LETTER IV.
Dear Charles,—Are you in earnest in defending phrenomagnetism?
Are you drawing me out merely? Surely
you will not insist on it, as argument conclusive, that “good
and pious men believe and practise it; that we ought not
impertinently (!) to propose experiments, but be content with
such manifestations as nature may be pleased voluntarily to
exhibit; that you yourself have witnessed the drawing of
teeth, the removing of tumors, and other surgical operations
on patients in the mesmerie state,” &c.
My dear fellow, if “good and pious men” were never
weak; if such had never been deceived, and could not be
deceived; if “old Adam were never too strong for young
Melancthon;” I would give a more logical anwer to your
proton-pseudos. But come, sir, what have you to urge in
defence of witchcraft? Pray, did not “good and pious
men,” men of piety and intelligence, too, far transcending
the present good men, who think there is something in mesmerism,
did they not believe in witchcraft? Were they not
furnished with facts innumerable, incontrovertible, and attested
under oath? They themselves saw the possessed,
talked with them, watched with them, prayed with and
preached about them; alas! condemned some to imprisonment
and death!
Why, Charles, the seeming facts in favor of witchcraft,
were a thousand-fold more numerous, and ten thousand times
better attested, than facts establishing our modern wonders;
and yet we very sapient men of the nineteenth century, we
sneer at the Puritans! And you, brother, are a cool and
philosophic disbeliever in witches, readily ascribing all wonders
in the by-gone era to delusion, and error, and weakness,
and malicious trickery, and yet you pretend to believe in
phrenology, and mesmerism, and clairvoyance! “Oh! consistency,
and so forth!”
Reverend sir, have you forgot the history of the golden
tooth? Wise, and scientific, and learned men saw the tooth
in the fellow's jaw with their own eyes, (whether the tooth
may have been in the jaw of an ass is not so clear, but we
know where the eyes must have been,) yes, saw it with their
own natural eyes, and then examined it with their spectacles
on, and afterwards went to work and set forth their opposite
theories to account for the lusus naturæ, in which was proved
the possibility; and then the probability of a man's having a
golden tooth! and yet, after all, the tooth proved to be a tooth
neatly covered with gold-leaf—gilded for the occasion!!
And, sir, are not the holy coats, and the bottles of blood,
and the thousand pieces of the true cross, and the heels of
Peter's sandals, and the hairs from the beards of Moses and
Aaron, and the specimens of the lice and flies sent to plague
Egypt—are they not all believed in, and sworn to, and gazed
at, and worshipped, by professedly good men, and wise, and
learned? Yea, are not cures wrought by touching, smelling,
and even looking at the relies?
Charles, let men of your cloth not tamper with delusion
and trickery. Science, falsely so called, will sooner or later,
with cool impudence, account for the miracles of the Bible
on principles of frenzy-mesmerism, if the world can be seduced
or deluded into admitting its principles; and you men
that are set for the defence of truth should not countenance
error.
And why will you, in so pitiful a way, entreat that we
shall not demand of mesmerism any other proof or experiment
than its professors choose to allow? What! Charley,
shall Miss Martineau's entranced maid-servant tell of
the shipwreck of an hermaphrodite brig, with a cargo of rum,
ginger, and slate-pencils, and may we not ask her what has
become of the President? Be satisfied, say you, with such
developments as nature may be pleased voluntarily to exhibit,
and wait her time! Oh! shame, where is thy blush?
Charles, if you do persist in this sort of supereminent nonsense,
I will turn Diogenes in Lucian's dialogues, and
sing at you all the best classic—
O tempora! O mores!
Pray, sir, what does nature give in philosophies, that
is not rigorously demanded from her? Is that not her own
law and will, that we must pertinaciously seek what she conceals?
And what principle in morals and science is true,
that flinches from the test of severe and rigorous examination?
Whatever here will not bear torturing is false. Nature's
secrets are yielded only to the rack: and if mesmerism
and its kindred fooleries are stretched tightly, and
twisted inquisitorily, they will yield up nothing but the ghost!
Animal magnetism, it is affirmed, is nothing new; and
claim is set up for an antiquity of many centuries. Why
then has it not made more progress in the world? Why is
its life spasmodie and periodical? Every thing in it is
agreeable to our nature; it gratifies our love of the marvellous,
our excited curiosity, our cupidity, our love of power,
of gold, of pleasure, of fame, of ambition. Nor has it lacked
determined advocates and enthusiastic disciples, who have
said it is true and it shall be true, and men must and shall
and will believe it. Steel pens, if not iron swords, have
been drawn in its defence;—and it certainly needs steel
in the pen as well as brass in the face—but still it only
marks time in its movement, rather than marches in the
world: for after the dust its occasional appearance raises is
scattered, there is mesmerism just where it was when Mark
Antony was mesmerized by the touch of Cleopatra, and ages
before that when Samson slumbered under the fascinations of
Delilah.
