Sketches of the philosophy of apparitions, or, an attempt to trace such illusions to their physical causes / by Samuel Hibbert.

  • Hibbert, Samuel, 1782-1848.
Date:
1824
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sketches of the philosophy of apparitions, or, an attempt to trace such illusions to their physical causes / by Samuel Hibbert. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    sented itself, and with the most intense belief and prophetic manner I exclaimed to Dr King- lake, ‘ Nothing exists but thoughts, the universe is composed of impressions, ideas, pleasures, and pains.111 Such is the interesting detail of a very important physiological experiment made by one of the most adventurous as well as profound philosophers of the present age. The visionary world to which he was introduced, consisting of nothing more than the highly vivid and embodied images of the mind, together with the laws by Avhich such phantasms (if they may be so called) were go- verned, form, in fact, the real object of the pre- sent dissertation. A singular result, but vai’ied by the opposite quality of pain, attends the incipient influence of the febrile miasma of Cadiz and Malaga. Sensa- tion and ideas are, as under the action of the ni- trous oxide, simultaneously vivified. The mind soon becomes insensible to actual impressions, and a new world of ideas, of the most fright- ful kind, take their place. Horrid spectral images arise, the fore-runner of a suddenly diminished degree of excitement, of total insensibility, or of death. Our inquiry will now perhaps be found not wholly devoid of interest. A pathological princi- ple in this investigation has been established, that