"She suffered between every dressing; and, when the pain acquired a certain intensity, she was mesmerised and had no pain, even for a long while after she was awakened again. Nothing unfavourable occurred after the operation, and the parts will soon be healed.

66

"This operation was performed in the presence of eight witnesses (five of them medical), several of whom had never before seen the phenomena of mesmeric insensibility. All left perfectly satisfied of the advantage of mesmerism in surgical operations.

"I have the honor to be, &c.,

"Cherbourg, Dec. 18, 1845.

"A. DELENTE."*

What will Sir Benjamin Brodie say to this? Against the amputation performed in Nottinghamshire he childishly urged that the patient might have been by nature insusceptible of pain,t in the face of the fact that the poor man had suffered excruciating agony up to the moment of the operation. The French young lady also suffered "acute pain," causing "very restless nights," and had undergone two operations on her foot already with "excessive pain.' Others as foolishly and untruly declared that the man had been trained,§ and one said trained in order to become a great mesmeric card. The young lady had been so trained that the second operation in her waking state agonized her no less than the first, and admirably prepared her for the "much more painful third." The dressing on the day after the operation, being done in her waking state, caused her exquisite suffering. The mesmerism practised before any of the operations had, as in the Nottinghamshire patient and Mdlle. D'Albanel, whose case is recorded in the last number, most beneficial effects. short time the size of the foot lessened, the pain was mitigated, and she passed her nights in refreshing sleep." But Sir Benjamin Brodie cunningly passed all this over in his anxiety to prove that mesmerism did nothing and that the Nottinghamshire man was an impostor,¶ and so did every one else.**

"In a

Can a man be worthy of the name and not feel deeply on reading this history also? Will Sir Benjamin Brodie and Hospital at Cherbourg, who sanctioned

¶ p. 36.

+ p. 7, 14.

§ p. 12, 19.

*The Director of the Military the operation on Miss D'Albanel. + See my pamphlet, p. 36, 37. || p. 6. ** Mr. Coulson, for instance, who afterwards "confessed to me that he had never seen a mesmeric fact and was quite ignorant of mesmerism," told the society that "the only point of interest was the non-expression of pain, and that was a common thing, and he had no doubt the man had been trained to it." p. 12, 13, 14.

the other Fellows of the society still be unable to distinguish between fortitude to bear pain and insensibility to it? Neither he nor any of them seemed ever to have thought of the difference, or of the difference of the manifestation of the two, while, in the absence of all expression of fortitude and the presence of every sign of perfect freedom from suffering, they urged that the Nottinghamshire man was only a courageous, and a trained courageous, fellow,* common enough to meet with. Will the society still display their entire ignorance of the phenomena of sleep-waking, even when not induced by mesmerism, but idiopathic or spontaneous, and imagine, because this patient heard and answered questions and sang, that she was therefore sensible to mechanical injury? Dr. George Burrows, positively a teacher of the practice of medicine in the large metropolitan hospital of St. Bartholomew, and who therefore ought to have made himself acquainted with all the affections of the nervous system, catalepsy, somnambulism, &c., doubted the reality of the Nottinghamshire case because the man honestly said that he fancied he once heard something in his sleep,t-a kind of crunching, which no doubt was the sawing of his own thigh bone. The most ordinary fact of sleep-waking is insensibility to mechanical injury with no impairment of hearing.§ Without sleep-waking, persons every day have no feeling in a palsied arm or leg and can hear perfectly well, and every day deaf people can feel very well. Poor Mr. Bransby Cooper, positively the teacher of anatomy, physiology, and surgery, in the large metropolitan hospital of Guy, displayed the same ignorance as Dr. George Burrows, and contended that if the man could not feel he could not hear," hearing and feeling,' said he, are the same!" If the faint hearing of the crunching sound in the Nottinghamshire patient when he could not feel so puzzled these gentlemen, they must be completely at their wit's end on reading that the French young lady sang a hymn while the operation was going on, tuning up very gradually from a faint humming till she was in full song.

