However, some are convinced of the positive agency of the will in mesmerising. The following statement by Mr. H. S. Thompson of Fairfield, made in a letter to Dr. Elliotson, published in the Zoist, admits the inferiority in force of the will to the material agency of Od, at the same time that it goes far to prove its efficiency.
“I have succeeded,” says Mr. Thompson, “in arresting spasms, and taking away every species of pain, and in producing intense heat and perspiration, by the will only; and in many instances without the knowledge of the patients, who have been all unconscious of the power I have been exerting, until after the results have occurred. At the same time, I have generally found that the passes in combination with the will, or attention, most readily produce the effects we desire; and that manipulations are much less fatiguing to the operator than the exertion of the will.”
Of an extremely sensitive patient, who was suffering with rheumatic pains, Mr. H. S. Thompson observes, “A few passes put her to sleep, though she was moaning as in great pain, and scarcely seemed to notice what I was doing. After sleeping for a few minutes, her face became composed, and she showed no symptoms of pain; but as I could not get her to speak in her sleep, I awakened her. She looked very much surprised, and said that she felt very comfortable and free from pain. I told my friend that she was so sensitive that I thought that she might be put to sleep by the will in a few minutes. The bed-curtains were drawn, so that she could not see or know what was going on. I fixed my attention upon her, wishing her to go to sleep. When we looked at her two minutes afterwards, she was fast asleep. It was agreed that the following day, though I should be thirty miles off, the experiment should be tried again. A lady went at the time fixed on. I purposely postponed the time half-an-hour, thinking that the woman might have become acquainted with my intention, and go to sleep through the power of the imagination. The lady’s account was, that she called upon the woman at the time agreed on, and at first thought that the experiment was going to fail, as she saw no symptoms of sleep; but that in half-an-hour afterwards the patient went into a deep sleep, which lasted some time. After this she went to sleep every day for a fortnight at the same time, though I did not will her to sleep. She says that she felt in a dreamy and happy state for some days after.”
I might add many similar facts to the above interesting observations. The mass of evidence existing on the subject establishes beyond all doubt that patients have been thrown into trances by persons who have previously mesmerised them in the common way, at distances which seem to preclude the idea of any physical agent having been the medium of communication between the two parties. The operation seems to have been in those instances mental. Then how is such a result to be explained?—or by what expression can it be brought to tally with the principles I am endeavouring to substantiate? I shape the answer thus:—
The first step is ordinary mesmerising; in other words, the operator directs an Od-current upon the patient, the Od in whose system is thereby disturbed; and initiatory trance ensues as the consequence.
Secondly, The mind of the patient thus entranced enters into relation with, or is attracted towards, the mind or person of the mesmeriser. I remember witnessing a most decisive instance in which the operation of this attraction was singularly manifested. The place was Dr. Elliotson’s waiting-room; the patient, a young man whom Mr. Simpson had entranced. Mr. Simpson then moved about the room, standing still at several points in it in succession. The young man seemed attracted towards Mr. Simpson, to whom he drew near each time he stopped; then he pressed against Mr. Simpson, jostling him out of his place, which he planted himself in—his countenance bearing an expression of huge delight at what he had achieved. But in half a minute he began to look anxious and uneasy; and again—his eyes being shut all the while—he set off in search of Mr. Simpson, and repeated the same scene. There exists, it would appear, an attraction between the (mind of the?) entranced person and (that of?) his mesmeriser, or (that of?) any other person with whom the entranced person has secondarily come into relation.
Then, thirdly, It may be presumed that, in phenomena which are purely mental, space and distance go for nothing. But if this supposition be admitted, it would be as easy for a mesmeriser to entrance by a mental effort a sensitive and habituated patient at a hundred miles off as at the end of the same room. The phenomenon thus viewed is wholly exoneural. The one mind is supposed to be actually sensitive to the influence of the other. Each of the two minds, though in different degrees, energizes, it may be imagined, beyond its bodily frame. And the mind of the patient feels the force of the mesmeriser’s will acting upon it, and slips as it were at once, by the accustomed track, out of the normal into the abnormal psychico-neural relation.
Still I cannot get rid of a lurking notion that, in the phenomena last considered, the Od-force contributes an element of physical or physico-dynamic influence. For, putting for the moment aside the idea of mental action, what is to prevent two living bodies, that may be in Od-relation, or in exact Od-unison, from physically influencing one another at indefinite distances?
IX. Trance-Diagnosis
IX. Trance-Diagnosis.—From Boppard, where I was residing in the winter of 1845-6, I sent to an American gentleman residing in Paris a lock of hair, which Col. C—, an invalid then under my care, had cut from his own head, and wrapped in writing-paper from his own writing-desk. Col. C—was unknown even by name to this American gentleman, who had no clue whatever whereby to identify the proprietor of the hair. And all that he had to do and did was to place the paper, enclosing the lock of hair, in the hands of a noted Parisian somnambulist. She stated, in the opinion she gave on the case, that Col. C—had partial palsy of the hips and legs, and that for another complaint he was in the habit of using a surgical instrument. The patient laughed heartily at the idea of the distant somnambulist having so completely realized him.