What is mesmerism? An attempt to explain its phenomena on the admitted principles of physiological and psychical science. / by Alexander Wood.

  • Wood, Alexander, 1817-1884.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: What is mesmerism? An attempt to explain its phenomena on the admitted principles of physiological and psychical science. / by Alexander Wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    PREFATORY NOTE. The substance of this paper, under the title of “ Contributions towards the study of Certain Phenomena, which have been recently denominated Experiments in Electro-Biology,” was read before the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh, and subsequently pub- lished in the u Monthly Journal of Medical Science.” As the sub- ject of which it treats has excited no small interest among the non- professional public, a few copies have been thrown off in a separate form. The original title sufficiently indicates the nature of the paper. It prefers no claim to be a complete disquisition on the whole subject, far less to account for every one of the very singular phenomena which, as has now been demonstrated, can be produced at will by one human being in another; it will have sufficiently fulfilled the end intended, if it is found to accomplish the humbler task of acting as a guide to farther inquiry, and, by attempting to show how many of the experiments can be accounted for, to lead to the discovery, in other hands, of some general laws which may eventually be found adequate to the solution of the whole. Those who believe in the real existence of certain mesmeric phenomena, are divided into two classes. The first attempt to ac- count for them, by supposing the existence of some imponderable or other mysterious agent by whose operation they are caused. The second content themselves by referring the matter to certain mental peculiarities,—and there they leave the matter, much as the child who, wearied with conjecturing how the motions of some ingenious toy are produced, throws it aside with the exclamation, u Oh, it is all done by machinery!” The author of the following paper, while professing to belong to the second class, and therefore disclaiming all novelty in his views as regards the conclusions to which he has come, has attempted a more minute analysis of the connection be- tween the particular phenomena observed, and the particular mental states by which he believes them to be produced, than, as far as he knows, has elsewhere been tried.