**

Like the other French young lady whose leg was amputated, this patient was so bad a physiologist, so ignorant of the reflex motions, that she too omitted to move the other leg while the surgeon's knife entered the diseased. When I think of the folly of Dr. Marshall Hall, and his followers,

* Pamphlet, p. 15, 16, 17, 18. See farther on, pp. 28, 33.

Zoist, vol. III., p. 496.

While correcting this sheet, I see the case noticed in the London Medical Gazette, Feb. 20, p. 351, and actually with the following remarks, illustrating all I have just said of the ignorance of the profession :-"That

VOL. IV.

C

Sir Benjamin Brodie, poor Mr. Wakley, Mr. Toswill, &c., in assuring us that, when a person can feel nothing and one. leg is wounded, the other and the other only ought to start, I can scarcely credit their absurdity.*

There is much to be regretted in the treatment of this case also by these enlightened gentlemen, owing no doubt to their not being habituated to the employment of mesmerism. When the cure of Miss Collins's+ foot and Miss Critchley's fingers, and the other local cures, recorded in the two last numbers, are remembered, it is impossible not to consider whether the retraction of the French female's fingers might not have been cured by mesmerism, general and local, sedulously employed; especially as the mesmerism which was practised reduced the size of the foot and lessened the pain. Her susceptibility was such that mesmerism had frequently been employed to lessen her suffering, and I should say that, as she was so readily sent to sleep, she ought to have been kept asleep continually, in order to reduce her suffering to the lowest point: and in this sleep abundant local mesmerism would have told even more than in her ordinary state.

The two first operations ought not to have been performed in her ordinary state: they might and should have been performed in her sleep and rendered painless. It is distressing to read that "the pain of them was extreme."

The first dressing should have been done in her sleep: if it was thought right to gratify her silly wish of seeing the wound, all the dressing should have been removed in her

a person should be able to resist the expression of pain, during the performance of this or even of a more severe operation, is nothing wonderful; but the singing is a new feature of the remarkable mystery known under the name of animal magnetism; and on the part of a female, it may be regarded as a very delicate way of shewing gratitude to the operator! Unfortunately for the credit of the story, it rests upon the authority of a notorious mesmeric journal."-This, I presume, is the Journal du Magnétisme.

Pamphlet, p. 19, &c., 22, 50. Zoist, vol. II., p. 425. Mr. Toswill says that Dr. M. Hall" withdrew his allegiance to mesmerism," because the sound leg of the man in Nottinghamshire did not start while the other was cutting off. Why Dr. M. H. never had an allegiance to mesmerism to withdraw. Mr. Toswill ridiculously considers him "perhaps the greatest living authority on the functions of the nervous system:" whereas he is no authority at all,―never made a discovery, is a scoffer at all Gall's discoveries, and has not written a true opinion upon reflex movements that had not been written before he was born, and even the word reflex had been thus applied by Prochaska in 1784. He never once mentions the name of Dr. Prochaska or Sir Gilbert Blane in his communication to the Royal Society announcing his pretended discoveries, so that I repeat what I said in my pamphlet, that it is worth considering "which was the greater, Dr. Hall's boldness in sending the paper, or the council's in printing it." His false claims and preposterous comparisons of himself to Harvey may be seen in my Pamphlet, p. 24, &c.

+ Miss Collins writes that she has just kept her birth-day in perfect health, for the first time these ten years.

sleep, and then she should have been awakened for an instant to see the wound and sent off again. She ought to have been continually mesmerised at this period, generally or locally, or both ways, and not allowed to suffer between every dressing. Mesmerisation should not have always been delayed till "the pain had acquired a certain degree of intensity." I am sure that with more practice in such cases the medical attendants will agree with me.

