Legend
Can the Use of Anesthetics Demonstrate the Existence of the Soul?
In the year 1800, Humphry Davy, then twenty-two years of age, suggested that the inhalation of nitrous-oxide gas might be used in surgical operations as a means of preventing pain; but it was not until 1844 that Mr. Horace Wells, a dentist residing at Hartford, Connecticut, used it in extricating teeth, and thus demonstrated the truth of Humphry Davy’s conjecture.
In the year 1846 Dr. Morton, of Boston, U.S., demonstrated for the first time that the severest surgical operations could be performed without pain under the inhalation of the vapour of sulphuric ether. Lastly, Sir James Simpson, of Edinburgh, introduced the beneficent use of chloroform in the labours of child-bed.
Anæsthetics having thus conferred on poor suffering humanity the inestimable blessing of painless surgery, I ask with reverence and hope: Are anæsthetics not yet destined to confer on the human race the infinitely greater boon of scientifically demonstrating the existence, free from the body, of the human soul?
It is true that the vast majority of human beings do instinctively believe in the existence of the human soul; and this is of all arguments the strangest, because any spiritual belief, which is all but universal in the human mind, must be regarded as an instinctive revelation in harmony with the nature of man, and therefore true; and when, further, this instinct is found to increase the happiness and welfare of the human race, the proof to me seems absolute, because no falsehood can produce ultimate good.
There are, however, among the scientific minds of the present day, an ever-increasing number of thoughtful, truthful, and benevolent men, who doubt or deny that there exists any entity or ego apart from the body, and these men assert that when the bodily organisation dies the man himself, so far as evidence goes, becomes extinct.
Let us then inquire whether or not this materialistic assertion is true, or whether the use of anæsthetics cannot demonstrate that this assertion of unbelief is contrary to fact.
It has been long known that persons who have been all but drowned, so as to appear actually dead, but who—it may be after hours of restorative labour— have been restored to consciousness, have sometimes declared that the process of drowning, after the first struggle, was not agonising, but actually pleasurable.
These individuals have sometimes said that the entire history of their lives flashed before them as if photographed instantaneously, and that then they have seemed to ascend to heavenly regions and celestial felicity.
Again, many of those who have inhaled nitrous-oxide, which produces asphyxia exactly analagous to that of drowning, have expressed their enjoyment of like happiness, even as their teeth were being extracted.
The same results have often followed the use of chloroform; and I myself, some six years ago, on one occasion, while inhaling chloroform as a relief to the agony of passing a small calculus, suddenly, to my surprise, found my ego, or soul, or reasoning faculty, clothed, and in the form of my body, standing about two yards outside my body, and contemplating that body as it lay motionless on the bed.
This startling discovery was to me most significant, and I have mentioned the fact to many others since.
Yesterday, becoming suddenly awakened to the important signification of this experience, I called on three medical men who had very large experience in the giving of anæsthetics.
In reply to my question, one gentleman said, “I can quite believe your assertion, as I have often heard patients express a similar idea, although in a confused way.” Another gentleman said, “He had himself on those occasions taken chloroform, and on each occasion he found himself, as it were, pleasantly whirling and soaring in the air;” and the third gentleman said, “My patients have often said that under my operations they felt no pain, but saw all I was doing like spectators looking on and watching the operations.”
In connection with these facts concerning drowning and anæsthetics, I will here draw attention to what are called mesmeric experiments.
I have, during the last forty years, witnessed many mesmeric experiments, and I have found that certain individuals, while their minds have been concentrated on a point and their breathing has become slower and slower, have passed into trance more or less profound, and while in this state it is well known from the evidence of Dr. Esdaile, of Calcutta, and others, that the several surgical operations have been performed not only without pain, but while the patient has at the same time passed into ecstatic joys.
The history of ecstatic martyrs has furnished additional evidence in this direction.
Thus we find in mesmeric trance a condition of things exactly analagous to what we sometimes find during the administration of anæsthetics.
Lastly, those who have studied Oriental Theosophy know that there is an order of Hindu Ascetics who, living lives of fasting, contemplation, and prayer, can so discipline their bodies as by practice to retain the breath until they become asphyxiated.
They assert that thus they can project their souls from the body, and, becoming entranced, ascend to God.
The Romish saints, without exactly practising the same method, so far as the breath is concerned, also became entranced, and, “ascending to heaven, unite their souls with the Lord.”
Now all this is one.
Whether by drowning, asphyxiating gases, mesmeric asphyxia, or “internal breathing,” or the self-imposed asphyxia of the Hindu Ascetics, or the entrancements of the ecstatic saints, the modus operands is analogous and the result identical, namely, the temporary death of the body, and thus, the temporary freeing of the soul. As St. Paul says, “Dead in the body, but alive in the spirit.”
This asphyxia is dangerous if pushed too far by the operation of medicinal substances; but in the entrancement produced by mesmerism or ecstasy, the condition may exist for hours, days, or even weeks, while the ecstatic declares on his return to earth-consciousness that he has in spirit outside his body <... continues on page 10-152 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ Can the Use of Anesthetics Demonstrate the Existence of the Soul? by Wild, George, London Spiritualist, No. 383, December 26, 1879, pp. 307-8
Sources
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London Spiritualist, No. 383, December 26, 1879, pp. 307-8