familiar story of the exorcism of the “evil spirit from God” that obsessed Saul, will recur to every one in this connection. It is thus related: “And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.”[358]
Maxwell, in his Medicina Magnetica, expounds the following propositions, all which are the very doctrines of the alchemists and kabalists.
“That which men call the world-soul, is a life, as fire, spiritual, fleet, light, and ethereal as light itself. It is a life-spirit everywhere, and everywhere the same.... All matter is destitute of action, except as it is ensouled by this spirit. This spirit maintains all things in their peculiar condition. It is found in nature free from all fetters; and he who understands how to unite it with a harmonizing body, possesses a treasure which exceeds all riches.”
“This spirit is the common bond of all quarters of the earth, and lives through and in all—adest in mundo quid commune omnibus mextis, in quo ipsa permanent.”
“He who knows this universal life-spirit and its application can prevent all injuries.”[359]
“If thou canst avail thyself of this spirit and fix it on some particular body thou wilt perform the mystery of magic.”
“He who knows how to operate on men by this universal spirit, can heal, and this at any distance that he pleases.”[360]
“He who can invigorate the particular spirit through the universal one, might continue his life to eternity.”[361]