(Illustrated with photographs of Doctor Luys’s patients, taken at the Charity Hospital in Paris.)
The scientific world is greatly interested in the dispute between the believers in the value of hypnotic experiments for purposes of therapeutics and psychology, and those who stigmatize the wonderful results which the former claim to have obtained, as the mere outcome of delusion or fraud.
DOCTOR LUYS.
Ever since the possibility of producing phenomena by the effect of animal magnetism was established, and their medical value asserted, by Frederick Anthony Mesmer, in his theory of mesmeric cures, the most violent hostility has been provoked. Volumes of controversy have been written, the most ardent of the writers being Nees Von Esenbeck, Kieser, Enemoser, Carus and Kluge amongst the Germans, and Deleaze and Foissac among the French.
The report made by the commission appointed by the French Academy of Sciences, the principal members of which were Benjamin Franklin, Lavoisier, Bailly, and Guillotin, pronounced the whole theory of Mesmer charlatanry, asserting that “there is no proof of the existence of the animal magnetic fluid; that this fluid, having no existence, is consequently without utility; and that the violent effects to be observed are due to the manipulations, to the excitement of the imagination, and to that sort of mechanical imitation which leads us to repeat anything which produces an impression on the senses.”
The consensus of opinion among scientists was opposed to the soundness of the theory of hypnotism. Yet such men as Laplace, Agassiz, Hufeland, Sir William Hamilton, and Doctor William Carpenter were always among its stanch supporters, so far as the fundamental facts were concerned.
THE NEW MESMERISM.
The novel development of the subject on sharply defined lines of scientific method owes itself to J. Braid, a surgeon of Manchester, England, who first published the results of his studies in 1840. But it was many years before his studies became widely known and had their due weight. He now shines primus inter pares among those who have shed most light on a perplexing problem. But just as the modern French art school built itself upon the work of the Englishman Constable, so it took the genius and enthusiasm of such investigators as Doctors Charcot and Luys, and of Colonel Rochas d’Aiglun to carry on Braid’s beginnings. These three scientists of recognized worth never proclaimed that the secrets of hypnotism have been solved, or that its possibilities have been more than foreshadowed; they simply asserted that the results already obtained, many being practical in an eminent degree, give encouragement to pursue their investigations.
