CONCLUSION OF THE ZOIST. "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven."Matt. vii. 21. THE object for which The Zoist was undertaken is attained. That object was neither pecuniary gain nor worldly reputation for loss was nearly certain; contempt, ridicule, virulent abuse, and serious injury, were all inevitable. It was the establishment of truths, splendid, exquisite, extensive in their bearings, and of the highest importance to the moral and corporeal well-being of mankind. During thirteen years, we have amassed fresh facts in Cerebral Physiology and Mesmerism, and presented them in such numbers and with such proofs, that to question them would be absurd: and they are no longer questioned, except by the most ignorant, who will gradually form a smaller minority. We have spared no labour in collecting facts or examining their solidity: we have never quailed under the attacks made upon us in the College of Physicians, in other lectures and addresses, in publications, or in conversation behind our backs, but have stood our ground and fought as became conscientious and fearless men. While thus sup porting truth, we have as earnestly applied ourselves to liberate it from the carelessly made observations of some, the weak and fanciful speculations and dreamings of others, and from that curse of all true natural knowledge and moral progress-superstition-supernatural imaginings-which are excluded from astronomy, chemistry, geology, and other sciences, and ought to be excluded from the physiology of the brain, or, in other words, the intellectual and moral functions of man and other animals, and from mesmerism, both which are but branches of natural knowledge. Very few phrenologists have ever seen Gall's works, and yet the generality of them believe far more than he wrote. We have studied them sentence by sentence, and yet are not satisfied with all that he has advanced, nor with by any means so much of what has been written by Dr. Spurzheim, 442 CONCLUSION OF THE ZOIST. Mr. Combe, and others of inferior note: and trust that we shall induce phrenologists to look more closely into the grounds of their convictions. We have been anxious that the world should discern the fact that all the mental-the moral and intellectual phenomena of man and other animalsare but so many phenomena of the living organ called brain, or other nervous substances, and are subject to all the laws of the functions of all other organs; are inevitable and calculable effects of so many causes acting upon certain combinations of matter in certain circumstances; and that to view them as anything more than phenomena of nervous matter is a childish fancy, which in still more uncivilized times prevailed in the consideration of many of the phenomena of inanimate nature. The terms force, power, principle, have led to so many fancies of peculiar substances or of spirits, that it would be better to speak only of phenomena and matter. We have furnished ample examples of facts in the physiology of the brain of which metaphysicians and physiologists are not aware-facts proving that the term cerebral physiology comprehends more than phrenology, and is not synonymous with it, signifying, as this does, the relation between individual faculties and development of individual portions of the brain. We have shewn that one brain can act silently upon another, one silently sympathize with another in emotion and in impressions communicated by the organs of sensation; that the brain can experience impressions from concealed or distant objects of sight; receive impressions to which we are habitually strangers; and can be impressed with what has passed or is to come. Imagination in the mesmeric or sub-mesmeric state can effect prodigies. Mesmerism has thus thrown a flood of light upon mental philosophy, and we have furnished an abundance of such illustrations. The ZOIST will for ever banish doubts of the reality of many facts in physiology and in disease. Only twelve years ago the whole medical profession scoffed at the possibility of surgical operations being possible without any sensation. The evenings of the 22nd of November and the 13th of December, 1842, will ever be memorable in the annals of medicine and afterwards, when surgeons were overwhelmed CONCLUSION OF THE ZOIST. 413 with mesmeric proofs, they eagerly adopted a new, but frequently injurious, method of accomplishing what they had held in derision and had spurned. We have recorded all the glorious doings of Dr. Esdaile in India, and all the painless operations performed elsewhere up to this hour, so far as we know of them. We have detailed almost endless instances of the great curative powers of mesmerism over diseases apparently very different from each other, and shewn that it is a mighty adjunct to the restorative power of the living frame, to the vis medicatrix nature which always battles against disease, that it soothes and strengthens, and, though not a remedy for every ailment, is likely to be more or less useful, and often strikingly useful, in every case, medical and surgical, general and local, in the young and the old, in the human subject and in the brute creation. We have shewn what cause mankind would have to congratulate themselves if the medical profession would receive it into the mass of means which they hourly, and too often unsatisfactorily and injuriously, employ. We have urged it upon the score of intellect and science, and upon what the profession disregard in the matter of mesmerism,-upon the score of humanity and conscientiousness. To say nothing of the cures, we may fairly express surprise that the common fact of pain being drawn lower and lower by the passes; of local insensibility and rigidity being produced by them, and removed by other processes; of diseases not infectious being communicated, and as it were transferred, from the patient to the mesmeriser (who, however, can easily be liberated from it); of susceptibility of peculiar effects in the mesmeric state from metals and other substances,-do not attract the condescension of a second thought or look from the profession. We have forced attention to singular nervous diseases disregarded by medical men, though occasionally recorded. Examples of clairvoyance abound in all the volumes. But, though this phenomenon appears unquestionable, we well know that gross imposition is hourly practised in regard to it by both professional clairvoyants and private individuals considered to be trustworthy but influenced by vanity and wickedness. The assertions of a clairvoyant may be heard, but should be 444 CONCLUSION OF THE ZOIST. believed in scarcely one instance out of a hundred-nor indeed ever believed unless they are free from the possibility of lucky guess or trickery and are verified by ascertainment of the facts. A host of clairvoyants are impostors, and no money should be paid to a clairvoyant unless on the understanding that he or she cannot guarantee you a true clairvoyance; for even in the genuine the power is uncertain. We have also to regret that some mesmerisers are impostors, pretending to superior power and knowledge which they do not possess, talking, flourishing, and perhaps pouring forth religious sentences, and cruelly making pecuniary victims of their patients. But let society remember that quackery pervades all professions and all occupations: that there are many professional mesmerisers who forego a portion, or even the whole, of their just remuneration from those who are poorly off: and that many persons mesmerise silently, modestly, and assiduously without any recompense. The practice of mesmerism tends greatly to heighten sympathy with our suffering fellow-creatures and is a source of true happiness to conscientious mesmerisers. We have presented satisfactory proofs that mesmeric phenomena, though they may be produced artificially, may all occur without artificial means, and are due to a peculiar condition, of which we are as ignorant as of the true nature of gravitation, electricity, heat, light, &c. We can only observe phenomena, and ascertain to what they are or are not owing. We have proved that mesmeric phenomena are independent of imagination, suggestion, fixed ideas, &c., though every mesmerist should be aware that imagination often plays a powerful part in mesmeric phenomena, and has thus proved a stumbling-block to investigators from the time of the first commission of enquiry in Paris in the last century to the present hour. Were the ZOIST continued longer it would be replete with useless repetitions of facts; it would be too large to be purchased and too extensive to be useful. It must be regarded as a complete work which has come out in fifty-two numbers, one for every week in the year, though the issue has been slower. It is a rich store, and will be a solid work of reference for years to come. London, December 31, 1855. |