256 



ON SraPATHY AND FASCINATION. 



Mr. Home at one time suspected that the organ of the spleen aflbiiled 

 a passage from the stomach to the circulation of the blood in the cases 

 before us, instead of the lacteal vessels, which immediately rise from the 

 alimentary canal. This idea, he has, however, since relinquished as er- 

 roneous ; but had even such a passage existed, it would not have answered 

 the purpose ; for it would only have conducted materials by another path 

 to the blood : and tlie experiments of Dr. Wollaston have sufficiently 

 proved, that the unknown channel, wherever it lies, has no connexion 

 whatever with any part of the system of blood-vessels, or even with the 

 common system of absorbent vessels : and so far he seems to have dis- 

 proved a previous theory of Mr. Charles Darwin upon this subject, which 

 held, that the absorbent system might become the channel, by assuming a 

 retrograde action. Such action, however, has never been established, 

 and, independently of the experiments before us, it is rendered highly in- 

 conceivable, by the known structure of the absorbent vessels them- 

 selves. 



The corollary, then, resulting from these observations, is, that in the 

 animal system, as well as in inorganic nature, bodies in various instances 

 act where they are not, and through channels of influence or communi- 

 cation, with which we are altogether unacquainted. 



The examples thus far offered, in regard to animals, I readily admit, 

 arc taken from different parts of the same individual frame : but as they are 

 drawn from parts remotely situated, and whose intercourse, so far as we 

 are able to trace it, is as much cut off as though they were of different 

 frames, excepting, indeed, by a channel, which does not show itself to be 

 resorted to in the cases before us, I mean the blood ; they may serve to 

 lay a ground work for our conceiving the possibility of a similar influence 

 or association of action between different parts of different frames, or, 

 which is the same thing, between living body and living body. 



I proceed, then, to offer examples of this latter kind of influence. 

 The subject, 1 am aware, is not only of a very curious, but of a very delicate 

 nature, and requires to be handled with the greatest dexterity ; nor do I 

 know of any philosophical work to which we can turn as a proper bea- 

 con to direct us in our pursuit, and to determine where the boundary of 

 sober judgment ceases, and that of imagination begins. 



Some of the instances I shall refer to, may, perhaps, be denominated 

 instinctive influences. I have no objection to the term ; but the facts 

 will remain as singular, and as little accounted for, as if no such term 

 were in existence. 



Among quadrupeds, and, so far as we know of them, among amphi- 

 bials, fishes, and insects, there exists but little attachment of the male to 

 the female during the time of parturition, or to his own yaung after the 

 female has brought them forth. The seal-tribes, and especially those of 

 the tricheclius Manatus^ or lamantin, from which we have probably derived 

 all the idle stories of mermen and mermaids, together with a few others, 

 may, perhaps, be offered as an exception ; for these, and especially the 

 lamantin, form unions of single male with . single female that continue 



substances being conveyed to the kidneys by the course of the blood, and becoming manifest 

 in their ordinary secretion on the application of chemical tests, is, that they may be so 

 minutely decomposed by the action of the blood while passing through it, as to be beyond 

 ihe influence of any tests whatever ; and that they only discover themselves in the renal se- - 

 cretion, in consequence of a peculiar attraction or affinity of the organ for such materials, 

 and their being hereby thrown off in a more concentrated form. But this explanation is, 

 after nil, merely coiijcctnral. See Stud. oJ Med, vol. v. p. 283. 2d edit. 



