Letter from Paris.
Mesmer has been well avenged by Charcot, the great professor who fills the chair in the clinical ward of the Saltpetriere for the nervous diseases of women. Not only, indeed, has this illustrious physician shown that the charlatan whom the elder Dumas introduced with such telling effect into his novels, “La Comtesse de Charny” and “Le Docteur Balsamo,” was no mere charlatan, but a number of Charcot’s disciples have proved the truth of what Dumas seemed to draw from his rich imagination. Dr. Charcot, who is a cautious man, has publicly admitted hypnotic suggestion. He thinks extraordinary curative effects, so far as the consciousness of pain goes, are to be derived from hypnotism, which is Mesmerism with a new Greek name. But he always exhorts laics not to dabble in it, and medical men to keep their hypnotic lore to themselves. This is charming after the way in which the profession of which Charcot is really a bright light treated Mesmerism. Mesmer was an empiric. But he nevertheless got at the truth.
Homœopathy was tabooed because it was not orthodox, by that Sanhedrim known as the Faculty of Medicine. Animal magnetism was long ignored on the ground that charlatans had taken it up and that no doctor who had self-respect could follow them. Mesmerism was treated with no less contempt until a new name was given it, and Charcot declared that there was not only something but a good deal in it deserving the attention of scientists.
Dr. Luys last Tuesday made a communication to the Academy of Medicine on this subject which electrified the members present. It was on the action, both at a distance and by direct contact, of certain medicated or fermented substances on hypnotic subjects. The latter were all women who could not possibly have got their cue beforehand, and were being observed, while Dr. Luys operated, by a jury of scientists above all suspicion of having lent themselves to any trickery. Alcohol when put to the nape in a tube no larger than a homœopathist’s vial and hermetically sealed produced exactly the same effect as if imbibed at a bar. Absinthe, haschish, opium, morphine, beer, champagne, tea and coffee were in succession tried with their characteristic effects. But “the cup which cheers but not inebriates” was found too exciting for French neuropaths. Valerian caused the deepest sadness. The thoughts of the patient were centred in a grave. She was impelled irresistibly to stoop down and scratch the ground, and thought herself in a cemetery exhuming a deceased relative whom she loved. Under the illusion she fancied herself picking up bones belonging to his skeleton, which she handled with tender reverence, and when there was an imaginary mound of them formed she placed, with deep-drawn sighs and tears and genuflections, a cross above them. Under the influence of haschish everything looked rosy and gayety prevailed. The subject was a young girl, very fond of the drama. She fancied herself on the stage and playing a part which suited her to perfection. It was in a bouffe opera and she sang her score admirably. The sentiments were expressed with delicate feeling. Dr. Luys can, according to the substances he uses, run through the whole gamut of human passions and emotions.
What is most strange is that no trace of the fictitious world in which the hypnotized subject has been wandering, remains when real consciousness is restored. It is very rare for even the idea of having been in dreamland to survive the awakening from the hypnotic trance. Dr. Luys says that hypnotic suggestion sometimes has periods of incubation more or less long. The subject is at first gently drawn to do a certain thing or things, and then the drawing becomes an irresistible impulse. They are first as if tempted and then as if possessed. They can no more help themselves than a man who had got to the verge of Niagara Falls in a boat could help going over.
Dr. Roger moved that the Academy name a Commission to inquire into hypnotic suggestion, near and at a distance. Dr. Bronardel supported him. He said, “All that Dr. Luys has alleged and shown cannot fail to make a noise throughout the world. Nobody save MM. Burot and Bourru have gone so far as Dr. Luys. He not only forces on the attention of the Academy the question of hypnotism, but of persons being affected by poisonous substances which do not penetrate, or it may be even touch, their bodies. This is from a legal point of view a great danger. A great social responsibility is involved in the matter. It is the duty of the Academy to have the experiments of Dr. Luys repeated, with others that bear upon them.”
