in a moment being converted to benevolence and tears; the sense of pain being stayed, and complete rigidity dissolved with a breath. Our friend, Mrs. W., used to go into a strange state of rigidity when mesmerized. It would take, I believe, sometimes half an hour to get her wholly relaxed. I saw her in this state one day, and breathed on the muscular organs, and she was released immediately. It is the same with lockjaw as with other local rigid conditions which often occur under mesmerism. I have caused children, as I mentioned before, in their natural sleep to rise up and lie down again, or throw about their arms without waking, by gently touching the Muscular power, just as I cause somnambules to walk in profound sleep, and when no other excitement or pressure on any other part of the head, or desiring them and entreating them to move, will induce them to do so. In this you have a clear fact; an instance wherein neither the impression of my thoughts, or commands, or suggestions, or other means, avail any thing. The response comes as truly as the sound from touching a particular note on the piano. If this be a delusion, what may not be a delusion? and we may ask in despair, "what is truth?" I can cause these mesmeric sleepers to dream what I will, and make them fancy they have pain or pleasing sensations, the case may be, or that they are in motion, &c. er any great muscular straining or exertion, I pain in that muscular organ, both in myself others: also in the central portion of the cere bellum, under the influence of cold or indigestion. I have noted the intense and often fixed pain in the central portion of the cerebellum, in many cases of deranged physical condition. I make mesmerized patients hold a weight, and tell me where it influences the brain, and see how the excitement of that part affects them, and I cause them to trace their various sensations, injuries, &c., to the brain. Whatever road I follow, it brings me to the same spot. And then, again, I take Gall's method. I have observed the great development of the muscular organs of the lateral portions of the cerebellum in prize-fighters and others, having great muscular power, agility, or muscular sensibility. The gladiators, as you remark, were noted for having a thick base to the skull. I have observed also numbers of children with precocious muscular power, and the brain protruding at these organs, while I notice men with large muscles but little strength, or muscular tact and sensibility, deficient in the necessary organs. When the gen eral physical or vital powers are great, the cerebellum is highly developed; particularly the central portion. The results of vivisections confirm my statements, and cannot be explained under any other view. Anatomy shows no objection, but is wholly in favor of the new philosophy. Again, the effects recorded under morbid conditions and injuries to the brain, give sanction to the same. But you see it is quite impossible to do more than allude to such matters, except when you wish any special explanation. And here I must pause again, and leave the rest I have to say about the brain for another letter. But I may add, that I am far more anxious to set men inquiring by methods adapted to the subject, than to establish what I have noted as a new light from my experiments. The knowledge of these organs of the cerebellum in particular, you will perceive to be highly important towards the explanation and cure of disease; and to be most suggestive and necessary to those who mesmerize. Every mesmerizer should understand phrenology and phreno-mesmerism; and the physician who is ignorant of these matters of phreno-physiology, goes into the sick chamber with a light only on one side of his subject. IX. ILLUSTRATIVE CASES. H. M. TO H. G. A. You say it would be an extremely interesting question whether one disease may not be made to drive out another. Do you mean by this any thing different from the ordinary medical practice of our time? I take it, this is the whole secret of medi1 practice, the secret of giving calomel, and the other horrible drugs by which doctors are - wont to set up one disease to drive out another," as they say. In this matter, my sympathies are wholly with the Homœopathists, who prefer following nature, and helping the actual disease out of the system, to driving it out by the introduction of another. But one wonders that the doctors have not got on,such facts as they have had before. their eyes, from daily causing a more manageable disease to drive out a less manageable one, to trying whether a healthy person cannot take upon himself the malady of the sick, not only sharing, but relieving the evil. You or I could at the shortest notice furnish them with exemplifications of this, from our experience in mesmerizing: and whenever they will attend to it, and put the matter to proof under their own eyes, it will be a great day for the health and happiness of the human race. It is a strange thing that the facts they must daily meet do not set them looking into them. You know my friend Mrs. H. C.'s husband died of consumption. When near death, within a few weeks of it, he was sleepless and restless, and suffered more from this restlessness than from any other cause. One day he told his wife that when her hands were on his pillow, moving near his face, he was aware of a soothing sensation: and he asked her to move them again. She had never, any more than himself, heard any thing about mesmerism; and when by experience of what suited the invalid, she in fact made passes whenever he needed sleep, she had no idea that she was mesmerizing. He always sank presently to sleep; and she always was aware of feeling exhausted, sleepless and restless. How many a sufferer have I seen relieved of one ailment after another, and daily recovering flesh and color and animation at the expense of a pain in my hand, or wrist, or elbow, or shoulder, and a nervous exhaustion which a cold bath, or an hour in the sunshine, would repair! As to the communicating of an ailment, without any corresponding advantage, I had, however, a somewhat startling warning five years since. My sister was mesmerizing a little boy, extremely susceptible, and succeeding in fixing his limbs, when I, inexperienced in the mysteries of the case, put my hand in, and made mischief. The boy was in a lively state of sleep-waking: and I amused him by putting my ear trumpet into his ear, speaking to him through it, and thus breathing into his ear. Presently he was found to be apparently stupid, attending to nothing that my sister and his guardian said to him. At last, it struck his guardian that I had made him deaf. And so I had; and nobody but myself could recover him. I was instructed what to do; and glad enough I was when the hearing returned. To come back to our present business. If we will not, in order to ascertain the seat of sensation and motion, question persons in the mesmeric sleep, why do we not question closely those who have ver been mesmerized, but who yet may have mething to tell? Now, you know I never have |