Many of these cases of clairvoyance, given by Mr Townshend, appear on the face of them ambiguous; thus the reading is said to be effected with difficulty and imperfectly, the difficulty to be increased by the superposition of obstacles. Others, as related, certainly admit of no explanation by deductions from ordinary experience. All we can say of them, therefore, is, that we have fairly sought to see such phenomena, and have never succeeded; when we see them, and can properly test them, we will believe them. But from the internal evidence of the latter portion of Mr Townshend's book, which we shall presently discuss, we cannot, although not doubting his honesty of purpose, set our faith upon his experiments and judgment.
Mr Townshend gives no account of the phreno-mesmerism, or of the surgical operations performed without any evidence of pain during the mesmeric states. We have already related one of the former exhibitions, which, we think, requires no further comment. Viewed abstractedly, the attempt to support by the assumed accuracy of one science, at best in its infancy, and confessedly fallible, another still more so, is making too large demands upon public credulity to require much counter argument. With regard to the surgical cases, they stand on a very different ground; three operations, among the most painful of those to which man is ever subjected, are alleged to have been performed during the mesmeric state—Madame Plantin, amputation of cancerous breast; and James Wombwell and Mary Ann Lakin, amputation of the leg above the knee. The case of Wombwell was canvassed at length at the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London; and in that and the other cases there seems to have been no question raised as to the facts of the patients having undergone the operation without the usual evidence of suffering. In Wombwell's case the divided end of the sciatic nerve was purposely (it appears to us very wantonly) touched with the forceps, but without any appearance of sensation on the part of the patient. In all these cases the medical men most opposed to mesmerism seem to have admitted the fact, and to have rested their incredulity on the various cases known to them, of parties having borne operations with such fortitude as not to have expressed the usual cries of suffering.
In Madame Plantin's case it is stated; that she subsequently confessed to a nurse in an hospital, that she felt the full pain, but purposely, and by great effort, kept silent. This confession is, however, strongly denied by Dr Elliotson and others, and does not appear to be clearly substantiated.
A professional "odium" appears to have arisen on the subject; and, from the controversial tone of the speaking and writing on both sides, it is difficult to get at the truth. We must say, however, that, admitting the facts, which the antagonists of mesmerism seem to do, we are more inclined to believe the paralysis of nervous sensation by mesmeric influence, than that, with such inadequate motives as the patients could feel, they should have such marvellous self-control as to feign sleep, and keep their whole muscular system in a relaxed state, while suffering such exquisite pain. Medical men are, indeed, better judges of the power of endurance and simulation than we can pretend to be; but, to make their testimony conclusive, they should have witnessed the operation. The elaborate research for causes explanatory of an unseen case, lessens the weight of authority which would otherwise be very high.
Many other minor cases, such as teeth drawn, and division of tendons, are given; and though we have never had an opportunity of witnessing such effects, we must say we think, from their benefit to suffering humanity, the possibility, however remote, of their truth, deserves more calm and dispassionate enquiry than appears hitherto to have been given them.
While doctors, however, seek to explain, by various profound theories, the efficient causes of asserted mesmeric cures, a member of the Church of England, and popular preacher at Liverpool, the Rev. Hugh M. Neill, M.A., has cut the Gordian knot, by a sermon preached at St Jude's Church, on April 10th, 1842, and published in Nos. 599 and 600 of the Penny Pulpit, price twopence. By this sermon it appears to have occurred to the philosophic mind of the reverend divine, that mesmeric marvels may be accounted for as accomplished by the direct agency of Satan! Doubtless Satan is as actively at work in this the nineteenth century, as in any anterior period of our history; but we are inclined to think the progress of civilization has opened a sufficient number of channels for his ingenuity, without rendering it necessary that he should alarm the devout by miraculously interfering to assuage human suffering.
We have given above as many instances as our space will permit, of the asserted phenomena of mesmerism; and now to return to Mr Townshend's book.
In taking a general view of the lines of argument adopted by the author to support the possibility or probability of mesmerism, we perceive they are of two sorts, essentially different, and in some measure inconsistent with each other.
1st, It is very properly argued, that our whole knowledge of the normal course of nature is derived from experience; that a law is a mere generalization from that experience, and is not any thing intrinsically or necessarily true. Thus, if the sun were to rise in the west to-morrow, instead of in the east, it would at first sight appear to be a deviation from natural laws; in other words, a miracle. If, however, the latter circumstance were wanting, after the first sensation of the marvellous had subsided, the philosopher would enquire, whether, instead of being a deviation from a law, it were not a subordinate instance of some higher law, of which the period of history had been too short to give any co-ordinate instances; and were it found, by a long course of experience, that in every 4000 years a similar retrocession of the earth took place, a new law would be established. Applying this to mesmerism, it is said our notions of sleep and waking, of sight and hearing, and of the possible limits and modes of sensation, are derived from experience alone; we cannot estimate or understand the modus agendi of a new sensation, because we have never experienced it. If, then, it be proved, by the acts of A, B, or C, that they attain cognizance of objects by other means than those which any known organ of sensation will permit, you must admit the fact, and by degrees its rationale will become supported by the same means as all other truths are supported, viz. by habitual experience. Its law is, indeed, nothing but its constant recurrence under similar circumstances. To take Mr Townshend's own mode of enunciating this—
"Are we entitled to conclude, in any case, that, because we have not hitherto been able to assign a law to certain operations, they are therefore absolutely without law? Are we to assert, that the orderly dispositions of the universe are deformed by a monstrous exception; or is it not wiser to believe that our own knowledge is in fault, whenever Nature appears inconsistent with herself? Surely we have enough order around us to suggest, that all which to us seems chance, is 'direction which we cannot see;' that all apparent anomalies are but like those discords which, in the most masterly music, prepare the transitions from one noble passage to another, and are actually essential to the general harmony. In many instances this is not mere conjecture. How much of fancied imperfection and disorder has fled before our investigation! The motions of comets at first appear to offer an exception to the exact arrangements of the universe.—'They traverse all parts of the heavens. Their paths have every possible inclination to the plane of the ecliptic; and, unlike the planets, the motion of more than half of those which have appeared has been retrograde—that is, from east to west.' Yet have we been able to detect the elements of regularity in the midst of all this seeming confusion, and to predict with certainty the day, the hour, and the minute of a comet's return to our region of the sky.