Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/633

Rh objective state induced by a supposed fluid, or force, or influence, then and now known as animal magnetism.

In order to be able always to guard effectively and absolutely against these two sources of error that I have thus far specified, just two things are necessary for the experimenter:

1. A general knowledge of the phenomena of the involuntary life, including both the action of mind on body and of body on mind, in health and in disease, and especially of the real nature and philosophy of trance, the state in which the involuntary life culminates.

2. The subject experimented on must always be deceived in the experiments in such a way that this involuntary action of his mind or body can not come in and destroy the experiment. The subject may be successfully deceived in three different ways, which I shall presently specify.

Burq, Charcot, Westphal, and their coadjutors in the now well-known metalloscopy experiments, failed on both of these points. Many of the critics of those experiments, as Althaus, Reynolds, and other physicians in England, also failed to comprehend these points, hence the inconsistency and unsatisfactoriness of the discussions to which these experiments gave rise. The claim of Burq and Charcot and Westphal in regard to the temporary relief of hysterical and sometimes of organic anaesthesia by the local application of metals might be entirely true, but thus far they have failed, in a scientific sense, to prove it to be true. I do not deny their results—indeed, there is a possibility that some of them may be genuine—although in my own experience with the same method I fail to confirm their claims; it is in the manner in which the experiments were conducted, without regard to the results, that the non-expertness of these experimenters appeared. The criticism I have to make on Charcot is that, in his elaborate lectures on this subject, he nowhere gives evidence of a full appreciation of the power of the involuntary life, particularly in hysterical conditions, or of the true and only method of systematically and successfully guarding against it. The experiments now going on under the same superintendence in the hospital of Salpêtrière with mesmeric trance, and with the effects of magnets and lights on catalepsy and kindred conditions, are all open to the same criticism.

If some savage fresh from the jungles were put on board of an engine, and told how to open the valves, he might very naturally infer that his own feeble strength caused the train to move; in like manner, scientific experimenters with living human beings attribute the phenomena that follow the application of metals and magnets and passes and flummeries solely to the objective influence of these appliances, whereas in truth these and similar performances but serve to let on the potent forces of the subject's own mind. The mistake of these philosophers is indeed quite analogous to that of the little boy who,