690 MESMERISM. 



My readers will remember the extraordinary, but unquestion- 

 able, case of Colonel Townsend (supra, p. 4-85. sqq.), who some 



with facts.* (Vol. ii. p. 120. sq., 150.) So credulous is he, that he considers the 

 learned and amiable Swedenborg to have been naturally in a state of magnetic 

 illumination, whom any one conversant with Swedenborg's theological writings, 

 and with the history of insanity, must know to have been a monomaniac for 

 thirty years. The mad Joan of Arc he supposes to have been in an habitual crisis. 

 He believes every childish tale without a shadow of authenticity (vol. i. p.xxx. 

 87. sq.), every absurdity advanced by mesmerisers, that mesmerised people speak, 

 not merely understand, when spoken to by others influencing them mesmerically, 

 languages unknown to them; he applies ridiculously extravagant terms of 

 praise to ordinary persons, and considers a certain production as highly satis- 

 factory, just what he himself would have executed, but which any man of 

 sense and good feeling will agree with me to have been too contemptible, intel- 



* As a specimen of his knowledge and mind, I refer to a note in vol. ii. p. 153. 

 He has " good reason to believe" that the brain is the seat of the operations of 

 intellect, but equally good to hold " that the ganglionic system, the nerves of 

 the chest and abdomen, is the primary seat of the affections ! " Love, hate, jea- 

 lousy, &c. alter the functions and even the structure of these organs, and any 

 effect of these passions " upon the brain appears to be merely secondary and 

 sympathetic ! " Shame makes the cheek blush ; shame therefore has its pri- 

 mary seat in the cheeks. We may go farther : disorder of the stomach causes 

 headach ; dyspepsia therefore has its primary seat in the head, and any effect 

 produced upon the stomach appears merely secondary and sympathetic. 



I must take this opportunity of supplying an omission on the subject of phreno- 

 logy. All persons give Dr. Spurzheim the credit of inventing the term phrenology 

 for his master's science : and he takes this credit, for, in his Phrenology, vol. i. 

 p. 12., he says, " In extending my views, I have found it necessary to change 

 the name again. I have chosen that of phrenology, which is derived from two 

 Greek words, <J>pv, mind, and Xoj/o?, a discourse, and I understand by it the 

 doctrine of the special phenomena of the mind, and of the relations between the 

 mental dispositions and the body, particularly the brain." Now, Dr. Forster, 

 in his Recueil des Ouvrages et des Pensees d'un Physicien et Metaphysiden, par 

 Thomas Forster, Francfort sur le Mein, 1836, p. 12., proves that he himself gave 

 the name: "I introduced my friend (Dr. Spurzheim) to the converzationi of 

 Sir Joseph Banks, which were held every Sunday evening in Soho Square, and 

 to many other men of science ; but the greatest benefit I rendered him was 

 to give him a suitable name for his system. In 1816 I published my Sketch of 

 the Phrenology of Gall and Spurzheim, London, 1816; a name which the 

 science has never lost." 