Hypnotism, or animal magnetism, has been a little more than a hundred years despised and rejected by the doctors. It was discovered by a Viennese, Mesmer, who belonged to that curious branch of the Freemasons, the Illuminati. When he told Stoerck, the head of the Faculty of Medicine at Vienna, of his discovery, that learned owl begged him not to discredit that body by talking of anything so absurd. He persisted. Sarcasm and then persecution obliged him to go abroad, and he came to Paris in 1778. The world of fashion and the court went crazy about him. He then set up in the Palais Royal, where, it must be said, in a way that was worthy of a charlatan, he worked his discovery. M. Le Roy, of the Academy of Medicine, thought him on the scent of a great truth. But the other doctors were of the bats’ eyes sort, and hunted Mesmer down. He went to stay at Creteil, where he applied his method and made his famous magnetic pail, which interested M. d’Eslon, head doctor to the Comte d’Artois—later Charles X. He wrote about the magnetic pail. The Academy of Medicine warned him to be more cautious in speaking of quack inventions, and threatened to expel him from membership if he did not retract what he had written. That body even made a new rule to this effect: “No doctor declaring himself in favor of animal magnetism, either in theory or practice, can be a member of this society.”
Mesmer, hearing the police had their eye on him, went to Spa. But the ladies took his part with such ardor that the king named a commission to inquire into his discovery. Its members, too, were owls. They reported that “the magnetic fluid of which Mesmer speaks does not exist.” Jussieu stood out against the owls and he only. He said: “All your efforts will not prevent this truth from making its way. They can only prevent this generation from profiting by it.”
I should add that the influence gained by the hypnotic operator remains after the subject awakes from the trance. Its action then reminds one of the characters in the legends of olden times who sold their souls to Satan. The Emperor of Brazil is very anxious to study hypnotism, or, at least, to dip into it when he comes back to Paris.
The reader will observe in the foregoing letter and in all medical literature Mesmer is spoken of as a “charlatan” and “empiric.” Charlatan is an opprobrious term, but “empiric” literally means one who follows experience instead of dogma, and should therefore be an honorable designation; but as the medical profession has always been dogmatic, and therefore hostile to empiricism, or fidelity to experience, it has made empiricism an opprobrious term. Dr. Mesmer was neither an ignoramus nor a quack, but a graduated physician, although his title is generally omitted. He had more enthusiasm than philosophy, but he was far in advance of his contemporaries, who had neither, and deserves to be honorably remembered.
Old Industrial Education.
The greatest triumph in the profession of education ever achieved by man was that of Ezekiel Rich, of New Hampshire, born in 1784, whose successful experiments at Troy, New Hampshire, were fully reported in 1838 to the American Institute of Instruction, and were described in the last edition of the “New Education.”
Mr. Rich demonstrated that a solid scientific, literary, moral, and industrial education, qualifying boys and girls for a successful business life, and greatly superior to the education now given, might be imparted to youth while they were also sufficiently occupied in the industrial way to pay all their expenses.
This is incomparably beyond anything that even the most famous teachers have ever done, for it brings the gospel of industrial salvation to all struggling laborers who dwell in poverty—not immediate salvation for themselves, but salvation for their class, by making education free for all, and giving to the children of the poorest laborer the opportunity of a career in which independence is sure, and wealth a possibility.
The profession of teaching, like all other professions, runs in its fixed grooves or, as popularly expressed, its “ruts,” and it will be long ere the noble example of Rich will inspire a spirit of imitation. His exposition of his method lay almost half a century unnoticed, until I brought it before the National Educational Association.
Upon the subject of Industrial Training, Mr. Geo. P. Morris has resurrected an old treatise, published by Thomas Budd, in 1685, describing East and West Jersey, in which he lays down a system of practical education which he wished to see adopted in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
He wishes a thousand acres of land given to maintain each school, free for the poor, the rich, and the Indians—the children being maintained free of expense to parents from the profits of the school “arising by the work of the scholars.” They are to be occupied in “learning to read and write true English, Latine and other useful speeches and languages, and fair writing, arithmatick and bookkeeping; and the boys to be taught and instructed in some mystery or trade, as the making of mathematical instruments, joynery, turnery, the making of blocks and watches, weaving, shoemaking, or any other useful trade or mystery that the school is capable of teaching; and the girls to be taught and instructed in spinning of flax and wool, and knitting of gloves and stockings, sewing and making of all sorts of useful needlework, and the making of straw-work, as hats, baskets, etc., or any other useful art or mystery that the school is capable of teaching.