August 2, 1886.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



507 



foregoing, that objects Tvere seen from the temporal side of 

 the eye much more distinctly than from the nasal side, 

 owing to the irreparable damage the retina and choroid had 

 sustained." 



Instances of the cure of deafness miist in the gi-eat 

 majority of cases be ascribed to the increase in the ilow of 

 nervous force along the aural nerves, and, therefore, are not 

 quite so surprising as the case just cited and others of a like 

 nature. Still, some of them have been very remarkable. 

 Take, for instance, Mr. Braid's account of the cure of 

 Nodan, a deaf mute, aged twenty-four, who, according to the 

 opinion of Mr. Vaughan, head master of the Deaf and Dumb 

 Institute where Nodan was a pupil, had never had the 

 power of hearing, properly so called. " After the first 

 operation," says Mr. Braid, " (inducing hypnotism, then 

 extending the limbs and fanning the ears), I satisfied myself 

 he had no sense of hearing ; but after the second, which I 

 carried still further, he could hear, and was so annoyed by 

 the noise of the carts and carriages when going home that 

 he could not be induced to call on me again for some time. 

 He has been operated on only a few times, and has been so 

 much improved, that although he lives in a back street he 

 can now hear a baud of music coming along the front street, 

 and will go out to meet it. I lately tested him, and found 

 he could hear in his room on the second floor a gentle knock 

 on the bottom stair. His improvement, therefore, has been 

 decided and permanent, and is entirely attiibutable to 

 hypnotism, as no other means were adopted in his case." 

 In other words, the cure was entirely attributable to that 

 special form of mental activity which is excited, or, at any 

 rate, becomes available, in the case of hypnotised patients. 



We ha^e seen how, thiough the influence of tlie mind 

 upon the bodj', the blind have been made to see, the deaf to 

 hear ; we may next consider cases in which the lame have 

 been made to walk — nay, even to dance — by no other influ- 

 ence. Among the experiments by which it was shown that 

 wooden tractors are as efiective, if only they are 'properly 

 painted, as iron ones. Dr. Alderson mentions the following : 

