CHAPTER III.

FURTHER APPARENT CORROBORATIONS OF PHRENOLOGY-CASE OF REMARKABLE SUSCEPTIBILITY TO EXTERNAL IMPRESSIONS-INDICATIONS OF DISTINCT FACULTIES NOT PREVIOUSLY RECOGNISED.

ONE evening I was trying experiments with Mr. D. G. Goyder, editor of the Phrenological Almanac, and Mr. Henry Atkin, at the house of the latter intelligent friend in Sheffield. The patient was an uneducated girl, who had never been mesmerised before, and if not totally ignorant of phrenology, could only have caught of it the most vague popular idea. She was passed into a deep mesmeric sleep, by me, in about twenty minutes, in the presence of Mrs. Atkin, and then brought before the rest of the company without appearing in the least disturbed. On my touching the region of Tune, she broke forth in a strain of melody as sweet as it was loud and clear; and gave a few equally striking indications of the functions of other faculties. But something followed that surprised and puzzled us, since when Mr. Goyder suggested that I should excite her Imitativeness, and I touched (as it appeared on close scrutiny) a point rather towards the back of the space allotted to that organ, she responded in terms quite at variance with our anticipation, manifesting diligence or industry in a most significant and powerful manner-but nothing of imitation. She persisted that she was at work, not imitating any body, and would not be hindered by our questions and interruptions. This was so contrary to the suggestions of Mr. Goyder and to my

own anticipation-so opposed to what we understood of phrenology-as to make us for a time suspend our judgment; and the patient being awoke, declared herself oblivious of all that had passed in her sleep.

A few days afterwards I met incidentally with a young man, who had first been mesmerised on Mr. Braid's plan of staring continuously at some motionless object, by which he was thrown into a state resembling an epileptic fit and made so painfully susceptible to nearly all external influences that the slightest atmospheric changes, as well as the forms and qualities of the objects he handled, would afterwards affect him most strangely, although a person of great muscular energy, firmness, and sagacity. I knew him on one occasion to be so affected by the mere handling or presence of a skull, although he was not aware of the source of the influence, as to become an impersonation of the character of the man to whom it had belonged. Phrenologically speaking, it must have been the cranium of one sadly deficient in all the cheerful and hopeful characteristics of humanity, but given to anger and to alimentive gratification; probably drunkenness. It had been used by Edmund Kean, when representing Hamlet in a provincial theatre, and was, for that reason, valued as a relic by the young man to whom I allude, in whose possession it had been only a few hours, when he became wretched-despondent to the utmost degree; out of his usual sympathy with what was good and beautiful, and, as the evening advanced, delirious, with a determination to suicide. He could not tell me the cause of this, nor was I then myself aware of it; but sat up with him all night to prevent him carrying his pur pose into execution. It was a night of horrors; but I kept calm and hopeful myself, which with thankfulness I may observe is generally the case where my aid is likely to be of benefit to a patient, however violent his paroxysms. Next day, while he was still in a hot fever, delirious and most wretched, by a mere incident I detected the cause; had the noxious object taken

away; removed his fever, reducing, in a few minutes, the pulse from 120 to 80, by what Deleuze calls the long passes; and he became almost instantaneously well; for which I raised my thoughts to Heaven in gratitude. My firm conviction, founded upon what I have seen in this and other cases, is, that diseases presenting symptoms similar to the foregoing might often be removed by means as simple, if we better understood the connexion between the world without and the world within-external nature as connected with our internal sympathies and antipathies.

"To every form of being is assign'd

An active principle, howe'er removed
From sense and observation; it subsists
In all things; in all natures; in the stars
Of azure heaven; the unenduring clouds;
In flower and tree, and every pebbly stone
That paves the brook; the stationary rock,
The moving waters, and the invisible air."

