Electro-biological phenomena considered physiologically and psychologically / by James Braid, M.R.C.S.E.

  • James Braid
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Electro-biological phenomena considered physiologically and psychologically / by James Braid, M.R.C.S.E. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    asserts,— On several occasions lately, I have sat in one room willing the mes- meric light into a wide-mouthed phial, of a pint capacity, and have taken it into another room, where, pouring the substance on a patient's head, she has instantly fallen asleep. Dr Ashburner then enunciates the following propositions as the necessary inferences to be drawn from these facts:— That a force, which is a material agent, attended by or constituting a 'coloured light, emanates from the brain of man when he thinks; that his will can direct its impingement; and that it is a motive poiuer. These are wonderful announcements—at least they must appear so to those who are not aware that individuals, who, like Dr A. and his patients, are sur- charged to overflowing with this blue flaming force, see and feel (that is, they perceive) what they believe, instead of being in the condition merely to believe what they veritably see and feel. To those, however, who are familiar with the sensuous illusions to which such individuals are prone, and the easy credulity of such parties, as well as with the power of imagination, belief, and habit, in in- fluencing certain subjects and sending them to sleep, &c., from their merely sup- posing that some process is going forward for the purpose of affecting them in such and such a manner, (which may happen to prove successful, when no pro- cess whatever of another person may be in operation); and the quickness with ■which some mesmeric patients catch suggestions, which might be overlooked by others, such as even a look, or movement, or the mere peculiar manner of the person on whom their attention is fixed, as explained at large in my lecture,—I say, to those who are aware of these peculiarities and sources of fallacy, all these apparent marvels of Dr A. are mere matters of course, easily admitting of explana- tion, independently of any blue flaming force emitted from the Doctor's brain, and impinged, by his will, on the sleeping or waking patient, in the manner alleged. For example,—for Dr A. to will a patient to come to him at his own house, or other usual place of meeting, in the case of a person whose presence he might frequently desire, and who believed that he possessed the power of transmitting his messages to her mentally; granting that such person should occasionally make her appearance shortly after the transmission of such mental mandates, this would carry conviction to the mind of no one accustomed to rigorous investigation, that there was any necessary connection between the wdlling of the Doctor and the personal appearance before him of his patient, and for this reason,—because, under the cu-eunistances named, there might be many accidental coincidences, merely from the patient imagining to herself that she was required by him at such and such a time. But, if the Doctor will only accompany a few gentlemen to half a score difierent houses, all situated within a mile and a-half of the resid- ence of his patient, each of the houses to be fixed on by some of the gentlemen as they pass along the street in a carriage not known to the patient, and all the gentlemen be allowed to accompany the Doctor into each house, to Avatch the re- sults of his mental mandates, the true state of the case could very soon be deter- mined. Having done this, if the patient does not at once find them out in each of their hiding places, then the Doctor's theoretical notions must have been erro- neous ; whereas if she finds them out on each occasion within a reasonable time, and by a direct track and without inquiry, then there will be good ground to concede to him and his patient the possession of some occult power. But Dr Ashburner declares that the power of his will is not only able to con- trol the behaviour and movements of organised and living beings in some mys- terious manner, without physical contact, word, or visible movement of his body, and even when at a distance, but he actually asserts that he possesses the like control even over inanimate matter itself Thus, in the « Zoist for October 1847, page 274, he has asserted, that by fixing two perpendicular glass rods, each nine inches in height, in a piece of flat board, at a distance of ten inches from each other, and another glass rod being placed so as to rest horizontally upon the top of the perpendicular rods, all of them about a quarter of an inch thick, and having suspended a gold ring from tlic middle of the horizontal bar of glass, by a tine silk thread,—having made all these arrangements, Dr A. asserts that
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