Now take a true science, and mark the difference. Take
electro-magnetism for instance. Does that skulk into a corner,
and in a sulky voice say, “You needn't ask me any more
questions, for I shan't answer”? Does that go before a justice
of the peace and depose under oath, like a quack doctor
with some everlasting elixir of life, or some infallible corn-plaster,
with power, if all exerted, sufficient to pull the very
toe out of joint, and then and there swear that on a certain
night in Dark Alley, at No. 39, in the third story, it did indeed
and double deed cure a fit of the wind colic? No,
sir; look at its open, manly countenance—it cannot stoop to
that. It asks not, like your New Purchase politicians, for
support to its character from certificates, and oaths, and affidavits:
but it comes into your house and keeps the hour,
and, twenty-four times every day,
strikes conviction through
your eyes and ears. It plays between the galvanic piles before
your eyes for ever. It whirls about on the circumference of
a wheel and grinds your knives and scissors. It stretches
nerves of iron along your streets and across your fields and
over your houses; and by means of its invisible fiery ink it
thinks your wishes for you a thousand miles away in a moment!
It ever stands in the public places and says to all
comers, “Ask me what you like.”
But that other thing has its nauseating tricks cut and dried
—and calls them experiments! and its furnished answers,
and says they are developments! It is placarded like another
quackery, as from Paris or London—a sort of royal corn-cutter
to majesty—and a pimple eradicator to highness! And
keeps on swearing itself to be true—though it looks exactly
like a lie!
And what, if now and then a patient of a peculiar temperament,
be lulled by soothing words and looks, peradventure
by subtle essences inhaled through the nostrils or swallowed
by the throat; or who, by having the mind so absorbed
in contemplating something else, is comparatively insensible
to plain: for that is possible, and especially where the operator
is pre-eminently skilful and his instruments perfect! How
often, too, where we anticipate and dread an operation, supposing
it necessarily to be very painful, and find it actually
much less than our expectations, how easily do we say the
pain was none? Why, Charles, you remember the tooth
pulled for me by the Hoosier doctor on Big Bear Wallow
Bottom—don't you know how I magnified the torture by
anticipation, and yet, it was so little in reality that I jumped
up and cried, “Doctor, it did not hurt at all!” Unlucky fellow,
why did he not mesmerize me beforehand?—Falsehood
thus could have been established for truth; and he could
have emptied all the jaws and pockets in the Big Bear Wallow
settlement!
I shall, however, conclude this lengthy letter by making
it a little lengthier with the addition of an incident or two.
Not long since, in this very village, a man had the artery
of his arm taken up and tied—an operation known to be
painful in general, but in this case uncommonly painful and
tedious; and yet, so quiet did he remain, with his eyes
closed, that some of the attendants said he was asleep, and
the operator himself feared he ahd fainted: but he was
neither asleep nor in a swoon, for he was wide awake!
Suppose our surgeon, knowing the man's character of fortitude,
had previously arranged with him the behaviour of one
mesmerized for an operation, how easy for even medical bystanders
to have been deceived, and then to have given certificates
to the world? And even learned and scientific
human nature will stoop to trickery for gold and glory.
We had, also, among us in by-gone days a poor creature
called Betsey Coblit; from the following incident, however,
better known as Bet Possum. Ashamed to beg openly, and
yet unwilling to work, she affected to be “sickly:” and in
this vocation so wrought on the sympathies of our good ladies,
as not only to be pitied and visited, but liberally supplied
with food and clothing. Desirous to ascertain how much she
was valued, poor Bet resolved to die. Hence, one sad morning,
the doctor was summoned in much haste to her house;
and on arriving was met at the door by several of the sorrowing
ladies, or sisters of charity—(for Protestants have
many such, though unincorporated)—and with the exclamation,
“Doctor, you are too late, poor Betsey is gone—she
has breathed her last!—poor thing, we did all we could—but
alas! she is gone!”
The physician thought, however, he would take a kind
of professional look; and so he entered the chamber of
death. And sure enough there lay the poor creature, her
jaw fallen, her eyes half open and glassy, one hand on her
breast, and the other one extended towards the outer edge of
the bed. A lady was near who had been holding a looking-glass
over the face of the dead—but in vain, its surface was
undimmed. From habit, our doctor took the arm that was
extended, and was in no small degree surprised to find a
pretty fair pulse with a regular beat!
He made no remark at this, nor even changed a feature,
but stepping to the table picked up a vial of liquid hartshorn,
and while the kind-hearted ladies stood around, some with
elevated and mourning eyebrows—others with sad tears falling
on their cheeks—and others again audibly sobbing—(for
poor Bet was no better than she should have been)—the
doctor suddenly emptied the whole of the liquid into the open
mouth of the subject!
The explosion of combined cough—sneeze—gasp—and
strangled exclamation from poor Bet was really terrific:
and the astonishment of the company baffles description.
And so our heorine acted as well as a mesmerized woman
under the best artists could have done, and richly deserves
for ever to stand at the head of the Betsey Possums.
