more important? In the next letter, I can, I think, complete this part of the subject, and tell you all I presume you wish to hear from me about the brain and its functions.

VII.

INQUIRY FOR NEW DISCOVERIES.

H. M. To H. G. A.

THIS last letter of yours is extremely interesting. Let me say, in the first place, that there is no danger of my thinking that you exaggerate the value of the discoveries you have made as to the functions of some portions of the brain. I do not see how it is possible to overrate them, supposing them proved, of which I have no doubt.

Let us just look at the course of the affair. First, I suppose, all movement, all operation of one thing upon another, was concluded, before science existed, to imply spirit. The winds, the waters, the waving and sprouting trees, the flickering fire, were all animated by spirits; and so were the movements of man, the rolling eye and jerking limbs of the new-born infant, as well as the far-reaching thought of the philosopher. How very lately were stillborn children supposed to be damned because they had not been baptized! Then, almost every organ seems to have been honored and glorified before the

brain; and especially the heart. How long will the word Heart stand in our parlance for soul, affections, sensibility, conscience? Then, by slow degrees, the brain seems to have risen into a sort of vague consideration as an indispensable, noble, but most mysterious part of our frame. All along, while any attention at all was paid to the brain, there seems to have been some kind of general impression that its size and mode of development indicated character. We find a low forehead, a small head, a thick skull, thought ill of; philosophers represented with large foreheads, and gladiators with a thick base to the skull: and, since Gall's time, we have met with a more and more extended admission that the head appears to have three regions, the intellectual, moral, and physical departments. Then came Sir Charles Bell's grand discovery about the nerves; his detection of the different structure and function of the motory and sensory nerves: mighty discovery in itself, but yet greater for its suggestive value. Here is one kind of nerve for sensation, by which the cataleptic patient may feel while wholly unable to move; and another kind. for motion, by which a patient may be frightfully convulsed without feeling any thing. A friend of mine, who told me all about it, was in the first of these states, her sentience acute while wholly incapable of motion; and she had a somewhat narrow escape from being buried alive. The most curious thing is that she concluded herself to be dead. She was in a state of exhaustion after severe

a

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 meltingrather 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.