Physico-physiological researches on the dynamics of magnetism, electricity, heat, light, crystallization, and chemism, in their relations to vital force / by Baron Charles Von Reichenbach; with the addition of a preface and critical notes by John Ashburner.

  • Carl Reichenbach
Date:
1850
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Physico-physiological researches on the dynamics of magnetism, electricity, heat, light, crystallization, and chemism, in their relations to vital force / by Baron Charles Von Reichenbach; with the addition of a preface and critical notes by John Ashburner. 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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    and truly the philosophy of mesmerism. Strange would it be if the wonders of clairvoyance ; those of the phenomena detected by the telescope; the events accruing from the nature of living organisms, in all their infinite varieties, should finally be dependent on the same force, which Newton contemplated, in his acute conjecture that water was a com- pound body, and which gave rise to the wild but important speculations of Mesmer, on the existence of an universal fluid, when he led the way to the facts of a new science, which, after a struggle of eighty years, has emerged in the hands of Yon Ueichenbach into principles applicable to all nature. A remarkable fact connected with the emergence of mes- merism into its present importance is the serious neglect of its merits which has marked the conduct of those who were bound to encourage them, by study and inquiry. Really, practically, mesmerism has deserved very different treatment. It has merited high civic honours. It has, under the patient philosophic guidance of Dr. Elliotson, conquered malignant cancer. It has removed enormous growths known as polypus, as I can testify. I know that it has chased away less exultation among its enemies, have nevertheless, when taken in connection with astronomy, developed and established a law of God’s natural government of the universe, grand beyond all others known to man, and undiscovered or only dimly seen by the great minds of other generations. I refer to the fact, that perpetual change is made the grand conservative and controlling principle of the universe. Men have always seen and felt this instability in respect to everything on earth ; and they have regarded it as a defect, rather than as a wise law of the natural world. But they now find it to be equally true of suns and planets as of plants and animals. Perpetual change, perpetual progression, increase, and diminution, appear to be the rules of the material world, and to prevail without exception.—[Professor Whewell, quoted by Dr. Pye Smith.] Burke might be quoted on the same sub- ject, for with the acumen and terseness of Genius, he says, in a letter to Sir Henry Langrishe, Change is the great Law of Nature.