Magic, witchcraft, animal magnetism, hypnotism and electro-biology : being a digest of the latest views of the author on these subjects / by James Braid.

Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Magic, witchcraft, animal magnetism, hypnotism and electro-biology : being a digest of the latest views of the author on these subjects / by James Braid. 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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    myself right Avith the p^ihlic, when he has gone so far as even to merge me with the materialists—namely, with those who maintain that the mentul functions are a mere secretion of the brain, as the bile is of the liver. Now% that any man should attribute such opinions or sentiments to me—and more particularly a friend like Mr. Colquhoun—passes my compre- hension, because, in all my writings—and Mr. C. has had pre- sentation copies from me of the whole of them, I believe—I have ever stoutly contended for the very opposite sentiments. In proof of this I beg leave to refer to pages 81, 87, 88, 89, and 91 of my work on “Hypnotism,” published in 1843, where I entered into a rather elaborate refutation of the doc- trine of materialism., adducing various arguments as the basis- on which my dissent from that doctrine w^as founded. I also quoted the opinions of Drs. Brown and Abercrombie, Dugald Stewart and Plato, in support of my opposition to the doctrine of materialism. Now, in the face of all this, was it not an unwarrantable, inconsiderate imputation in Mr. Colquhoun to represent me as a materialist ? And what else but this eould he hone to X. convey by the inuendo contained in the following sentence :— “ Does Dr. Braid, then, acknowledge no science but the merely physical ?” After having promulgated in my writings such sentiments as those referred to, I am sorry to say that I cannot see how Mr. Colquhoun, or any one else, should endeavour to rank me amongst the materialists, unless from a reekless perversion of legitimate inference, or a determination to misrepresent and injure me, because I would not accept their transcendental notions about the higher phenomena, as they style them, of mesmerism or animal magnetism. In July last I published a pamphlet, entitled, “Electro- Biological Phenomena considered Physiologically and Psy- chologically,” a copy of which was sent by me to Mr. Colquhoun