Mesmerism true, mesmerism false : a critical examination of the facts, claims and pretensions of animal magnetism / edited by John Forbes ; with an appendix, containing a report of two exhibitions by Alexis.

Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mesmerism true, mesmerism false : a critical examination of the facts, claims and pretensions of animal magnetism / edited by John Forbes ; with an appendix, containing a report of two exhibitions by Alexis. 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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    6. That there was not one single unequivocal example of what is called clairvoyance. 7. That, consequently, this exhibition not only affords not one tittle of evidence in favour of the existence of this faculty in the man Alexis, but presents extremely strong grounds for believing that the pretended power in him is feigned, and that he is consequently an impostor. From what I witnessed at this exhibition, and at another where it was pretended that the so-called somnambulist exhibited the faculty of having the phrenological organs excited individually by mesmerism, I am much more satisfied than I used to be in regard to the probable causes of the extensive belief in the wonders of mesmerism. On both these occasions it was clear that many of the spectators were either totally unacquainted with the laws of evidence, or that their enthusiastic temperament, or previous convictions or prejudices, rendered them, for the time, incapa- ble of appreciating, or of being guided by, such laws. They admitted, as positive facts, what appeared to calm unprejudiced observers, not only not facts, but the merest assumptions, unsupported by a tittle of the kind of evidence required in scientific investigations. It was also evident that there was, among such persons, an endeavour to help the exhibitor to get at the results proposed, and an eagerness to believe everything without question, and with a proneness of faith unjustifiable, and therefore never admitted, in inquiries of a scientific character. A further source of fallacy existed in the circumstances in which the great majority of the spectators were placed, viz., the utter impossibility, owing to their distance from the scene of action, of their seeing exactly what took place, so as to enable them to guard against the possibility of mistakes, misstatements, or col- lusion. These circumstances, taken in combination with the natural tendency of the human mind to believe rather than to be sceptical, and with the proneness of mankind in general to recollect successful wonders (especially in the way of guessing, divining, or prophesying) rather than failures, may, as I have said, help to explain the wide-spread belief in mesmerism, even if mesmerism should be false. In concluding these hurried notes, I think it right to state that even now, I only avow myself a sceptic or doubter—not an utter disbeliever— as to mesmerism. I am still open to conviction, when such evidence of its truth is afforded me as is deemed necessary in any other scientific in- quiries. The things I have myself seen, most assuredly increase very ma- terially the doubts I before entertained ; still I do not regard them as sufficient to prove the utter falseness of mesmerism ; they prove nothing more than their utter insufficiency to prove its truth. Even the positive proof of trickery and collusion on the part of its professors, however, would afford no sound reason for declaring it to be false. Like medicine, or any other branch of natural science, it may be true, although it be professed and practised by charlatans, cheats, and rogues. Give me the same kind of proofs of clairvoyance that I have of other scientific truths, and I will believe it. 5