The mesmeric discrimination of disease involves three degrees.
First, the clairvoyante placed in relation with the patient, either by taking his hand, or by handling a lock of his hair, or any thing impregnated with his Od, feels all his feelings, realizes his sensations, and describes what he sensibly labours under. Her account of the case thus obtained will be more or less happy, according to the extent of her previous knowledge respecting ordinary disease.
Secondly, the clairvoyante, if in a higher state of lucidness, actually sees and inspects the interior bodily construction of the patient, whose inward organs are, as it would seem, lit with Od-light, for her examination. Or she sees them by their Od-light, being in mesmeric relation with the internal frame of the patient.
Thirdly, the clairvoyante, if still more lucid, foresees what will be the progress of the malady; what further organic changes are threatened; what will be the patient’s fate.
The first two points require no further comment. I reserve my comments upon the last for another head.
X. Mesmeric Treatment
X. Mesmeric Treatment.—Let me first advert to the use of artificial trance as an anæsthetic agent in the service of surgery. There is no doubt that, when a patient can thus be deprived of ordinary sensibility, the resource is preferable to the employment of chloroform. Not only is it absolutely free from risk, but its direct effect is to soothe and tranquillize; whereas chloroform is but a powerful narcotic, the effects of which are obtained through a brief stage of violent physical excitement. Then, at each dressing—at any moment, in short, when advisable—mesmerism may be again resorted to, which chloroform cannot. The honour of having been the first to employ mesmerism systematically, as an anæsthetic agent, belongs to James Esdale, M. D., Presidency Surgeon at Calcutta. The reports of his success, in a vast body of cases, many of the most serious description, are given in the Zoist.
A second point is the employment of artificial trance as a universal sedative; as a means from which, in all cases purely nervous, the most admirable results may be expected and are realized; and from which, in disease in general, singular and beneficial effects have been obtained. This success was confidently to be anticipated, the instant that the real nature of mesmeric phenomena was appreciated.
A third point is the employment of mesmeric passes, without the intention or power to produce trance,—simply as a local means of tranquillizing the nervous sensibility of a diseased part, and allaying the morbid phenomena which depend upon local nervous irritation.
There is a fourth point under this head which will be regarded as more questionable, viz. the power attributed to clairvoyantes of prescribing treatment for themselves and others. Nevertheless, in their own cases, where the prescriptions have been limited to baths, and bleeding, and mesmerism itself, the boldness and precision of their practice, and its success, have been such as to excite our wonder, and almost to command our confidence. It does not, however, seem that the treatment prescribed by clairvoyantes to others is equally certain; and when they recommend drugs, it is clear that, adopting the fashion of the time and country in medicine, they are only prescribing by guess, like other doctors. But they sometimes guess very cleverly.