It may be readily enough understood that the spiritual activity of the spirit of man ultimates itself in acts, and that almost all of these are executed by the hand, but it is probably but little known that in healing, for instance, there is a peculiar physical basis in the hand, upon which the healing power is dependent, the Pacinian corpuscles, namely.
It is now many years ago (it was in 1830 and 1840) that Pacini, a physician of Pistola, made his discovery; but with the exception of the literature to which it gave rise, and which is known only to a few learned men and a few librarians of larger libraries, little or nothing is known of his discovery.
Pacini found in all the sensible nerves of the fingers many small elliptical, whitish corpuscles. He compared them to the electrical organs of the torpedo and described them as animal magneto-motors, as organs of animal magnetism. And so did Henle and Kólliker, two German anatomists, who have studied and described these corpuscles very minutely.
In the human body they are found in great numbers in connection with the nerves of the hand, also in those of the foot. Why should they not be in the feet? Let us remember the rythmical structure of the human body, particularly the feet, and it becomes clear why they are there; the ecstatic dances of the enthusiasts and the not-sinking of somnambulists in water or their ability to use the soles of their feet as organs of perception and the ancient art of healing by the soles of the feet—all these facts explain the mystery.
They are found sparingly on the spinal nerves, and on the plexuses of the sympathetic, but never on the nerves of motion.
They are most numerous on the small twigs of nerves and generally placed parallel to them, though often at an acute angle. They are more or less oval, sometimes elongated and bent. They are nearly transparent, with a whitish line traversing their axis. The corpuscles of the human subject are from one-twentieth to one-tenth of an inch in length.
They consist of a series of membranous capsules, from thirty to sixty or more in number, enclosed one within the other. Inside of these capsules there is a single nervous fibre of a tubular kind enclosed in the stalk, and advancing to the central capsule, which it traverses from end to end. Sometimes the capsules are connected by transverse bands.
Anatomists are interested in these Pacinian corpuscles because of the novel aspect in which they present the constituent parts of the nerve-tube, placed in the heart of a system of concentric membranous capsules with intervening fluid, and divested of that layer which they (the anatomists) regard as an isolator and protector of the more potential central axis within.
This apparatus—almost formed like a voltaic pile, is the instrument for that peculiar vital energy, known more or less to all students as Animal Magnetism.
Since the cat is somewhat famous in all witchcraft, let me state, that in the mesentary of the cat, they can be seen in large numbers with the naked eye, as small oval shaped grains a little smaller than hempseeds. A few have been found in the ox (the symbol of the priestly office); but they are wanting in all birds, amphibia and fishes.