Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/826

808 few only of those who can be mesmerized can be made to pass into a condition of complete anæsthesia. It is possible, however, that this may be due to the passes which give rise to inhibitory impulses not being continued long enough. Dr. Esdaile, who in India was accustomed to mesmerize his patients before performing surgical operations upon them, used to continue the passes for one to two hours, and often to repeat this for several days in succession.

In different people the order in which different centers are inhibited varies, as we should expect, from the unequal development of different centers in different people. This is no doubt of influence in determining whether the general state is cataleptic, somnambulistic, or lethargic, and here probably the method used to mesmerize is also of considerable importance; it would seem that the cataleptic condition is more likely to be developed when the process of mesmerization involves a strain on the eyes of the subject than when he is mesmerized by passes. Not much attention, however, has as yet been directed to this point.

There can, I think, be no doubt that mesmerism may help, and sometimes cure, persons suffering from certain diseases of the nervous system. It is not in our power to make any accurate statement of the way in which this is brought about; but, since disease may be the result of either an over-activity or of an under-activity of any part of the central nervous system, it is reasonable to suppose that a beneficial effect will follow the employment of a method which allows us to diminish or increase these activities as we will. This is a side of the question which is of the greatest interest both to physicians and to physiologists—to physiologists, since it bears directly upon the problem of the influence of the nervous system on nutrition. There is good reason to believe that, by directing attention strongly to any particular part of the body, the nutritive state of that part of the body may be altered. The determination of the actual way in which this is brought about is full of difficulties, but the following way is at least theoretically possible: It may be that the nerve-centers connected with the tissue in question are made unusually active, and that they send out nerve-impulses of a trophic nature, that is, impulses which directly control the nutrition of the tissue. The alteration in the tissue caused by its changed nutritive state—its changed metabolism—may conceivably be either beneficial or detrimental to the whole organism; it may give rise to a diseased state, or get rid of an existing one.

The modern miracles of healing, wrought in persons in a state of religious enthusiasm, offer a field for investigating this problem; the field, however, is a particularly bad one, and chiefly because so many people concerned regard any careful examination of the subject as impious. But in mesmerized persons it seems probable that such investigations could be made on a fairly satisfactory basis. Men when mesmerized gradually lose remembrance of those things which they remember when they are awake, but not infrequently other things are