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illness. A peculiar sensation ran through her. Her mother stooped over her bed, and then, as the patient heard, told the sister, who was by the fire, that all was over. While hearing their grief, and feeling their warm tears on her face, the patient could not open eyes or mouth, or stir a finger; and she concluded this to be death. It did occur to her to wonder how long this would last, how many ages she should lie thus in the grave; but she does not remember feeling any painful alarm about this. Yet, when, in the afternoon, her mother began swathing her in the sheet, from the feet upwards, she extremely disliked the idea of her head being thus muffled up; and, as the sheet came higher and higher, she made a desperate effort, and opened her eyes, sending her mother back far from the bed, with a start of astonishment. She was still so full of the idea which had moved her, that she struggled on till she said "Don't smother me;" though by that time the entreaty had become unnecessary. Now, the discovery being made that one set of nerves relates to sensation and another to motion, what so probable as that one portion of the brain is appropriate to sensation, and another to motion? You have detected these portions, have you not? Tell me as much as you can about it, before going on to report of the functions of the cerebrum.

I suppose you have two methods of ascertaining and testing the portions of the brain appropriated to motion and sensation; — by inquiring of persons in the mesmeric sleep, where they feel this or that

sensation, and getting them to point out the place; and then, by exciting involuntary movement, and even sensation, in other patients, by acting upon the parts to which you have been directed. If you ever succeeded by this method, if you thereby render a patient insensible to the pain of losing a limb, for instance; or cause him to feel pleasure or pain in the absence of the outward condition; or set in motion particular limbs or muscles at your own silent pleasure, -I do not see how any number of failures can invalidate your discovery. Failures are only the supervention of other conditions than those you are seeking: and they cannot invalidate their antecedents.

I can never doubt the wonderful efficacy of the method, after what I have witnessed. Before I had ever turned my attention to it, or had heard any thing of your researches, I was witness to a curious contention between a mesmerizing friend of mine and her patient; - an ignorant servant-girl, under twenty years of age. The lady desired the girl to mimic a guest she thought she ought not. Her mesmerizer appealed to one faculty after another,— to her power of imitation, of obedience, of affection, &c., and the girl raised her hands, and touched, in the course of her response, Conscience, Firmness, and, finally, Combativeness. The raising,

first of one hand, then of the other, the stretching and quick movement of both to cover the desired portions, in the midst of her animated sleep, were a singular sight.

I know something, too, of the peculiar sensation you speak of, when portions of the brain are set strongly in action, by mesmeric influence. The sensation is markedly local, and extremely peculiar; a sort of creeping and lightening or melting rather agreeable than otherwise, though the force of the faculty is, at the time, too great for comfort. I have sometimes thought it not wholly unlike the sensation I have been aware of every time, for weeks together, that my mesmeric patients have "slipped over" into the sleep. When three or four have been in my room at one time, and I have put one after another to sleep, I have found myself able to detect, by a peculiar sensation throughout my whole frame, the precise instant when the sleep took possession of them, though their eyes might have been so fast closed before, that it would require deep observation and long experience to assign the moment without such sympathy. As for detecting the seat of pain in a patient who does not tell of it,

I do it simply by feeling pain in the fingers, and, if I persevere, in the wrist, elbow, and shoulder, successively; and, more frequently still, by the swelling of the hand. More than once, a ring on my finger has been almost hidden by the swelling which takes place in a few minutes, when I mesmerize a person under severe pain. But there is, in this case, no sensation in me at all resembling that of the action of my brain, under the hand of my mesmerizer, or that which indicates the moment when a patient of mine passes into the sleep.

By the way, can you tell me how it is, that the mesmerizer feels the patient's sympathetic pain, rather than the disease which causes it? For instance, when liver disorder causes pain in the shoulder, why does the hand of the mesmerizer swell in passing over the shoulder, and not the liver? Or does it in both?

But I must remember how much you have to tell me in your next. You promise to go on about the brain and its functions: and I know there is much to be said yet under this great division of our survey.

VIII.

METHODS OF NEW DISCOVERY. ORGANIC ARRANGEMENT OF THE BRAIN.

H. G. A. TO H. M.

THANK you for your confirmations of so many points of interest.

It seems to me, that it is only by the study of our peculiarities and abnormal conditions that we shall gain light whereby to comprehend the ordinary and normal operations of our nature: and this knowledge, again, will enable us, at once, to perceive the cause and nature of every deviation from the true form. But knowledge has a progressive growth and natural course; and it is not in the

power of the most suggestive mind to make any sudden leap. The discovery of a new instrument, or of a general law, alone enables us to make a stride in advance. The telescope, the power of which was not credited at first, gives us an extended range of observation; the microscope enables us to observe the more secret workings and minute structure of parts: by the electric telegraph we communicate in London with our friends in Edinburgh: by the stethoscope we detect the condition of internal portions of the body. The laws of light and gravitation extend over the universe, and explain whole classes of phenomena: the law of physiology, that each function has a special organ, and the extension of this law to the brain, explain the differences and variations in the condition of man, and his relations towards other animals. Gall's discoveries were made by observing striking instances of particular development; and we all of us have some peculiarities of development or constitution, if we will but closely observe them. I am glad to learn any thing you will tell me about your own unusual condition. I never experienced any swelling of the hand, as you and some others have, from relieving pain, or other conditions: but my hand has, in many instances, remained strangely hot and in pain the whole day afterwards. In such cases, however, there was a general irritability or inflammatory condition, as well as pain, in the patient. Simple nervous pains seem to hang loosely upon the nerves, and pass away quickly under mesmerism; but when