BUCHANAN'S. JOURNAL OF MAN
Many Authors
BUCHANAN'S
JOURNAL OF MAN.
VOL. I. NOVEMBER, 1887. NO. 10.
CONTENTS OF JOURNAL OF MAN.
The Slow Triumph of Truth
Old Industrial Education
An Incomparable "Medical Outlaw"
Educational.--Educational Reform in England; Dead Languages
Vanishing; Higher Education of Women; Bad Sunday-School Books;
Our Barbarous Orthography
Critical.--European Barbarism; Boston Civilization; Monopoly;
Woman's Drudgery; Christian Civilization; Walt Whitman;
Temperance
Scientific.--Extension of Astronomy; A New Basis for Chemistry;
Chloroform in Hydrophobia; The Water Question; Progress of
Homoeopathy; Round the World Quickly
Glances Round the World (concluded from August)
Rectification of Cerebral Science (illustrated)
THE SLOW TRIUMPH OF TRUTH.
THE JOURNAL OF MAN does not fear to perform its duty and use plain
language in reference to the obstructionists who hinder the acceptance
of demonstrable sciences and prevent all fair investigation, while
they occupy positions of influence and control in all collegiate
institutions.
It is not in scorn or bitterness that we should speak of this erring
class, a large number of whom are the victims of mis-education--of the
hereditary policy of the colleges, which is almost as difficult to
change as a national church, or a national despotism. The young men
who enter the maelstrom of college life are generally borne along as
helpless as rowing boats in a whirlpool. It is impossible for even the
strongest minds to be exposed for years, surrounded by the
contaminating influence of falsehood, and come forth uninjured. But
while we pity the victims of medical colleges and old-fashioned
universities, let us seek for our young friends institutions that have
imbibed the spirit of the present age.
Man is essentially a spiritual being, and, even in this life, he has
many of the spiritual capacities which are to be unfolded in the
higher life. Moreover, there are in every refined constitution a great
number of delicate sensibilities, which no college has ever
recognized.
There has been no concealment of these facts. They have always been
open to observation,--more open than the facts of Geology and
Chemistry. Ever since the earliest dawn of civilization in Egypt,
India, and Greece the facts have been conspicuous before the world,
and, in ancient times, have attracted the attention of imperial and
republican governments. And yet, the literary guild, the
_incorporated_ officials of education everywhere, have refused to
investigate such truths, and shaped their policy in accordance with
the lowest instincts of mammon,--in accordance with the policy of
kings, of priests, of soldiers, and of plutocrats; and this policy has
been so firmly maintained and transmitted, that there is not, to-day,
a university anywhere to be found that possesses the spirit of
progress, or is willing to open either its eyes or its ears to the
illumination of nineteenth-century progress, and to the voice of
Heaven, which is "the still small voice of reason."
"_Of the earth, earthy_" is the character of our colleges to-day as it
was in the days when Prof. Horky and his colleagues refused to look
through the telescope of Galileo. Is not this utter neglect of
Psychometry for forty-five years (because it has not been _forced_
upon their attention) as great an evidence of perpetuated stolidity as
was the conduct of the Professors of Padua 280 years ago in shunning
the inspection of Galileo's telescope, when the demonstration has been
so often repeated that Psychometry is a far greater addition than the
telescope to the methods of science and promises a greater enlargement
of science than the telescope and microscope combined.
"_Of the earth, earthy_" is a just description of institutions which
confine their investigations and limit their ideas of science to that
which is physical, when man's life, enjoyment, hopes and destiny are
all above the plane on which they dwell and in which they burrow.
Physical science is indeed a vast department of knowledge, but to
limit ourselves to that when a far grander realm exists, one really
more important to human welfare, is an attempt to perpetuate a
semi-barbarism, and the time is not _very_ remote in this progressive
age when the barbarism of the 19th century literature and education
will become a familiar theme.
The efforts of intellectual rebels to break through the restrictions
of collegiate despotism have not yet had much success, and my own
labors would have been fruitless in that respect if I had not been
able to combine with others in establishing a more liberal college,
the _Eclectic Medical Institute_ of Cincinnati, which still retains
something of the progressive spirit of its founders.
Simultaneously with the American rebellion against British authority,
_Mesmer_ in France made an assault upon that Chinese wall of medical
bigotry which Harvey found it so hard to overcome, but although he
secured one favorable report from the Medical Academy at Paris, he was
never admitted to an honorable recognition. Now, however, the baffled
truth has entered the citadel of professional authority and the
correspondent of the New York Tribune tells the story as follows:
CHARCOT AVENGES MESMER.
Under this heading the _New York Tribune_ published in September the
letter of its regular correspondent at Paris, which is given below:
It shows that in the present state of imperfect civilization the
narrow-minded men who generally lead society are perfectly able to
suppress for a time any discovery which does not come from their own
clique. And when they do yield to the force of evidence and accept
extraordinary new discoveries, they either do it in a blundering and
perverted manner, or they try to appropriate it as their own and
continue to rob the pioneer thinker.
The psychometric experiments of Drs. Bourru and Burot, Dr. Luys and
others have not been conducted in the scientific and satisfactory
manner in which I introduced them in 1841, but in the hysterical and
sensational manner which is now attracting attention.
LETTER FROM PARIS.
