MESMERISM, ODYLISM, TABLE-TURNING, ETC. 19 



sible to pain, while of all that took place in it she had subsequently 

 no recollection whatever. About twelve years afterward, two ampu- 

 tations were performed in our own country one in Nottinghamshire, 

 and the other in Leicestershire upon mesmerized patients, who showed 

 no other sign of consciousness than an almost inaudible moaning ; 

 both of them exhibiting an uninterrupted placidity of countenance, 

 and declaring, when brought back to tlieir ordinary state, that they 

 were utterly unaware of what had been done to them during their 

 sleep. And not long afterward Dr. Esdaile, a surgeon in Calcutta, 

 gave details of numerous most severe and tedious operations per- 

 formed by him, without the infliction of pain, upon natives in whom 

 he had induced the mesmeric sleep the rank of presidency surgeon 

 being conferred upon him by Lord Dalhousie (then Governor-General 

 of India), " in acknowledgment of the services he had rendered to 

 humanity." The results of minor experiments performed by various 

 persons, desirous of testing the reality of this state, were quite in har- 

 mony with these. Writing in 1845, Dr. Noble, of Manchester (with 

 whom I was early brought into association by Sir John Forbes in the 

 pursuit of this inquiry), said: 



" We have seen a needle thrust deeply under the nail of a woman sleeping 

 mesmerically, without its exciting a quiver ; we have seen pungent snuff in large 

 quantities passed up the nostrils under the same circumstances, without any- 

 sneezing being produced until the patient was roused, many minutes afterward ; 

 we have noticed an immunity from all shock when percussion-caps have been 

 discharged suddenly and loudly close to the ear ; and we have observed a pa- 

 tient's little-finger in the flame of a candle, and yet no indication of pain. In 

 this latter case all idea of there having been courageous dissimulation was re- 

 moved from our mind in seeing the same patient afterward evince both surprise 

 and indignation at the treatment received ; as, from particular circumstances, a 

 substantial inconvenience was to result from the injury to the finger, which was 

 by no means slight." ' 



This " mesmeric sleep " corresponds precisely in character with 

 what is known in medicine as "hysteric coma;" the insensibility 

 being as profound, while it lasts, as in the coma of narcotic poisoning 

 or pressure on the brain; but coming on and passing ofi*with such 

 suddenness as to show that it is dependent upon some transient con- 

 dition of the sensorium, which, with our present knowledge, we can 

 pretty certainly assign to a reduction in the supply of blood caused 

 by a sort of spasmodic contraction of the blood-vessels. That there 

 is no adequate ground for regarding it as otherwise than real^ appears 

 further from the discovery made not long afterward by Mr. Braid, a 

 surgeon practising at Manchester, that he could induce it by a very 

 simple method, which is not only even more efiective than the "passes" 

 of the mesmerizer, but is, moreover, quite independent of any other 

 will than that of the person who subjects himself to it. He found that 

 ^ British and Foreign Medical Review, April, 1845. 



