660 MESMERISM. 



such that, during the minute of the fit, a pistol fired off in the ear 

 of one was unnoticed. In common epilepsy and sometimes in hys- 

 teria we have coma, perfect insensibility, and at the same time 

 such high excitement of the parts of the nervous system which 

 move the muscles that violent convulsions occur. In sleep-waking, 

 it is an intellectual, and sometimes also moral, part of the 

 nervous system that is excited in the midst of the torpidity, 

 sometimes one part, sometimes another ; and, in some instances, 

 probably a heightened partial sensibility of parts concerned 

 in external sensation. In neuralgia we have fits of violent 

 excitement of nervous parts concerned in sense ; in palsy of 

 sensation, the reverse. In tonic and clonic spasms we have 

 excitement of nervous parts concerned in motion ; in palsy of 

 motion, the reverse. We have these two portions sometimes in 

 opposite conditions. The same holds good precisely of all 

 parts of the brain : and these conditions, in all these cases, and 

 in all other diseases of the nervous system, as fits of morbidly 

 excessive sleep, may be purely functional, and occur in pa- 

 roxysms : nay, most rapid changes of external sense may pro- 

 bably take place in the paroxysms, or even alterations different 

 from changes of mere degree. Some may have ecstatic de- 

 lirium, in which there is no loss of external sense, nor coma, 

 but a sudden change in the internal feelings, so that the patient 

 talks and acts like a fool, and in a moment the whole may cease 

 and be forgotten, and the patient be as before : and this may be 

 interchanged with fits of sleep-waking. 



BY certain processes, such as passing the points of the fingers 

 at a short distance from a person in a direction from the face 

 down the arms, trunks, and legs, with a degree of energy, the 

 state of sleep, or sleep-waking, may actually, we are told, be in- 

 duced. It is then termed magnetic, and the whole phenomena, 

 animal magnetism. The patient becomes insensible to all around,but 

 may have the inward senses augmented as in common ecstasis, 

 may sing well for the first time in his life, and talk so unguardedly 

 as to disclose secrets. The external senses may become so impene- 



