NOTICES OF BOOKS.

Mesmerism, Spiritualism, &c., Historically and Scientifically Considered. Being Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution, with Preface and Appendix. By WILLIAM B. CARPENTER, C.B., M.D., F.R.S., &c., &c. London: Long

mans, Green, and Co., 1877.

THE two lectures which Dr. Carpenter gave last year at the London Institution were generally reported by the press and led to some controversy. They were then published in Fraser's Magazine; and they are now re-published with what are considered to be piéces justificatives in an appendix. We may therefore fairly assume that the author has here said his best on the subject that he has carefully considered his facts and his arguments and that he can give, in his own opinion at least, good reasons for omitting to notice certain matters which seem essential to a fair and impartial review of the whole question.

Dr. Carpenter enjoys the great advantage, which he well knows how to profit by, of being on the popular side, and of having been long before the public as an expounder of popular and educational science. Everything he writes is widely read; and his reiterated assurances that nobody's opinion and nobody's evidence on this particular subject is of the least value unless they have had a certain special early training (of which, it is pretty generally understood, Dr. Carpenter is one of the few living representatives) have convinced many people that what he tells them must be true and should therefore settle the whole matter. He has another advantage in the immense extent and complexity of the subject and the widely scattered and controversial nature of its literature. By ranging over this wide field and picking here and there a fact to support his views and a statement to damage his opponents, Dr. Carpenter has rendered it almost impossible to answer him on every point, without an amount of detail and research that would be repulsive to ordinary readers. It is necessary therefore to confine ourselves to the more important questions, where the facts are tolerably accessible and the matter can be brought to a definite issue; though, if space permitted, there is hardly a page of the book in which we should not find expressions calling for strong animadversion, as, for example, the unfounded and totally false general assertion at p. 6, that "believers in spiritualism make it a reproach against men of science that they entertain a prepossession in favour of the ascertained and universally admitted laws of nature." Vague general assertions of this kind, without a particle of proof offered or which can be offered, are alone suffi.

cient to destroy the judicial or scientific claims of the work; but we have no intention of wasting space in further comment upon them.

Dr. Carpenter lays especial stress on his character of historian. and man of science in relation to this enquiry. He parades this assumption in his title page and at the very commencement of his preface. He claims therefore to review the case as a judge, giving full weight to the evidence on both sides, and pronouncing an impartial and well-considered judgment. He may, indeed, believe that he has thus acted-for dominant ideas are very powerful-but any one tolerably acquainted with the literature and history of these subjects for the last thirty years, will most assuredly look upon this book as the work of an advocate rather than of a judge. In place of the impartial summary of the historian he will find the one-sided narrative of a partisan; and, instead of the careful weighing of fact and experiment characteristic of the man of science, he will find loose and inaccurate statements, and negative results set up as conclusive against positive evidence. We will now proceed to demonstrate the truth of this grave accusation, and shall in every case refer to the authorities by means of which our statements can be tested. The first example of Dr. Carpenter's "historical" mode of treating his subject which we shall adduce, is his account (pp. 13 to 15) of the rise of mesmerism in this country owing to the successful performance of many surgical operations without pain during the mesmeric trance. Dr. Carpenter writes of this as not only an admitted fact, but (so far as any word in his pages shows), as a fact which was admitted from the first, and which never went through that ordeal of denial, misrepresentation, and abuse by medical men and physiologists that other phenomena are still undergoing from a similar class of men. Yet Dr. Carpenter was in the thick of the fight and must know all about it. He must know that the greatest surgical and physiological authorities of that day-Sir Benjamin Brodie and Dr. Marshall Hall-opposed it with all the weight of their influence, accused the patients of imposture, or asserted that they might be "naturally insensible to pain," and spoke of the experiments of Dr. Elliotson and others as "trumpery," and as "polluting the temple of science." He must know, too, that Dr. Marshall Hall professed to demonstrate "physiologically" that the patients were impostors, because certain reflex-actions of the limbs which he declared ought to have occurred during the operations did not occur. The medical periodicals of the day were full of this, and a good summary may be found in Dr. Elliotson's "Surgical Operations without Pain, &c.," London, 1843. Dr. Carpenter tells us how his friends, Dr. Noble and Sir John Forbes, in 1845 accepted and wrote in favour of the reality of the facts; but it was hardly "historical" to tell us this as the whole truth, when, for several years previously, the most violent controversy, abuse, and even

