Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/382

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. n. OCT. is, 1904.

by PEOF. SKEAT (ante, p. 122), that Sulgwyn may be regarded as an expression merely adapted in its sense to the older English name. Similarly, the Old Norse "Hvita- sunnu-dagr," having been introduced from the Anglo-Saxon Mother-Church into Nor- way and Iceland, was displaced in modern Denmark, Norway, and Sweden by Pindse and Pingst^Germ. Pfingsten, derived from ancient Greek Pentekost, as fully explained in Vigfusson's 'Icelandic-Engl. Dictionary' (p. 303). H. KREBS.

PEPYS'S ' DIAEY ': A REFERENCE (10 th S. i. 68). The mother's condition resulted in the expulsion of many hydatidiform moles. This is a form of abortion. MEDIC ULUS.

GEORGE STEINMAN STEINMAN (10 th S. ii. 88). It appears from Waif ordV County Families ' that Mr. Steinman is deceased, as his grand- son, Capt. William Henry Olphert Kemmis, of Ballinacor, co. Wicklow, is described as the " eldest son of Col. William Kemmis, of Bal- linacor, who died 1900, by Ellen Gertrude de Home Christy, dau. of the late George Stein- man Steinman, Esq., F.S.A., of Sundridge, Kent." No doubt, on application, Capt. Kemmis would be able to give ITA TESTOR the information he seeks. D. K. T.

MESMERISM IN THE DARK AGES (10 th S. ii. 168). MR. R. M. LAWRANCE should refer to the ' Encyclopedia Britannica,' vol. xv. p. 277, article 'Magnetism, Animal.' It is there stated :

" It would appear that in all ages diseases were alleged to be affected by the touch of the hand of certain persons who were supposed to communicate a healing virtue to the sufferer. It is also known that among the Chaldaeans, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Hindus, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans, many of the priests effected cures, or threw people into deep sleeps in the shades of the temples, during which the sleeper sometimes had prophetic dreams, and that they otherwise produced effects like those now referred to animal magnetism."

MR. LAWRANCE will find there the litera- ture on this subject. I think I remember reading in the Zoist, edited by Dr. John Elliotson, articles showing the early use of mesmerism. HARRY B. POLAND.

Inner Temple.

RECHABITE at 1 st S. vi. 8 quotes from Apuleius ('Apol.,' 475, Delph. ed.) an early allusion to mesmerism. Beckmann, in his 'History of Inventions' (Bohn, 1846, vol. i. p. 43), has an essay on * Magnetic Cures,' in _ which he remarks that mesmerism, or animal magnetism, having no relation to the magnetism of the magnet, "may form

the subject of a future article." But he does not appear to have given it the attention he intimated, at all events in the work alluded to. Glanvil, in his ' Scepsis Scientifica,' published in 1665, is said to refer to some doctrine analogous to modern mesmerism.

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

The attractive power of the loadstone or magnet is referred to by Aristotle, Homer, and Pliny; it was known to the Chinese and Arabians. The Greeks are said to have ob- tained the loadstone from Magnesia in Asia, 1000 B.C. However, if MR. R. M. LAWRANCE will turn to the * Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and theMadnessof Crowds,' by Charles Mackay, LL.D. (Routledge & Son, 1869), he will find much interesting informa- tion in connexion with the subject in question, under the title of ' The Magrietisers ' (pp. 262 295). HENRY GERALD HOPE.

119, Elms Road, Clapham, S.W.

I had the pleasure of an introduction to Dr. Walford Bodie at Burton-on-Trent on Easter Saturday last, and though I did not hear him make any such statement as the one attributed to him by MR. LAWRANCE, the doctor's assertion at Aberdeen (where he was formerly a medical student) is quite correct. Ample proof of this is given by Ennemoser in the * Annales du Magnetisme Animal,' wherein he says that magnetism was daily practised in the temples of Isis, of Osiris, and Serapis. In these temples the priests treated the sick and cured them, either by magnetic manipu- lation, or by other means producing som- nambulism. We shall prefer (he writes) turning our attention to such Egyptian monuments as present us with the whole scenes of magnetic treatment. Although these Egyptian hieroglyphics are regarded with great daring and boldness, yet much that is probable results, and the more so from the fact that all things in these monuments are not hieroglyphic. There are also purely historical paintings, which represent sacri- fices, religious ceremonies, and other actions, as well as things which refer to the natural history of animals, of plants, and the stars.

Among the emblems he includes the re- markable representation on a mummy case given by Montfaucon. Before a bed or table on which lie the sick stands a person in a brown garment, and with open eyes, and the dog's head of Anubis ; his countenance is turned upon the sick person, his left hand is placed upon the breast, and the right is raised over the head of his patient, quite in the position of a magnetizer. At both ends of the bed stand two female figures, one with