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HPB-SB-11-291: Difference between revisions
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... | <center>{{Style S-Small capitals| By John E. Purdon, M. B.}}</center> | ||
{{Style S-HPB SB. Continues on|11-292}} | <center>MESMERIC RAPPORT FIRST ESTABLISHED DURING SLEEP.</center> | ||
I shall now give a brief account of some cases of my own where the intervention of a physical machinery of some kind must be allowed, whether involving tensions through which strains were propagated or represented by free motions, complex in character, playing the part of messages between nerve centres, if the description of the cases, for the accuracy of which I vouch, be acknowledged to represent matters of fact. | |||
Ten years ago, when I seriously turned my attention to the subject of mesmerism with the view of reducing its apparent vagaries within the limits of law, the first case upon which I tried an experiment was one which from the beginning gave me a datum sufficiently comprehensive to overthrow a great deal of the foregone conclusion which I had accepted with thousands of the medical profession, namely, that in the case of subjects easily affected with the mesmeric influence, we were only dealing with pure hysterical catalepsy. | |||
An unmarried lady, over thirty years of age, on a visit with my family, then staying at the seaside, had often expressed a wish to be mesmerised, and I, to please her, had promised to do so, putting the operation off from time to time, however, as I knew little or nothing at all about it or its effect. | |||
One afternoon, when she was asleep on the sofa, while I was sitting at the opposite side of the room, the notion came into my head to try the effect of passes and an effort of will in inducing the hypnotic state. In a very short time I saw her mouth twitch in a manner which I afterwards found to be characteristic whenever she was thrown into the same condition as that which speedily resulted from the operation. Believing that the mesmeric influence had been exerted upon her, I beckoned my wife, through the window, to come in and attempt to rouse her. This she entirely failed to do, though she called her loudly and shook her also, if I remember rightly. | |||
I awoke the young woman by making transverse passes on the forehead, and told her that she had been mesmerised while in her sleep, a fact which she would by no means accept, though we were intimate friends. To convince her, I at once caused her to fall into the trance condition again and lifting up the loose sleeve of her dress passed a needle through a fold of skin at the back of the wrist, drawing down the sleeve again so as to hide the needle. When {{Style S-HPB SB. Continues on|11-292}} | |||
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