persecution, had raged on this very matter. Great physiological authorities were egregiously in the wrong then, and the natural inference to those who know the facts is, that other physiological authorities who now deny equally well attested facts may be no more infallible than their predecessors.

Dr. Carpenter persistently denies that there is any adequate evidence of the personal influence of the mesmeriser on the patient independent of the patient's knowledge and expectation, and he believes himself to be very strong in the cases he adduces, in which this power has been tested and failed. But he quite ignores the fact that all who have ever investigated the higher phases of mesmerism-such as influence at a distance, community of sensation, transference of the senses, or true clairvoyance-agree in maintaining that these phenomena are very uncertain, depending greatly on the state of body and mind of the patient, who is exceedingly susceptible to mental impressions, the presence of strangers, fatigue, or any unusual conditions. Failures continually occur, even when the mesmeriser and patient are alone or when only intimate friends are present; how, then, can the negative fact of a failure before strangers and antagonists prove anything? Dr. Carpenter also occupies his readers' attention with accounts of hearsay stories which have turned out exaggerated or incorrect, and lays great stress on the "disposition to overlook sources of fallacy," and to be "imposed on by cunning cheats" which this shows. This may be admitted; but it evidently has no bearing on well-authenticated and carefully observed facts, perfectly known to every student of the subject. Our author maintains, however, that such facts do not exist, and that "the evidence for these higher marvels has invariably broken down when submitted to the searching tests of trained experts." Here the question arises, who are "trained experts?" Dr. Carpenter would maintain that only sceptical medical men and professed conjurors deserve that epithet, however ignorant they may be of all the conditions requisite for the study of these delicate and fluctuating phenomena of the nervous system. But we, on the contrary, would only give that name to enquirers who have experimented for months or years on this very subject, and are thoroughly acquainted with all its difficulties. When such men are also physiologists it is hardly consistent with the historical and scientific method of enquiry to pass their evidence by in silence. I have already called Dr. Carpenter's attention to the case of the lady residing in Professor Gregory's own house, who was mesmerised at several streets distance by Mr. Lewis without her knowledge or expectation. This is a piece of direct evidence of a very satisfactory kind, and outweighs a very large quantity of negative evidence; but no mention is made of it except the following utterly unjustifiable remark:"His (Mr. Lewis's) utter failure under the scrutiny of sceptical enquirers, obviously discredits all his previous statements, except

to such as (like Mr. A. R. Wallace, who has recently expressed his full faith in Mr. Lewis's self asserted powers) are ready to accept without question the slenderest evidence of the greatest marvels." ("Mesmerism, Spiritualism, &c.," p. 24.) Now will it be believed that this statement, that I "place full faith in Mr. Lewis's self-asserted powers," has not even the shadow of a foundation. I know nothing of Mr. Lewis or of his powers, self-asserted or otherwise, but what I gain from Prof. Gregory's account of them; and in my letter to the "Daily News," immediately after the delivery of Dr. Carpenter's lectures, I referred to this account. I certainly have "full faith" in Professor Gregory's very careful narrative of a fact entirely within his own knowledge. This may be "the slenderest evidence" to Dr. Carpenter, but slender or not he chooses to evade it, and endeavours to make the public believe that I and others accept the unsupported assertions of an unknown man. It is impossible adequately to characterise such reckless accusations as this without using language which I should not wish to use. Let us pass on, therefore, to the evidence which Dr. Carpenter declares to be fitly described as "the slenderest." M. Dupotet, at the Hotel de Dieu, in Paris, put a patient to sleep when behind a partition, in the presence of M. Husson and M. Recamier, the latter a complete sceptic. M. Recamier expressed a doubt that the circumstances might produce expectation in the patient, and himself proposed an experiment the next day, in which all the same conditions should be observed, except that M.. Dupotet should not come at all till half an hour later. He anticipated that the "expectation" would be still stronger the second time than at first, and that the patient would be mesmerised. But the result was quite the reverse. Notwithstanding every minute detail was repeated as on the previous day when the operator was in the next room, the patient showed no signs whatever of sleep either natural or somnambulic (Teste's "Animal Magnetism," Spillan's Translation, p. 159). The Commission appointed by the Academie Royale de Medicine in 1826 sat for five years and investigated the whole subject of animal magnetism. It was wholly composed of medical men, and in their elaborate report, after giving numerous cases, the following is one of their conclusions:

"14. We are satisfied that it (magnetic sleep) has been excited under circumstances where those magnetised could not see, and were entirely ignorant of the means employed to occasion it."

These were surely "trained experts;" yet they declare themselves satisfied of that, the evidence for which, Dr. Carpenter says, has always broken down when tested.

Baron Reichenbach's researches are next discussed, and are coolly dismissed with the remark that "it at once became apparent to experienced physicians, that the whole phenomena were subjective, and that 'sensitives' like Von Reichenbach's can

feel, see, or smell anything they were led to believe they would feel, see, or smell." His evidence for this is, that Mr. Braid could make his subjects do so, and that Dr. Carpenter had seen him do it. One of them, for instance,—an intellectual and able Manchester gentleman,-"could be brought to see flames issuing from the poles of a magnet of any form or colour that Mr. Braid chose to name." All this belongs to the mere rudiments of mesmerism and is known to every operator. Two things, however, are essential-the patient or sensitive must be, or have been, mesmerised, or electro-biologised as it is commonly called, and the suggestion must be actually made. Given these two conditions and no doubt twenty persons may be made to declare that they see green flames issuing from the operator's mouth; but no single case has been adduced of persons in ordinary health, not subject to any operation of mesmerism, &c., being all caused to see this or any other thing in agreement, by being merely brought into a dark room and asked to describe accurately what they saw. Yet this is what Von Reichenbach did, and much more. For, in order to confirm the evidence of the "sensitives" first experimented on, he invited a large number of his friends and other persons in Vienna to come to his dark room, and the result was that about sixty persons of various ages and conditions saw and described exactly the same phenomena. Among these were a number of literary, official, and scientific men and their families, persons of a status fully equal to that of Dr. Carpenter and the Fellows of the Royal Society-such as Dr. Nied, a physician; Professor Endlicher, director of the Imperial Botanic Garden; Chevalier Hubert von Rainer, barrister; Mr. Karl Schuh, physicist; Dr. Ragsky, Professor of Chemistry; Mr. Franz Kollar and Dr. Diesing, Curators in the Imperial Natural History Museum, and many others. There was also an artist, Mr. Gustav Anschütz, who could see the flames, and drew them in their various forms and combinations. Does Dr. Carpenter really ask his readers to believe that his explanation applies to these gentlemen? That they all quietly submitted to be told what they were to see, submissively said they saw it, and allowed the fact to be published at the time, without a word of protest on their part from that day to this? But a little examination of the reports of their evidence shows that they did not follow each other like a flock of sheep, but that each had an individuality of perceptive power, some seeing one kind of flame better than another; while the variety of combinations of magnets submitted to them, rendered anything like suggestion as to what they were to see quite impossible, unless it were a deliberate and wilful imposture on the part of Baron von Reichenbach.

But again, Dr. Carpenter objects to the want of tests, and especially his pet test of using an electro-magnet, and not letting the patients know whether the electric circuit which "makes and "unmakes" the magnet was complete or broken. How