Mesmer has been well avenged by Charcot, the great professor
who fills the chair in the clinical ward of the Saltpetriere for
the nervous diseases of women. Not only, indeed, has this
illustrious physician shown that the charlatan whom the elder
Dumas introduced with such telling effect into his novels, "La
Comtesse de Charny" and "Le Docteur Balsamo," was no mere
charlatan, but a number of Charcot's disciples have proved the
truth of what Dumas seemed to draw from his rich imagination.
Dr. Charcot, who is a cautious man, has publicly admitted
hypnotic suggestion. He thinks extraordinary curative effects,
so far as the consciousness of pain goes, are to be derived from
hypnotism, which is Mesmerism with a new Greek name. But he
always exhorts laics not to dabble in it, and medical men to
keep their hypnotic lore to themselves. This is charming after
the way in which the profession of which Charcot is really a
bright light treated Mesmerism. Mesmer was an empiric. But he
nevertheless got at the truth.
Homoeopathy was tabooed because it was not orthodox, by that
Sanhedrim known as the Faculty of Medicine. Animal magnetism was
long ignored on the ground that charlatans had taken it up and
that no doctor who had self-respect could follow them. Mesmerism
was treated with no less contempt until a new name was given it,
and Charcot declared that there was not only something but a
good deal in it deserving the attention of scientists.
Dr. Luys last Tuesday made a communication to the Academy of
Medicine on this subject which electrified the members present.
It was on the action, both at a distance and by direct contact,
of certain medicated or fermented substances on hypnotic
subjects. The latter were all women who could not possibly have
got their cue beforehand, and were being observed, while Dr.
Luys operated, by a jury of scientists above all suspicion of
having lent themselves to any trickery. Alcohol when put to the
nape in a tube no larger than a homoeopathist's vial and
hermetically sealed produced exactly the same effect as if
imbibed at a bar. Absinthe, haschish, opium, morphine, beer,
champagne, tea and coffee were in succession tried with their
characteristic effects. But "the cup which cheers but not
inebriates" was found too exciting for French neuropaths.
Valerian caused the deepest sadness. The thoughts of the patient
were centred in a grave. She was impelled irresistibly to stoop
down and scratch the ground, and thought herself in a cemetery
exhuming a deceased relative whom she loved. Under the illusion
she fancied herself picking up bones belonging to his skeleton,
which she handled with tender reverence, and when there was an
imaginary mound of them formed she placed, with deep-drawn sighs
and tears and genuflections, a cross above them. Under the
influence of haschish everything looked rosy and gayety
prevailed. The subject was a young girl, very fond of the drama.
She fancied herself on the stage and playing a part which suited
her to perfection. It was in a bouffe opera and she sang her
score admirably. The sentiments were expressed with delicate
feeling. Dr. Luys can, according to the substances he uses, run
through the whole gamut of human passions and emotions.
What is most strange is that no trace of the fictitious world in
which the hypnotized subject has been wandering, remains when
real consciousness is restored. It is very rare for even the
idea of having been in dreamland to survive the awakening from
the hypnotic trance. Dr. Luys says that hypnotic suggestion
sometimes has periods of incubation more or less long. The
subject is at first gently drawn to do a certain thing or
things, and then the drawing becomes an irresistible impulse.
They are first as if tempted and then as if possessed. They can
no more help themselves than a man who had got to the verge of
Niagara Falls in a boat could help going over.
Dr. Roger moved that the Academy name a Commission to inquire
into hypnotic suggestion, near and at a distance. Dr. Bronardel
supported him. He said, "All that Dr. Luys has alleged and shown
cannot fail to make a noise throughout the world. Nobody save
MM. Burot and Bourru have gone so far as Dr. Luys. He not only
forces on the attention of the Academy the question of
hypnotism, but of persons being affected by poisonous substances
which do not penetrate, or it may be even touch, their bodies.
This is from a legal point of view a great danger. A great
social responsibility is involved in the matter. It is the duty
of the Academy to have the experiments of Dr. Luys repeated,
with others that bear upon them."
Hypnotism, or animal magnetism, has been a little more than a
hundred years despised and rejected by the doctors. It was
discovered by a Viennese, Mesmer, who belonged to that curious
branch of the Freemasons, the Illuminati. When he told Stoerck,
the head of the Faculty of Medicine at Vienna, of his discovery,
that learned owl begged him not to discredit that body by
talking of anything so absurd. He persisted. Sarcasm and then
persecution obliged him to go abroad, and he came to Paris in
1778. The world of fashion and the court went crazy about him.
He then set up in the Palais Royal, where, it must be said, in a
way that was worthy of a charlatan, he worked his discovery. M.
Le Roy, of the Academy of Medicine, thought him on the scent of
a great truth. But the other doctors were of the bats' eyes
sort, and hunted Mesmer down. He went to stay at Creteil, where
he applied his method and made his famous magnetic pail, which
interested M. d'Eslon, head doctor to the Comte d'Artois--later
Charles X. He wrote about the magnetic pail. The Academy of
Medicine warned him to be more cautious in speaking of quack
inventions, and threatened to expel him from membership if he
did not retract what he had written. That body even made a new
rule to this effect: "No doctor declaring himself in favor of
animal magnetism, either in theory or practice, can be a member
of this society."
Mesmer, hearing the police had their eye on him, went to Spa.
But the ladies took his part with such ardor that the king named
a commission to inquire into his discovery. Its members, too,
were owls. They reported that "the magnetic fluid of which
Mesmer speaks does not exist." Jussieu stood out against the
owls and he only. He said: "All your efforts
