And now the patient—beginning to wake in trance, hearing and answering the questions of the operator, moving each limb, or rising even, as the operator's hand is raised to draw him into obedient following—enters into a new relation with his mesmeriser. He adopts sympathetically every voluntary movement of the other. When the latter rises from his chair, he rises; when he sits down, he sits down; if he bows, he bows; if he make a grimace, he makes the same. Yet his eyes are closed. He certainly does not see. His mind has interpenetrated to a small extent the nervous system of the operator; and is in relation with his voluntary nerves and the anterior half of his cranio-spinal chord. (These are the organs by which the impulse to voluntary motion is conveyed and originated.) Farther into the other's being, he has not yet got. So he does not what the other thinks of, or wishes him to do; but only what the other either does, or goes through the mental part of doing. So Victor sang the air, which M. de Puységur only mentally hummed.
The next strange phenomenon marks that the mind of the untranced patient has interpenetrated the nervous system of the other a step farther, and is in relation besides with the posterior half of the cranio-spinal chord and its nerves. For now the entranced person, who has no feeling, or taste, or smell of his own, feels, tastes, and smells every thing that is made to tell on the senses of the operator. If mustard or sugar be put in his own mouth, he seems not to know that they are there; if mustard is placed on the tongue of the operator, the entranced person expresses great disgust, and tries as if to spit it out. The same with bodily pain. If you pluck a hair from the operator's head, the other complains of the pain you give him.
To state in the closest way what has happened—the phenomena of sympathetic motion and sympathetic sensation, thus displayed, are exactly such as might be expected to follow, if the mind or conscious principle of the entranced person were brought into relation with the cranio-spinal chord of the operator and its nerves, and with no farther portion of his nervous system. Later, it will be seen the interpenetration can extend farther.
But before this happens, a new phenomenon manifests itself, not of a sympathetic character. The operator contrives to wake the entranced person to the knowledge that he possesses new faculties. He develops in him new organs of sensation, or rather helps to hasten his recognition of their possession.
It is to be observed, however, that many and many who can be thrown into trance will not progress so far as to the present step. Others make a tantalising half advance towards reaching it thus; and then stop. They are asked, "Do you see any thing?" After some days at length, they answer, "Yes"—"What?" "A light." "Where is the light?" Then they intimate its place to be either before them, or at the crown of the head, or behind one ear, or quite behind the head. And they describe the colour of the light, which is commonly yellow. And each day it occupies the same direction, and is seen equally when the room is light or dark. Their eyes in the mean time are closed. And here, with many, the phenomenon stops.
But, with others, it goes thus strangely farther. In this light they begin to discern objects, or they see whatever is presented to them in the direction in which the light lies, whether before the forehead or at the crown of the head, or wherever it may be. Sometimes the range of this new sense is very limited, and the object to be seen must be held near to the new organ. Sometimes it must touch it; generally, however, the sense commands what the eye would, if it were placed there.
One tries first to escape the improbability of an extempore organ of sense being thus established, by supposing that the mind of the entranced person has only penetrated a little deeper than before into yours, and perceives what you see. But I had the following experiment made, which excludes this solution of the phenomenon. The party standing behind the entranced person, whose use it was to see with the back of her head, held behind him a pack of cards, and then, drawing one of them, presented it, without seeing it himself, to her new organ of vision. She named the card justly each time the experiment was repeated.
The degree of light suiting this new vision varies in different cases: sometimes bright daylight is best; generally they prefer a moderate light. Some distinguish objects and colours in a light so obscure that the standers-by cannot distinguish the same with their eyes.
The above phenomena have been, over and over again, verified by the gentleman whom I before referred to, Mr J. W. Williamson of Whickham; and not only have I received the accounts of them from himself, but from two other gentlemen, who repeatedly witnessed their manifestation in patients at Mr Williamson's residence.
A parallel transposition of the sense of hearing I will exemplify from the details of a case of catalepsy, or spontaneous trance, as they are given by the observer, Dr Petetin, an eminent civil and military physician of Lyons, where he was president of the Medical Society. The work in which they are given is entitled, "Memoire sur la Catalepsie. 1787."