Electro-biological phenomena considered physiologically and psychologically / by James Braid, M.R.C.S.E.

  • Braid, James, 1795?-1860.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Electro-biological phenomena considered physiologically and psychologically / by James Braid, M.R.C.S.E. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    1 their auricular suggestions arid manoeuvres to j)roduce the results on their patients than there would be for such to insui'e the one side of a Leyden jar being charged negatively with electricity when the other is being charged positively, or for the attendant to speak aloud to the electric telegraph the message which he wishes it to convey. The few occasional examples adduced by them in which they allege that they can convey then- behests to subjects silently and unseen, through pure sympathy and power of their will, I consider inade- quate to sustain their hypothesis. At best they are but exceptional cases; and where I have had opportunities of testing such patients, I have soon been able to demonstrate the sources of fallacy which had misled the operators. .. . ,^ It is a well estabhshed' pHpioTogicM ^aet, that the moment the trunk of a nerve is divided, all sense and voluntary motion is abo- lished in parts supplied by such nerve beyond the point of section. Now, are we to believe that it could be possible that such a degree of sympathy could exist between different individuals as to enable one, by the exercise of his volition, or other silent and unseen ma,- noeuvres, to force his own nervo-vital influence beyond his own organ- ism, so as to control the acts of the other at a distance, even when miles apart, when he could not propel it a fraction of a line beyond the section of the nerve in his own limb (the divided ends of the nerve being in close apposition), so as to produce a voluntary move- ment of his own member ? In July 1846, I published a little brochure, entitled The Power 0f the Mind over the Body. The object of that work was to point out what appeared to me an important source of fallacy, which had been overlooked, or not sufficiently attended to, by Baron Eeichen- bach when instituting experiments to prove the existence of a ne\V imponderable, which he has designated the Od, or Odyle force. I most readily admit that Baron Reichenbach's experiments were carefully conducted, and well contrived for determining merely physical facts; but there seemed to have been a want of due con- sideration given to the veiy important part which the mind of the patient j^lays in such experiments, in producing or modifying re- sults, quite irrespectively of external influences. The only test or proof of this alleged new force was certain effects produced'.on the human nerves of some highly nervous subjects. Now, my experi- ments went to prove that precisely similar phenomena might be realised in such highly sensitive subjects as the Baron succeeded with as the mere result of sustained mental attention of the patient alone, changing the physical action of the part so regarded, espe- cially when done with the expectation of something being about to happen. These effects might be increased in intensity by the subject seeing or feeling anything drawn over a part, from the visible or tangible object aiding the subject in concentrating his mental atten- tion, without the transmission of any occult or external influence, B