672 MESMERISM. 



stated he had five children, all gifted in the same extraordinary 

 way:" and, though Mr. C. acknowledges there is much room for 

 deception, " would strongly recommend" (in italics) the investi- 

 gation of the facts to professional men, because he has " suf- 

 ficiently proved that the phenomena exhibited are of possible 

 occurrence." 1 He would have us believe the case of Miss Mac- 

 aray, of Liverpool, a Roman Catholic young lady, who became 

 blind in June, 1816, when fifteen years of age, and accidentally 

 discovered in the following October that she could read with 

 her fingers the " Lives of the Saints," the " Life of Thomas a 

 Becket," and the Bible ; having previously, after having become 

 totally blind, presented a stole made by herself to her confessor. 

 Whether the priest, for the glory of God and the church, sug- 

 gested subsequent miracles of sight to her, or she imposed 

 upon his Roman Catholic credulity, is a matter of speculation. 

 She told an object placed under two plates of glass, by touching 

 the upper plate of glass with her fingers; and could read with 

 her fingers nine inches from the book, by a convex lens tvhich she 

 touched ! Now this single circumstance proved the whole to be 

 an impudent imposture. If the lens could have assisted her 

 fingers to see, it must have been when they were placed at that 

 particular distance from it at which the rays formed an image 

 of the object ; not when they were in contact with it. At its sur- 

 face, a lens affords no image of an object : yet to her fingers, 

 touching the surface of the lens, objects appeared magnified if 

 the glass was convex, small if it was concave ! This statement 

 was a most unlucky mistake ; she should have pretended to see 

 with her fingers at the proper focal distance. k 



Voltaire advises the Devil never to address himself to the 

 faculty of physic, but to that of theology, when he wishes to 

 impose upon mankind. However, in 1726, a poor woman at 

 Godalming in Surrey, named Mary Tofts, pretended that, after 

 a violent longing for rabbits, when pregnant, she brought forth 

 these animals ; and persuaded her apothecary, " Mr. Howard, a 



* 1. c. vol. ii. p. 339. sq. 



k See Annals of Med. and Surgery ; London, 1818, vol. ii. p. 385. j where 

 it is remarked as singular that no person thought of ascertaining whether the 

 point which she touched upon the glass was in a line between the object and 

 her eyes; and whether an intervening opake substance, placed in this line, 

 prevented her power of discriminating objects. 



