Animal magnetism. Being the first part of animal magnetism and homoeopathy, with notes illustrative of the influence of the mind on the body / [Edwin Lee].

  • Lee, Edwin, -1870
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Animal magnetism. Being the first part of animal magnetism and homoeopathy, with notes illustrative of the influence of the mind on the body / [Edwin Lee]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ing the power of good training upon a well developed brain ; no poet or moralist could desire finer speci- mens of all that is delightful in the youthful mind. They have not known each other—they both ex- hibit exquisite mesmeric phenomena; are thrown into a profound coma, which no impression on the senses will jdispel, and which soon becomes sleep- waking; their limbs may be. stiffened at pleasure and endowed with enormous force, which, although not yielding to mechanical violence, gives way to contact or to the breath, or to movements of the operator's hand without contact, in the direction op- posite to that of the limbs’ position, the various muscles of the face may be made to twitch as if with electricity, and the eyes be opened or the body be drawn by movements of the fingers and hands held at a short distance; the position of each finger of the operator’s hand will be minutely imitated though the eyes be closed, and the experiment be made out of the patient’s sphere of vision. Though showing all the signs of sleep in the breathing, the falling of the head, the aspects, and the exquisite positions, they may be roused to both, but never recognise the person nor the place; their dream, if so it may be called, is perfectly rational, but the real place and person ad- dressing, and even the time, are invariably fancied otherwise than is the fact. “I know to a certainty that both are totally ig- norant of phrenology. Without any previous inten- tion, I one day tried to mesmerise some of the cerebral organs in the young lady. On placing the point of a finger on the right organ of attachment, she strongly squeezed my fingers of the other hand placed in her right hand,. and fancied I was her favourite sister ; on removing it to the organ of self- esteem, she let go. my fingers, which were in the right hand, repelled my hand, mistook me for a per- son she disliked, and talked in the haughtiest man- ner. Onreplacing the point of my finger on attach- E