I cannot proceed to the next cases without directing the attention of my readers to the striking circumstance that these two French operations have not been performed in Paris, but in a distant province. In Paris, Madame Plantin's breast was removed by M. Jules Cloquet, seventeen years ago, and so satisfactory were the facts that the French Academy of Medicine thus reported upon it. "The committee sees in this case the most evident proof of the suspension of sensibility during sleep-waking, and declares that, though it did not witness the case, they find it so stamped with the character of truth, it has been attested and reported to them by so good an observer who had communicated it to the surgical section, that they do not fear to present it to you as a most unquestionable proof of the state of torpor and stupefaction produced by mesmerism."* Yet amid the abundance of surgical operations performed there and in the great cities of Lyons, Strasburg, &c., daily ever since, not a single attempt that I have heard of has been made to turn mesmerism to the same blessed account-no recollection seems to have existed of the astounding and all important fact with all their great hospitals and everlasting teaching of young men. Even M. Cloquet the operator has been totally lost to it: and been operating for his bread without bestowing one thought upon what he witnessed and was a party to. Of a truth human nature is in many particulars a most sorry nature. The total indif ference of the medical profession to facts most astounding in medical science and most important in medical and surgical treatment of disease shows how much of the savage still remains in what is incorrectly considered civilized man. The stupid indifference of nineteen out of twenty of the profession to the profound character and the mighty importance of the phenomena of mesmerism, even when prevailed upon by me to witness them, and their looking at the phenomena as merely strange, amusing, and funny,† if perchance they do

• Foissac's Rapports et Discussions, &c., p. 400. It is related as perfectly genuine in our Penny Cyclopædia, article Somnambulism.

+ A surgeon in Leicester who makes thousands a year, witnessed some mesmeric phenomena, and all he afterwards said of them was that they were "very funny." Zoist, vol. I., p. 326.

not regard them as sheer imposition, is precisely what occurs among savages who are shewn our arts or a demonstration of our scientific discoveries. Captain Parry tells us that among the Esquimaux was a woman of superior intellect called Iliglink, who absolutely put all the men to shame, as the Lady Mary does to whom we owe the first great surgical operation, the first amputation, in this country, and as the Lady Mary did who forced inoculation upon the English doctors of the last century.

"Of all the wonders they had ever witnessed on board, the welding of two pieces of iron especially excited their admiration, and I never saw Iliglink express so much astonishment at anything before. Even in this her superior good sense was observable, for it was evident that the utility of what she saw going on, was what forced itself upon her mind; and she watched every stroke of the hammer, and each blast of the bellows, with extreme eagerness, while numbers of other Esquimaux looked stupidly on, without expressing the smallest curiosity or interest in the operation, except by desiring to have some spear heads fashioned out by this means.'

How this reminds me of Mr. Wakley, Mr. Liston, Mr. Quain, Dr. A. T. Thomson, and Dr. Sharpey, beholding the exquisite mesmeric phenomena of the two Okeys and my other patients of University College Hospital. It was the four last of these who got up all the opposition to mesmerism at University College; Dr. Sharpey and Mr. Quain being the most active, but in the slyest manner, doing their utmost in privacy with individual members of the council. Those three honest men, Drs. Grant and Lindley and Mr. S. Cooper, took no part in the opposition. The two former have since been more than once to my house to witness mesmerism, such is their interest in it: and the latter wrote to me a month ago that he had always greatly deplored my leaving the college.

Medical men write ardently and carry on fierce controversies about matters important enough, for all science is important, but of infinitely less importance than mesmerism, and of a far lower order in physiology and practice, and never bestow a single thought upon it. They pique themselves upon, and wage war for, originality about the smallest mechanical improvements and the smallest discoveries that require only industrious eyes and no intellect; they make a mighty fuss about the poorest observations in disease and the poorest and most limited fresh method of treatment,-the very thing they make so much pother about ending after a longer or short period most frequently in nothing, proving erroneous, and becoming, like themselves and all their medical clatter, completely forgotten, to make room for successors like themselves.