 — " Robert Wood, aged sixty-seven, on June 4 was operated 

 upon with wooden tractors for a rheumatic aftection of the 

 hip, which he had had for eight months. During the appli- 

 cation of the tractors, which was continued for about seven 

 minutes, no effects were produced, except a profuse perspira- 

 tion and a general tremor. On ceasing the application of 

 the tractors, to his inexpressible joy and our satisfaction, the 

 good eSects of our labour were now produced and acknow- 

 ledged ; for he voluntarily assured me that he could walk 

 with perfect ease, that he had the entire motion of the joint, 

 and that he was fiee from pain — to use his own words : 'As 

 to the pain I have now, I do not care if I have it all my 

 life ; that will matter nothing. You may take your medi- 

 cines — I'll have no more of them ! ' And, prior to his 

 leaving the infirmary, he remarked how vei-y warm those 

 parts were where the tractors had been applied ; and then 

 walked from the infirmary to his own house, assuring his 

 companion that he could very well walk to Beverley." In 

 another case no tractors were used, or any other mysterious 

 form of apparatus employed to excite attention. The attrac- 

 tion used was not magnetic or electrical, but an attraction 

 of a very diflerent kind, not as yet considered among medical 

 remedies — except, by the way, in one case which occurs to 

 me at the moment, and will be found fully recorded, pre- 

 scription and all, in the pages of" Hard Cash," though the 

 remedy is there prescribed to cure an ailment for which it 

 seems in some degree more approjjriate. A young lady of 

 sixteen (we are describing a real case, not the case of Julia 

 Dodd) had for many months been sufiering from an inversion 

 of the left foot, which was twisted at right angles with the 

 other, and ■was treated by orthopaedic surgeons with an 



elaborate apparatus of splints. Neither the}' nor Mr. Skey 

 (though ho recognised the nature of the afl^ection) succeeded 

 in curing it. Psychical agents, however, effected a cure in a 

 few minutes. She willed to use her foot like other people, 

 and she did. " She accompanied her family to a ball," says 

 Mr. Skey, in the Medical Times and Gazette for October 1 3, 

 1866; "her foot, as she entered the ballroom, being not 

 yet restored to its normal position. She was invited to 

 dance, and, under this novel excitement, she stood up, and, 

 to the astonishment of her family, she danced the whole 

 evening, having almost suddenly recovered the healthy 

 muscular action of the limb. She came to me two days 

 afterwards. She walked perfectly well into my room, and 

 paced the room backwards and forwards with great delight. 

 The actions of the limb were thoroughly restored, and all 

 trace of the previous malady had disappeared." 



After reading such accounts as these, accounts given by 

 sober-minded medical men, who would naturally be inclined 

 rather to limit unduly than unduly to exaggerate the power 

 which the mind of the patient may possess over the diseased 

 l)ody, it becomes easy to explain the accounts of seemingly 

 miraculous cures which are published from time to time 

 in various religious (and also in some scarcely religious) 

 journals. Amongst such cases may be cited as particulai'ly 

 ci-edible, when once the influence of the imagination is 

 recognised, the so-called miracles performed by Prince 

 Hohenlohe, for he combined with the princely title,* and 

 the imagined efiicacy of royal blood, the attributes of 

 the priest, and personal qualities admirably suited to 

 influence the minds of the weaker sort of men. In one 

 case certainly, in which he cured a man of deafness, his 

 princely position can hardly have helped him much, for the 

 man was also a prince of the blood — Louis, ex-King of 

 Bavaria. Louis's letter describing his own cure, and other 

 wonders, is very curious. It is addressed to Count von 

 Sinsheim. " My dear Count," he says, " there are still 

 miracles. The ten last days of the last month, the people of 

 Wiirzburg might believe themselves in the times of the 

 Apostles. Tiie deaf heard, the blind saw, the lame freely 

 walked, not by the aid of art, but by a few short prayers. 

 . . . On the evening of the 28th, the number of jnersons 

 cured, of both sexes, and of every age, amounted to more 

 than twenty. These were of all classes of the peojjle, from 

 the humblest to a prince of the blood ; who, without any 

 exterior means, recovered, on the 27th, at noon, the hearing 

 which he had lost from his infancy. This cure was efiected 

 by a prayer made for him, during some minutes, by a priest, 

 who is scarcely more than twenty-seven years of age — the 

 Prince Hohenlohe. Although I do not hear so well as the 

 majority of the persons who are about me, there is no com- 

 parison between my actual state and that which existed 

 before. Besides, I perceive daily that I hear more clearly. 

 . . . My hearing at present is very sen.sitive. Last Friday, 

 the music of the troop which defiled in the square in front 

 of the palace struck my tympanum .so strongly, that for the 

 first time I was obliged to close the window of my cabinet. 

 The inhabitants of Wiirzbui-g have ' testified, l)y the most 

 lively and sincere acclamations, the pleasure which my cure 



* Dr. Todd remarks, with sly humour, that Hohenlohe's " name 

 and titles had probably much to do with his influence. They were 

 Alexander Leopold Franz Emmerich, Prince of Hoheulohe-Walden- 

 bm'g-SchiUiiigs£urst, Archbishop and Grand Provost of Gross- 

 wardein, Hungary, and Abbot of St. Michael's at Gaborjau." How 

 should such a name fail I Hohenlohe was born in 17!)-1, in Walden- 

 burg, and educated in several universities. He officiated as priest at 

 Olmiitz, Munich, &c. "Wlien twenty-sis,'' Dr. Todd add,", "he met 

 with a peasant who had performed several astonishing cures, and 

 from him caught the enthusiasm which he subsequently manifested 

 in curing the sick. He constantly appealed to their faith in his 

 power." 



