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ch is disengaged, sometimes by the effect of certain crises, sometimes by the power of magnetism itself. Those who systematically keep up this hiatus in the study of human physiology are the best allies of the superstitions they profess to combat.... Suppose that study seriously undertaken, with what precision should we resolve the problem of which now we can but indicate the solution! Habituated to the wonders of the nervous fluid, knowing that it can raise, at a distance, inert objects, that it can biologize, that it can communicate suppleness or rigidity, the highest development of the senses or absolute insensibility, we should not be greatly surprised to discover that it communicates also, in certain cases, elasticity and that degree of impenetrability which characterizes gum-elastic."[54] De Gasparin further explains his theory in the following passage:--"The great difficulty is not to explain the perversion of sensibility exhibited by the convulsionists. Aside from that question, does it not remain incomprehensible that feeble women should have received, without being a hundred times crushed to pieces, the frightful blows of which we have spoken? How can we explain such a power of resistance? A very small change, operated by the nervous fluid, would suffice to render the matter very simple. Let us suppose the skin and fibres of the convulsionists to acquire, in virtue of their peculiar state of excitement, a consistency analogous to that of gum-elastic; then all the facts that astonish us would become as natural as possible. With convulsionists of gum-elastic,[55] or, rather, whose bony framework was covered with muscles and tissues of gum-elastic, what would happen?" He then proceeds to admit that "a vigorous thrust with a rapier, or stroke with a sabre, as such thrusts and strokes are usually dealt, would doubtless penetrate such an envelope"; but, he alleges, the St.-Medard convulsionists never, in a single instance, permitted such thrusts or strokes, with rapier or sabre, to be given; prudently restricting themselves to pressure only, exerted after the sword-point had been placed against the body. He reminds us, further, that neither razors nor pistol-balls, both of which would penetrate gum-elastic, were ever tried on the convulsionists; and he adds,--"Neither flint stones nor andirons nor clubs nor swords and spits, pressed against it, would have broken the surface of the gum-elastic envelope. They would
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