een phrenology and
mesmerism.

7th. Curative effects.

We believe these categories will include all the leading phenomena of
mesmerism. We purpose to give instances of these, partly derived from
our own experience, and partly from the book of Mr Townshend, or other
the best sources to which we can have recourse; to state fearlessly what
we believe may be true, and what we entirely disbelieve; and then to
examine the arguments by which the reason of the public has been
assailed, and in many cases rendered captive.

First, then, as to the power of induced coma, we will relate an instance
which came under our own observation, and which serves to demonstrate
that a power may be exercised by one human being over another which will
produce a comatose or cataleptic state. In the Christmas week of the
year 1842, we dined at a friend's house with a party of eight, (numeric
perfection for a dinner-party, according to the ingenious author of the
_Original_.) In the evening, Mackay's book on popular delusions being on
the drawing-room table, some one asked if the author had treated of
mesmerism. Upon this, one of the party who had recently returned from
London--a man who had led a studious life, and of a highly nervous
temperament--said he had recently witnessed a mesmeric exhibition, and
would undertake to mesmerise any one present. Upon this, two or three
ladies volunteered as patients; and he commenced experimenting upon a
lady of some twenty-five years old, whom he had known intimately from
childhood, clever, and well read, but rather imaginative. To make the
thing more ridiculous, he knelt on both knees, and commenced making
passes with both hands slowly before her eyes, telling her, whenever she
took her eyes off, to look fixedly at him, and keeping a perfectly grave
face when every body around was laughing unreservedly. After this had
endured for some three minutes, the lady's eyes gradually closed, she
fell forwards, and was only prevented from farther falling by being
caught by the mesmeriser. He shook her, and, in rather a rough manner,
brought her to her senses; then, suspicious lest she had been purposely
deceiving him, questioned her seriously as to whether her sleep were
feigned or real. She assured him that it was not simulated, that the
sensation was irresistible, different from that of ordinary sleep, and
by no means unpleasant; but that the only disagreeable part was the
being roused. Upon this, the g