Numerous cases of surgical operations without pain in the mesmeric state; with remarks upon the opposition of many members of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society and others to the reception of the inestimable blessings of mesmerism / By John Elliotson.

  • Elliotson, John, 1791-1868.
Date:
1843
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Numerous cases of surgical operations without pain in the mesmeric state; with remarks upon the opposition of many members of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society and others to the reception of the inestimable blessings of mesmerism / By John Elliotson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the poor man at Wellow was susceptible of pain. He could bear his pain in no other than a sitting posture; had slept before he was mesmerised but two hours in seventy from his pain; would shed tears from his pain; could not bear except in the mesmeric state the lightest covering on his knee for his pain; and was awakened, even from mesmeric coma when this was not deepened by the fingers held on the eyes, by the slightest movement of the extremity. This argument was therefore good for nothing. But it told, as well as the preceding, for Ihe insensibility of the man in his mesmeric state. He further urged that patients worn down with suffering (so that he now remembered that the poor man knew what pain was) some times became hysterical and more or less insensible. But this patient was not hysterical; and suffered acutely to the last, even while being moved for the operation. This argument therefore falls with the rest. He allowed after all that the man was in a peculiar state. Of what he meant I have no idea, except that the man was in an hyste rical insensible state, which was not the fact. That he was in a peculiar and insensible state when under the agency of mesmerism is very true and for what we contend. When he had seen Mr. Chenevix, fourteen years ago, mesmerise a little girl into coma, and was asked by that gentleman, “ Do you think this girl really and truly slept? 5 ’ he replied, “I do, and very soundly too: 55 and when asked, “Do you think she went to sleep of herself out of pleasure or desire, or by means of what you saw me do? 55 he replied, “Certainly by means of what you did. 55 These means he compared to rocking.* Now, if he allowed this, he might, though stationary in his knowledge for fourteen years, allow that the poor man at Wellow was asleep by Mr. Topham’s means. His explanation of the mesmeric sleep reminds me of the explanation given by some people of the shocks of the electrical fish, the torpedo. The facts were at first denied, and, when they could be denied no longer, some would not allow there was any electricity in the matter, but explained them by the animal giving a sudden blow with its broad back, first drawn flat and then suddenly restored to its usual convexity. This explanation was so clear—“tec clarurn est , 55 that Marrher saysfthat Reaumur, the explainer, “ arcanum deprehendit And now we obtain electric sparks from electric fish, and the sceptics exist no longer. * London Medical and Physical Journal. Sept. 1829. p. 214. f Prcelectiones in Hermanni Boerhaavii Institutiones , tom. iii. p. 76.