The use of clairvoyance in medicine / by John Mill.

  • Mill, John, 1645-1707.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The use of clairvoyance in medicine / by John Mill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    We read in St. Justin, that the Sibyls said with justice and truth many great things,, and that when the intelligence and instinct animating them was withdrawn, they no longer remembered what they had said. (Justin. Adm. ad. Gracos.) According to Celsus, Asclepiades put to sleep by means of passes those who were attacked with phrensy, which passes, if long continued, used to cause the patient to pass into lethai'gy or coma. These facts, to which many more might be added, leave no doubt as to their identity with the magnetic and clairvoyant phenomena so familiar among us during the last half-century. We have also some testimony upon the same subject among the Gauls and ancient Britons. According to the accounts of Tacitus, Lampridius, and Vopiscus, with respect to the Dmids, these latter exhibited the greatest confidence in the truth of the predictions of their priestesses, reared under the direction of the Druids, who uttered oracles, prophesied of the future, and cured diseases. Pomp. Mela says, Endowed with singular talents (the Druidesses), they cured diseases reputed incurable, knew and declared the futui-e to men. Pliny speaks of the Druids as part priests and part physi- cians.—Hoc genus vaium medicorumque,—is the term he applies to them. We have also some recognition of the subject as being known in what are called the Middle Ages. The churches, says M. Mialle, succeeded to the temples of the ancients, in which were consigned the traditions and the processes of magnetism. We find in them the same customs of passing the nights there, the same dreams, the same visions, the same cures. The indisputable wonders operated before the tombs of saints, are distinguishable by characters which it is not in the power of man to imitate ; but we ought to cut off from the list of ancient legends, a host of most surprising cures, in which religion and faith only acted as favouring dis- positions for the natural action of magnetism. (Foissac's