Lecture IX. Hypnotism and the Border-land of Science

In this last lecture of our course I propose to make a brief excursion with you into the border-land of science, a region chiefly occupied by imposture and superstition. To show there is such a territory, we have only to name a few of its inhabitants, such as mesmerism, animal magnetism, odylism, hypnotism, mind-reading, faith-cures, clairvoyance, spiritism, including table-rapping, spirit-rapping, most of which have been used in connection with medicine. I do not maintain that all of these are mere vagaries, empty shadows, without the least reality, mere ghosts and hobgoblins, mere phantoms of the heat-oppressed brain, or cunning devices of impostors to deceive a gullible crowd of the ignorant public. Yet most of these are such beyond a doubt, and as such are totally unworthy of our attention.

Medicine is a science; it deals with undoubted facts and certain principles, and with theories in so far as they are supported by well-ascertained realities. The border-land of which I speak presents to our investigation few certain facts. It is chiefly the domain of imposture. Charlatans and showmen and medical quacks call things facts that are not facts. Among all the inhabitants of the shadowy region that I have enumerated, there is only one considered to-day by the science of medicine as worthy of its attention. It is hypnotism. As its first origin is connected with the history of mesmerism, and the latter, though itself a phantom, has been used as the chief patron of all other phantoms, I will premise a few words about mesmerism itself.

I. Mesmer was born about 1733, studied in Vienna and there became a doctor of medicine in 1766. Soon after, he began to speculate upon the curative powers of the magnet, and claimed to have discovered the existence of a force in man similar to magnetism and the source of strong influence on the human body.

In 1775 he published an account of the medical powers of this animal magnetism, which from his name was afterward called mesmerism. Paris was then the centre of attraction for scientific discoverers and pretenders. Thither Mesmer betook himself and there he soon created a lively sensation by the exhibition of mesmeric trances, some of which were accompanied by clairvoyance—that is, the power of seeing objects concealed from the eyes. He was also supposed to work some inexplicable cures.

The secret of his art he could not be induced to reveal even for the sum of 340,000 livres, which was offered him in compensation. People began to doubt whether he had a real secret, or whether he was a rank impostor. A royal commission was appointed to examine into the matter. Our Benjamin Franklin, then in Paris, was one of the commissioners. Their report was unfavorable. They found no proof of the existence of a fluid such as animal magnetism, and thought that all that was not imposture could be accounted for by the power of imagination. In a secret report they pointed out very strongly the dangers likely to arise from this unhealthy stimulus to the imagination. Their verdict does honor to their learning and their common-sense. Mesmer left Paris, and he died in obscurity in 1815.

But his pretended discovery did not die with him. It was a mine of resources to charlatans and impostors generally. There were strange effects produced, and at the sight of the inexplicable men lose their wits. The gullible public wondered, restless minds experimented, and many pondered thoughtfully on facts, most of which were not facts at all. But after eliminating all the elements of imposture and exaggeration there seemed to remain a residue of phenomena that were strange and unaccountable.