HYPNOTISM-MESMERISM
SCIENCE TAKES A STEP
The encyclopaedias are not yet out of print which have classed
mesmerism among the foolish supersitions of the ignorant played
upon for profit by the quick-witted imposter, nor are the learned
doctores dead who have published articles in support of the encyclopaedias;
yet today the most eminent physicians in Europe declare that
Mesmer was right and that mesmerism is not a superstitions, but
that it is necessary for reputations to adopt a new name, -so
mesmerism is rechristened Hypnotism. In this way those doctors
who laughed at and derided what has long been know to the common
people may now learnedly discuss phenomena which some years ago
they ignored under its old name. In the March number of Scribner
Dr. William James writes upon this subject under the name
of the "Hidden Self," and the April Forum admits
an article by the eminent Dr. Charcot upon "Hypnotism and
Crime."
This step, though taken late, is in the right direction. But
the eminent physicians who make this advance cannot claim to
be the leaders of the people, for the latter have for generations
known quite as much about the matter as the licensed practitioners,
except that they use no high-sounding name to call it by. It
is well known to many members of the Theosophical Society that
there are perhaps thousands of people in the United States who
forty years ago pursued the same investigations and made similar
experiments to those of Dr. Charcot and others. In the year 1850
a certain Dr. J.B. Dods gave lectures about the country and taught
what he called Electrical Psychology. This was then so
well known that it attracted the attention of certain U.S. Senators,
among them, Daniel Webster, John P. Hale, Theodore Rush, Sam
Houston, Henry Clay, and others, who invited Dr. Dods to lecture
before them in Washington. He delivered his lecture, went on
with his experiments, and published a series of Lectures upon
the subject. In these are to be found, together with other things,
the directions so loudly proclaimed and appropriated now by physicians
who would have hooted at Dr. Dods. And even on the point of the
necessity of precaution and of keeping hypnotism out of the hands
of unprincipled persons, Dods was not silent. In 1850 he said
in his Introduction that, although he had taught more than one
thousand individuals whom he had put under solemn pledge not
to reveal his methods to impure and immoral persons, yet some
were so unprincipled as to violate their pledge and hawk the
"science" about everywhere.
Dr. Charcot in the April Forum pleads for legislation
that will prevent just such unprincipled persons from dealing
with subjects, not solely on the ground that crime may be easily
and safely committed with the aid of hypnotism, but rather that
sensitive persons may be protected from the recurrence of hysteria
or catalepsy, and ventures the opinion that crime will probably
not find any aid or safeguard in hypnotism. While we thoroughly
agree with Dr. Charcot as to the need for placing safeguards
around this budding science, it is from a conviction that crime
can be aided and hidden by the use of such a practice, and is
today thus aided and hidden. We do not care to commit hypnotism
solely to the doctors, as he asks, just for their sake, but we
would wish to place restrictions upon even those gentlemen, and
to limit the number of them who may be allowed to use it.
The chief value to the Theosophist of this new step of the
schools, is not, however, in the likelihood that rules and methods
may be published, but that before long time the erstwhile materialist
who can be convinced of a fact only when an Academy endorses
it will be the more easily convinced that there is a soul. In
the March Scribner article above spoken of, we have a
public admission that the facts of hypnotism prove a Hidden Self.
Dr. Charcot does not go as far as this, but the variety and peculiarly
occult character of numerous facts daily brought to light by
other investigators will raise such a mountain of proof that
hardly any one will be able to overcome it or deny its weight.
Once they begin to admit a Hidden Self,-using, indeed, the very
words long adopted by many Theosophists and constantly found
in the ancient Upanishads, they allow the entering wedge. And
so not long to wait have we for the fulfillment of the predictions
of H.P. Blavatsky made in Isis Unveiled and repeated in
the Secret Doctrine, "...and dead facts and events
deliberately drowned in the sea of modern scepticism will ascend
once more and reappear upon the surface."
RODRIQUEZ UNDIANO
Path, May, 1890
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