Mesmerism in India, and its practical application in surgery and medicine / by James Esdaile.

Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mesmerism in India, and its practical application in surgery and medicine / by James Esdaile. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    probably bring us near the truth, and each plan will be found a useful resource, in dififerent cir- cumstances. It seems to me that irregularity in the distribu- tion of the nervous energy is at the bottom of all the mesmeric symptoms, however produced, whe- ther naturally or artificially; and I suspect that the same effects may follow a state of exhaustion or repletion of the nervous system. J£ I might venture on so material an illustration, I should say that the first effects produced in the system by Mesmerism may be likened to a river rolled back upon its source by a heavier body of water, stagna- ting in its channel, and unable to resume its usual course, till the opposing tide subsides. From all I have seen, I cannot but believe, that there is an influence of some kind that passes from one person into another, when one of two persons is mesmerised in the way I have described; that, in fact, there is a virtual transfusion of some vital agent from the one body into the other. The wonderful subtlety as well as the effects of this power, lead us to suspect that it is a nervous pro- duct ; and may it not be the nervous energy passing off by the organs of sense, and even for a short time going beyond the surface of the body; the lungs, meanwhile, and periphery of the body,