Recent bio-magnetic experiments in Germany : -by Herr Carl Hansen / written by Edmund Sheridan Purcell.

  • Purcell, Edmund Sheridan, 1824?-1899.
Date:
[1882?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Recent bio-magnetic experiments in Germany : -by Herr Carl Hansen / written by Edmund Sheridan Purcell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    EGYPTIAN HALL, Piccadilly. HERR CARL HANSEN, (THE CELEBRATED DANISH MESMERIST,) WILL GIVE HIS REMARKABLE EXPERIMENTS IN ANIMAL MAGNETISM, With Explanations as to the Extent and Influence of Mesmerism. These experiments Herr Carl Hansen has produced by special command, before their Imperial Majesties, the late Emperor of Russia, as well as the present Emperor and Empress of Russia and the whole court of St. Petersburg, likewise before H. M. the King of Saxony, and many German Courts and Dignitaries, and nearly all the German and Belgian Universities. IJcrmt iUa-wagiutix fejjmmeute in ©ermcUtg.-^y Herr Carl Hansen. Written by Edmund Sheridan Purcell. The attempts recently made in London by Mr. W. I. Bishop at “ Thought-reading”—a designa¬ tion as misleading as it is inaccurate—presented, in the feebleness of their results and in the uncertainty of operation, a striking contrast to experiments somewhat similar in character carried on. with almost unbroken success, week after week during the last two years in Germany. These experiments in bio-magnetism have been tested and verified over and over again by men of science, by university professors, and by doctors practising at the hospitals, and witnessed by tens of thousands in all the chief cities of Germany, and unquestionably prove that the operator possesses over those he operates upon full and supreme mastery : (1) over the muscles; (2) over the senses ; (3) over the imagination; and (4) over the will. Over the muscels his power is shown by reducing the bodies of his “subjects” to a state of perfect rigidity, impervious to sensation. Over the senses he exerts like mastery, inasmuch as he makes at will men, sane of mind and sharp of sight, believe and declare that the brilliance of the noonday sun is midnight darkness, that the boards of the stage, touched by their hands and feet, is a running stream, into which they plunge, striking out boldly as in swimming. The epicure, delicate of palate, eats, at the magnetiser’s bidding, a raw potato as a ripe pear. Those under his influence hear, in the calm clear sky, the roll of thunder, by others unheard. An odour, like unto that of the missiles once but too commonly flung at the heads of unpopular candidates at the hustings, is to them sweet as the violet in spring. Over the imagination or mind an equal power is shown, for the operator inspires those he operates upon with his own ideas, makes'them think his thoughts and utter them, dream dreams by night of his fabrication. And, lastly, over the will of his “subjects” his dominion is supreme, for he not only suspends the action of their will, but substitutes his own for theirs, making them not merely passive recipients, but active agents, carrying out his behests in thought, word, and deed. This bare statement of facts—for facts they are, if human testimony the most diversified, the most skilled, and the most spontaneous be worth a brass farthing—is yet so startling as to excite at the first blush a not unnatural incredulity. But incredulity, pushed beyond its legitimate limits, is but too apt, like superstition, not only to retard the march of science, but to put scientific discoveries, as it were, under an interdict. For every statement which I advance I have under my hand evidence which I have carefully sifted and weighed. In this cause I shall cite only such witnesses as are, by their repute and scientific attainments, like Caesar’s wife, beyond suspicion. If the sceptical temper be the frame of mind which best befits scientific '.inquiry, yet the Zeit-Geist, as the Germans call it, forbids us, warned by the almost inconceivable prejudices of former times, to deny the possibility of the existence of laws of nature hitherto undiscovered, or unsuspected even. With a mind open, then, to conviction let us examine the evidence as to the recent experiments in bio-magnetism, which in Germany have been tested, verified, and accepted, though scientific men have not as yet determined under what law of nature the results obtained are to be placed. It is, however, for many reasons important to show, before I proceed further, that scepticism as well as superstition has its victims, for the mind which is incapable of making admissions is not open to proof. Men of science are more especially jealous of making admissions, which might imply that they do not already occupy the high pedestal of complete and perfect knowledge. They fear ridicule far more than they fear the devd. Perhaps it is owing to the existance of such a fear among the purveyors of news in England that, notwithstanding our intimate relations—social and intellectual—with Germany, not a word should as yet have reached this country as to the extraordinary experiments in bio-magnetism which, during the past year or two, have excited such widespread and intense interest among Germans of every rank and condition in life. It may not, therefore, be without interest for the English public to learn now for the first time some, at least, of the results of these experiments in bio-magnetism, witnessed not only by large masses of the people in every class in society, but tested by men of science, professors in German universities, physicists of reputation, doctors attached to public hospitals, and by independent witnesses of good name and repute. The experimenter, who is not a German, but a Dane by birth, commenced his recent experi¬ ments in bio-magnetism—after a futile attempt at obtaining a hearing in Holland—atLeipsic in the early part of the year 1879. At first he met with a most hostile reception, and was roundly