Jilt 1, 1886.] 



♦ KNOW^LEDGE ♦ 



279 



ing, when she was completely cured in fifty minutes by the 

 application of the tractors. The medical gent'emen had 

 been exerting themselves to the utmost, in the kindest 

 manner, and one of them said he would give a hundred 

 guineas if he could save her life. This gentleman came into 

 the room while I was in the act of using the tractoi-s, which 

 he had never seen before, but kindly said they should cer- 

 tiinly have a fair chance, and he directed me where to apply 

 them with the greatest advantage. I continued the operation 

 for forty minutes without any apparent benefit, and then, 

 giving the tractoi-s into the hands of the surgeon, returned to 

 my own house, awaiting the issue of their further application. 

 In about twelve minutes the surgeon (Mr. S.) came breath- 

 less with hasts and delight to inform me that he had himself 

 continued the use of the tractoi-s only ten minutes when the 

 poor creature opened her mouth. lilr. S. was so fully per- 

 suaded of the efficacy of the tractors that he immediately 

 pmx;hased a pau- for his own use. Mr. S. writes : ' The case 

 is yours, the suggestion was yours : I merely continued the 

 employment of the measure from the appai-ent helplessness 

 of medical means in relieving the distressing complaint. 

 Although previously to the employment of the tractors I had 

 utterly given up the idea of saving my poor patient : although 

 I feared medicine would prove wholly ineflicacious, yet 1 

 am not prepared to siy that certain death would have been 

 the result ; but I do not for a moaient me;in to impeach the 

 effect of the tractors in this case. I feel conviction that they 

 produced the cure.' "' 



In passing I may note, with Dr. Todd, my surprise that 

 after it had besn conclusively proved by the experiments 

 made by Dr. Haygarth and others with wooden tractoi-s, that 

 such cures as the above were really due to the effect of 

 imagination, they should therefore have ceased to pay 

 further attention to the matter. The result of their experi- 

 ments was more interesting than would ha^■e been any 

 demonsti-ation of the potency of metallic tractors. They 

 had established, in fact, the existence of a curative power 

 in nature far more wonderful, and promising to be of 

 £;u' greater, because of far wider, utility than those mystical 

 instruments. Yet, having eflected this great discovery, 

 they treated it as if it were of no value whatever. Are we 

 to suppose that if, when death was gi-adually approaching 

 nearer and nearer to Mi's. P. of Maidstone, 8. the surgeon 

 and Vine Hall the tractorian, had known what was afterwards 

 established by Haygarth and others, they would have declined 

 to use the means by which (through the intluenee on her 

 imagination) the poor woman was actuilly cured 1 The 

 conduct of Haygarth and the rest, after the efficacy of 

 metallic tractors had been disproved, suggests that this 

 would have been the course of medical men acquainted with 

 Haygarth's results. In other words, having pi-oved that a 

 certain very potent method of cure derives its power from a 

 source other than had been supposed, doctors seem to 

 have agreed that therefore this remedy should no longer be 

 employed, though the very researches by which they liad 

 detected the true nature of the remedy had at the s;ime time 

 indicated its wonderful efficacy. It is as though a physician, 

 called in by a family doctor to counsel him about a patient, 

 should suppose that a certain medicine which had proved of 

 great service before his arrival contained quinine ; but finding 

 on analysis or otherwise that it contained other ingredients, 

 and no quinine at all (satisfying himself, also, in the mean- 

 while, from observation, that it was of great service to 

 the patient), he should incontinently throw the bottle out of 

 window. This, as Dr. Todd well remarks, " is at least as 

 astonishing as that the public should believe in, and allow 

 themselves to be cured by, the metallic tractors of Perkins, 

 and be content to refer the influence to galvanism," 



The case of Irving preaching under an attack of cholei'a, 



and actually overmastering that terrible disease in the 

 struggle, is perhaps familiar to many of my readei-s. But it 

 so remarkably illustrates my subject that I can ill afford to 

 I omit it. During the cholera season of 1832, he was seized 

 with " what was in all appearance, and to the conviction of 

 medical men when described to them, that disease which 

 had proved fatal to so many of our fellow-creatures." He 

 had risen in perfect health. But by breakfast-time he had 

 become very cold, and was in great agony. The usual 

 symptoms of choleiu presently supervened. A medical man 

 informed Dr. Todd that to his knowledge Irving was in a 

 state of dangerous collapse dming one part of the morning. 

 " With sunken eyes, pallid cheeks, and an altogether ghastly 

 appearance, he tottered to the church, a quarter of a mile 

 distant, and found another minister officiating for him." He 

 was tempted, he tells us, to turn back, but summoned I'eso- 

 lution to send a message to his brother-minister that he 

 would shortly take his place. In the meantime he stretched 

 himself on three chairs in the vestry before the fire. "Even 

 as I shifted my position," he said, " I endured much suffer- 

 ing, and was almost involuntarily impelled to draw up my 

 ; limbs in order to keep the pain under. K'evertheless, when 

 I stood up to attire myself for the pulpit, and went forward 

 to ascend the pulpit-stairs, the pains seemed to leave me." 

 With dimmed sight, his head swimming, and his breathing 

 laboured, he gra-sped the sides of the pulpit, and looked wist- 

 fidly around, wondering what was to follow. Be it remem- 

 bered that in his eyes disease was sin ; faith only was needed 

 to overcome all other bodily iUs save those due to accident 

 or old age ; and that disease seemed now likely to master him 

 was evidence, as he thought, that he had sinfully lost hold of 

 faith. It was a moral struggle (at least, it seemed so to him), 

 not a bodily contest in which he was engaged. As he thus 

 stood contending against the evil spirit in imagination, but 

 in reality bringing bj' strong effort of the will his natm'al 

 energies to meet the progress of physical disease, the crisis 

 came. In an instant " a cold sweat," he tells us, " chUl as the 

 hand of de;ith, broke out all over my body, and stood in 

 large drops upon my forehead and hands. From that 

 moment I seemed to be strengthened." For more than an 

 hour he preached with a fervour unknown to him — fervid 

 preacher as he ever was before. He walked home, eating little. 

 In the evening he preached in a crowded schoolroom, and 

 nest morning rose before the sun, strong and hearty as before 

 the attack. 



An agency competent, as these and many similar cases 

 which might be cited seem to show, to check the progress 

 of such maladies as hydrophobia, lockjaw, and cholei-a, is 

 one which deserves to be dealt with, not as an interesting 

 illustration of psychological and physical relations, but as a 

 potent remedial force worthy to take its place beside, if not 

 above, any of the medicaments which doctors are at present 

 in the habit of employing. But apart from this, the cir- 

 cumstance that powers so remarkable exist in the cerebral 

 faculties suggests other purposes to which they might be 

 applied. In the phenomena of hypnotism, or artificial 

 somnambulism, we have some very striking e%'idence on 

 this point ; but it would lead us too far from our present 

 subject to consider these, except so far as they illustrate 

 the influence of the mind on bodily disease. In this respect 

 they supply some of the most remarkable evidence we have 

 to consider. 



Let it te premised before considering the phenomena of 

 hypnotism, mesmerism, or whatever we choose to call them, 

 that the theory of their being due to animal or any other 

 sort of magnetism has been abundantly disproved. Of 

 course, if it were otherwise, they would fall entirely outside 

 the range of this essay. ^Tor, again, can they be in any way 

 attributed to the influence of one mind on another, except in 



