MESMERISM, ODYLISM, TABLE-TURNING, ETC. 25 



M. Bertraud with the mesmeric fluid while he was writing it. Desir- 

 ing to test the matter still further, he caused one of his friends to 

 write a similar letter, imitating his handwriting so closely that those 

 who received it should believe it to be his the same effect was once 

 more produced. 



And so it was with the large number of expei'iments that were 

 made within my own knowledge during the twenty years' attention 

 that I gave to this subject, with a view to test the mesmerizer's power 

 of inducing any of the phenomena of this state without the patient's 

 consciousness. Successes, it is true, were not unfrequent ; but these 

 almost invariably occurred when the experiments were made under 

 conditions to which the parties had become habituated, as in the case 

 of Dr. Noble's friend. For his performances were so continually being 

 repeated to satisfy the curiosity of visitors, that Dr. Noble's call at 

 his house would have been sufficient to excite, on the part of the 

 " subject," the expectancy that would have thrown her into the sleep. 

 But when such expectancy was carefully guarded against, the result 

 was so constantly negative as I will not say to disprove the existence 

 of any special mesmeric force, but to neutralize completely the affirm- 

 ative value of the evidence adduced to prove it. For I think you must 

 now agree with me that, if " expectancy " alone is competent to pro- 

 duce the results, as admitted by the most intelligent mesmerizers, 

 nothing but the most rigid exclusion of such expectancy can afford 

 the least ground for the assumption of any other agency. And my 

 own prolonged study of the subject further justifies me in taking the 

 position that it is only when the inquiry is directed, and its results 

 recorded, by skeptical experts, that such results have the least claim 

 to scientific value. The disposition to overlook sources of fallacy, to 

 magnify trivialities into marvels, to construct circumstantial myths 



(as in the case of Miss Martineau's J and Lord Morpeth) on the 



slightest foundation of fact, and to allow themselves to be imposed 

 upon by cunning cheats, has been so constantly exhibited by even 

 the most honest believers in the " occult " power of mesmerism, as, 

 not only in my own opinion, but in that of my very able allies in this 

 inquiry, to deprive the unconfirmed testimony of any number of such 

 believers, in regard to matters lying beyond scientific experience, of 

 all claim to acceptance. In fact, the positions taken in regard to mes- 

 merism by my friend Dr. Noble, as far back as 1845,* and more fully 

 developed by myself a few years later on the basis of Mr. Braid's ex- 

 periments, and of my own physiological and psychological studies,* 

 have not only in our own judgment, but by the general verdict of the 

 medical and scientific world, been fully confirmed by the subsequent 

 course of events, the history of which I shall next proceed to sketch. 

 Fraserh Magazine. 



' British and Foreign Medical Jievieio, vol. xix. 



' " Principles of Human Physiology," fourth edition, 1853 ; and Quarterly Review, Oc- 

 tober, 1853. 



