TO THE SICK IN BODY AND MIND
Dr. Q. has been induced by the great number of cases which have come under his care within the last twelve years, to devote his time to the cure of diseases. His success in the art of healing without the aid of medicine has encouraged many persons who have been suffering from sickness of long standing to call and see him for themselves. This has given him a very great advantage over the old mode of practice, and has given him a good chance to see how the mind affects the body. He makes no pretension to any superior power over ordinary men, nor claims to be a seventh son, nor a son of the seventh son, but a common every-day man.
He contends there is a principle or inward man that governs the outward man or body, and when these are at variance or out of tune, disease is the effect, while by harmonizing them health of the body is the result. He believes this can be brought about by sympathy, and all persons who are sick are in need of this sympathy.
To the well these remarks will not apply, for the well need no physician.[1] By these remarks I mean a well person does not know the feelings of the sick, but the sick alone are their own judges, and to every feeling is attached a peculiar state of mind which is peculiar to it. These states of mind are the person's spiritual identity, and this I claim to see and feel myself.
When there is discord in these two principles, or inward and outward man, it seems to me that the outward man or body conveys to me the trouble, the same as one man communicates to his friend any trouble that is weighing him down. Now all I claim is this, to put myself into communication with these principles of inward and outward man, and act as a mediator between these two principles of soul and body; and when I am in communication with the patient, I feel all his pains and his state of mind, and I find that by bringing his spirit back to harmonize with the body he feels better.
The great trouble with mankind is this, they are spiritually sick, and the remedies they apply only serve to make them worse. The invention of disease, like the invention of fashion, has almost upset the whole community. If physicians would investigate mind a little more and medicine a little less, they would be of some service; but this inventing disease is like inventing laws: instead of helping man, they make him worse. Diseases are like fashions, and people are as apt to take a new disease as they are to fall in with any new fashion. Now if there was a law made to punish any person who should through any medical journal communicate to the people any new disease and its symptoms, it would put a stop to a great deal of sickness. Seven cases out of ten throughout the whole community of old chronic cases are the effects of false impressions produced by medical men, giving to the people the idea they have spinal disease, or heart or kidney or liver disease, or forty others that I could name, to say nothing of the number of nervous diseases.
Now all of these ideas thrown into the community are like so many foolish fashions which the people are humbugged by. I do not dispute but that any of these diseases may be brought about through the operation of the mind, but I do say if there was no name given to disease, nor its symptoms, there would not be one-tenth of the sickness there is at this day. I have taken people who have been sick with all of the above diseases, as they thought, and by describing their symptoms and state of mind without their telling me what the trouble was, and they have recovered immediately. A person sick is like a person in a strange land, without money or friends. Now there may be some one near by who would be glad to receive such persons, but they are ignorant of them. The sick are not in communication with themselves, nor any one else—they feel as though no person could tell them how they feel.[2]
SPIRITUALISM AND MESMERISM
How does spiritualism differ from mesmerism? The word mesmerism embraces all the phenomena that ever were claimed by any intelligent spiritualists. The spiritualists claim that they get knowledge from the dead through living mediums.
Do not mesmerisers do this? Surely. Then what is the difference? In the ignorance of the people.
I will give some facts which have come under my own observation. When I first commenced mesmerising about sixteen years ago, the most of my experiments were of the following kind: after getting my subject in a mesmerised state I would try some simple experiment, for instance, imagine some person or animal which he would describe. I would then put him in communication with some person of the company, and let that person carry him to some place which he would describe. In these experiments it would often happen that he would get intelligence from some person of whom the company knew nothing. At other times the audience would like to have me send him after some one's lost friend. This I used to do but tried to make them understand that it was the reflection of their own thoughts.
In these experiments I had an opportunity to see and hear the different opinions and beliefs of mankind in regard to whether he really saw the person that he would describe or not. I found that my own opinion could have but little effect upon the mind of the audience. Their religious opinions would govern in most all cases. Sometimes when the experiments would embrace the friend of an infidel I would confuse him some; but I found that all persons were inclined to believe just about as their religious opinions were. I also found that my subject's religious opinions were just about like the person's opinions that he was in communication with.
If they professed religion to the world and were a hypocrite at heart, the subject would find it out, and the same was true of the subject. I had one subject who was very religious when awake, but when asleep was just the opposite.
I will here relate an experiment when on the Kennebec I had my subject in the sleep. I then requested any of the company to bring me the name of any individual dead or alive, and the subject would find him. A name was accordingly handed me. I passed it to the subject. He took the paper on which the name was written and read the name aloud. At this time the subject was blindfolded so that it was impossible for him to see with his natural eyes. I then told him to find the person. I will relate his own story.
He said, “This is a man.” “Well,” said I, “find him and talk with him.” In a short time he said, “I have found him.” I asked, “What does he say?” He answered, “He was a married man, had a wife and three children, was a joiner by trade; left his tool chest in a barn, and left between two days, went to Boston, stopped a time, left for the state of New York, worked there for three years, and then died; has been dead three years.”
I told him to bring him here and describe him. He went on to give a general description of a man, and I told him that if there was anything peculiar in his appearance that differed from all others to describe it. “Well,” said he, “there is one thing in which he differs from any one else in the room. He has a hair lip.” This was the fact.
Now as there was no knowledge among the people of the principle by which this was done, the people were left to their own judgment. So I left them arguing, some trying to prove it was the man's spirit, some calling it humbug and collusion. Others went away and told what they saw and heard.
This kind of experiment I was trying almost every day for over four years.
I then became a medium myself, but not like my subject. I retained my own consciousness and at the same time took the feelings of my patient. Thus I was able to unlock the secret which has been a mystery for ages to mankind. I found that I had the power of not only feeling their aches and pains, but the state of their mind. I discovered that ideas took form and the patient was affected just according to the impression contained in the idea. For example, if a person lost a friend at sea the shock upon their nervous system would disturb the fluids of their body and create around them a vapor, and in that are all their ideas, right or wrong. This vapor or fluid contains the identity of the person.
Now when I sit down by a diseased person I see the spiritual form, in this cloud, like a person driven out of his house. They sometimes appear very much frightened, which is almost always the case with insane persons. I show no disposition to disturb them, and at the last they approach me cautiously, and if I can govern my own