The Salem witchcraft ; The planchette mystery ; and Modern spiritualism / with Dr. Doddridge's dream.

Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Salem witchcraft ; The planchette mystery ; and Modern spiritualism / with Dr. Doddridge's dream. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Brandeis University Libraries, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections Department, Brandeis University.

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    STATE OF PHYSIOLOGY. The very conception of science bad then scarcely begun to be formed in the minds of the wisest men of the time; and if it had been, who was there to suggest that the handful of pulp contained in the human skull, and the soft string of marrow in the spine, and cobweb lines of nerves, apparently of no moie account than the hairs of the head, could transmit thoughts, emotions, passions—all the scenery of the spiritual world! For two hundred years more there was no effect- ual recognition of anything of the sort. At the end of those two centu- ries anatomists themselves were slicing the brain like a turnip, to see wiiat was inside it,—not dreaming of the leading facts of its structure, nor of the inconceivable delicacy of its organization. After half a cen- tury of knowledge of the main truth in regard to the brain, and nearly that period of study of its organization, by every established medical authority in the civilized world, we are still perplexed and baffled at every turn of the inquiry into the relations of body and mind. How, then, can we make sufficient allowance for the effects of ignorance in a community where theology was the main interest in life, where science was yet unborn, and where all the influences of the period concurred to produce and aggravate superstitions and bigotries which now seem scarcely credible ? [The reviewer appears to be a half believer in Phrenology, and yet unwilling to acknowledge his indebtedness to its teachers for the light he has received in the organization and phenomena of the brain.] WILLIAM PENN AS A PRECEDENT. There had been miserj^ enough caused by persecutions for witch- craft within living memory to have warned Mr. Parris, one would think, how he carried down his people into those troubled waters again; but at that time such trials were regarded by society as trials for murder are by us, and not as anything surprising ^except from the degree of wickedness. William Penn presided at the trial of two Swed- ish women in Philadelphia for this gravest of crimes; and it was only by the accident of a legal informality that they escaped, the case being regarded with about the same feeling as we experienced a year or two ago when the murderess of infants, Charlotte Winsor, was saved from hang-ing by a doubt of the law. If the crime spread—as it usually did —the municipal governments issued an order for a day of fasting and
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