These expressive lines are from Wordsworth, who might, according to the fact stated above, have drawn another illustration even from the grave itself.*

And the question arises as to whether or not selfmesmerism, or "hypotism," does not mainly differ from the common results of " magnetic" manipulation in this, that it sometimes quickens the susceptibility of the patient to external impressions-to the influence of inanimate objects—without supplying or generating the additional animal force necessary for sustaining him in his new condition. But to proceed.

Finding this young man so susceptible that I could either quicken or suspend sensation in any part of his body—could, in fact, lock or unlock his jaw by operating upon his toes even-I thought that, with judicious treatment, he would be a good subject for phrenomesmerism; and so I found him, always corroborating the doctrines of Gall when I attempted to "magnetise"

*For many curious illustrations of this and other mysterious principles, read THE SEERESS OF PREVORST, translated by Mrs. Crowe. London: J. C. Moore, 1845.

the brain by touching the centre of those spaces given by that philosopher to the organs he had discovered. One day, however, on my touching, as I thought, the region of Imitativeness, he commenced with great energy the same movements of his hands as those required in the trade he worked at-that of a file-cutter. Thinking this might be really a manifestation of Imitativeness, I asked him what he was doing. His reply was, "Why, don't you see? Cutting files, to be sure. Don't bother me." "Who have you seen cutting files?" was my next question. "Why, don't you see that I am cutting them myself?" was his reply. "Well," I continued, "but why are you cutting them?" "Because," said he, "they are wanted, and if you hinder me in this way, I shan't be able to get them done soon enough." At the close of this parley, my finger-end accidentally slipped a little forward, when he began to manifest imitation by mocking every sound that was made. The above indication of diligence, it should be remembered, resulted from my exciting the same part in this patient as in Mr. Atkin's servant; but, in both cases, altogether independent of my anticipation: in the first, in opposition to a direct verbal suggestion; and, in the second, in opposition to the patient's own ideas of phrenology.

The thought now struck me, that as most if not all of the other functions had been so accurately and strikingly indicated in these cases that it would require any one who might attempt to simulate them to be at least a Combe in phrenology, a Locke in metaphysics, and a Garrick in acting; since the patients were too little educated to be more than passive subjects in the matter-and especially as this manifestation of diligence or industry was not less striking and characteristic of some distinct function than were the indications of those faculties already recognised-Mr. La Roy Sunderland might possibly be correct in his hypothesis of a great amplification, and that what I now saw was the natural language of the moral faculty of Diligence, the organ of which might be seated in that

part of the head. Acting upon this idea, and avoiding as much a possible any design or suggestion as to the results, I afterwards proceeded, by minute changes of the point of contact, over the entire head of this patient, and the heads of others in the same way; some of my friends and correspondents have done the same with similar results; and I am bound to state my conviction, that if such results are corroborative of phrenology at all, they are equally so of a very great amplification of its details. If, however, they can be referred with more certainty and satisfaction to any other principle, nothing will afford me more pleasure than to give way to it. A pioneer and expositor, rather than a theorist, I wish my opinions to be valued only according to the facts upon which they are founded. I am well aware, and have sometimes shown how, in certain conditions of the patients, similar results may be obtained by verbal suggestion, or association of ideas with particular points of contact in any part of the body, so that they may be trained to whistle or sing if we touch the nose, and to weep with compassion if we touch the heel or the elbow. I am also well aware of, and shall proceed to describe some beautiful cases of silent mental communion between operator and patient, by which the mute intention or expectation of one is indicated by the words or actions of the other. But how are we to explain those phenomena arising with such consistency -after a due allowance for idiosyncratic differences has been made from what appears to be the paramount action of particular faculties, when they are opposed alike to the anticipations of the operator, the opinions of the patient, and the verbal suggestions of bystanders, if we do not recognise the hypothesis of a special influence through a distinct organic medium? For the present I leave this question with the reader.

*See various articles on the subject by myself, Mr. Stenson, and others, in THE PHRENO-MAGNET, (Simpkin and Marshall), 1843; and in the PHRENOLOGICAL ALMANAC, (Goyder, Glasgow), 1845.