Human physiology, with which is incorporated much of the elementary part of the Institutiones physiologicae of J.F. Blumenbach.

  • Elliotson, John, 1791-1868.
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Human physiology, with which is incorporated much of the elementary part of the Institutiones physiologicae of J.F. Blumenbach. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    1183/1220 (page 1175)
    cause it to relax, and drop the sovereign ; and in consequence of the absence of this, the rigidity and stupefaction are not kept up, and terminate in waking instead of perfect sleep and relaxation. She is desired again to pick up the sovereign; she does so, and rises higher than ever before the effects come, and they are shorter. All is repeated, she rises completely before they come, and they are still shorter. Again all is repeated, and she not only rises but goes about, and talks before the effects come, and they are slight. On repetition a still longer time intervenes, and still slighter are the effects; and so experiment after experiment goes on till the sovereign has lost its power altogether. The sovereign often rolls far away; and in such cases it has been changed for one charged by contact with another person, it being impossible for her to observe the change and impossible for her to detect any difference in regard to warmth or moisture, as the original sovereign has been as much in her own hand as the new sovereign in the hand of another person. The new sovereign has always produced a far more quick and strong effect than the exhausted one. By means of chargeable metals, I devised a mode of showing very accurately the influence of health upon the mesmerising power. I took one of the sisters into a female ward in which she had never been, and respecting the inmates of which she and I were perfectly ignorant. Every ticket with the name of the disease on the head of the bed was removed: every patient had the clothes drawn com- pletely over her. A sovereign, which had lain long untouched, and had therefore no mesmeric charge, was taken up by her, and we proceeded to the ward. She put the sovereign under the bed- clothes into the hand of each patient in succession, and at the same number of moments by my stop-watch took it out again and kept it in her hand. I noted the period in which the effect began, the length of time it lasted, and the amount of it, — whether it caused spasm of the hand only; of the hand and arm; or spasm and stupefaction. So we went round the ward, and in one bed, at the request of a certain student, I repeated the experiment. As soon as each experiment was finished, the bed-clothes were turned down and the ticket examined. The effects were in every instance precisely proportionate to the strength of the patient in whose hand the sovereign had been placed. Those in consump- tion or worn down with paralysis produced little or no effect: