On the true scientific spirit in which the claims of phrenology and mesmerism ought to be examined / [William Gregory].

  • Gregory, William, 1803-1858
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the true scientific spirit in which the claims of phrenology and mesmerism ought to be examined / [William Gregory]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the observers of incapacity or of fraud, unless these asser¬ tions are made good by an appeal to facts. And yet such is the staple'of the opposition to Mesmerism. One chief cause of this must be sought in the same want of accurate notions as to what constitutes evidence in natu¬ ral science, to which we have referred the principal part of the opposition to Phrenology. Let us, therefore, endeavour to trace the process, that we may discover the fallacy or fal¬ lacies which must exist somewhere, to account for the cir¬ cumstance that, while, on the one hand, statements of fact are made by those who profess to have observed them, and who appeal to nature, maintaining that every man may, if he choose, observe them for himself; on the other, these alleged facts are contemptuously rejected on a variety of grounds, but certainly without the objectors having, as they ought to have done, investigated the matter experimentally for them¬ selves. We say that some fallacy or fallacies must exist here to lead to so strange a mode of treating a question of fact; and that if we can trace it, we shall probably find it to be the same which operated in producing precisely similar conduct on the part of the opponents of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Harvey, and Gall. We do not here proceed on the assumption that what is called, in general, Mesmerism, is true. We only maintain that, whether true or false, it appeals to fact, and has been met by every kind of opposition except the only legitimate one in such a case, namely, a fair appeal to fact on the part of the objector. If we take the accounts of the mesmeric phenomena from the modern writers on the subject, we find that they may be divided or classified into several states or stages, which are not always found to occur in the same individual—sometimes one only appearing, sometimes another, and sometimes two or three in succession. The first of these is the mesmeric sleep, passing, in many individuals, into sleepwaking or somnambulism. Indeed the latter may almost be described as a distinct stage. It is, however, very closely connected with simple mesmeric sleep, and in many cases is the first stage observed. In the next stage, the subject, still asleep, and commonly with shut eyes, can readily communicate with his mesmeriser, and often exhibits attachment to him, often also sympathy with him, with or without contact, so as only to hear, or, at least, to notice, his voice, &c. In this stage, if not in the former, the subject frequently exhibits insensibility to pain (though this is far from uniform), and community of taste.