James Esdaile

    I shall find much in the books to interest and instruct me, as I did in your first
work on Hypnotism; but I shall not wait to read them before replying to your
communication.
    I have not seen any of the papers you allude to in the journals; but am glad
to hear that the doctors are, at last, condescending to turn their attention to one
of the most interesting and important subjects ever submitted to the consider-
sideration of the physiologist, the metaphysician, and natural philosopher.***
    Regarding the reality and cause of the mesmeric phenomena, if I venture to
differ from you even, who are so much better prepared to investigate the subject
[than certain individuals to whom the Doctor had referred], it is for reasons which
I hope you will consider worthy your attention. I am fully aware that there are
various modes of inducing the mesmeric symptoms, to a certain extent, without
the probability, or even possibility, of any vital force proceeding from the
operator being concerned in the matter. But I have never (except for experiment)
produced the mesmeric state of the system by the exhaustion of any organ,
such as the eye, [here the Doctor has overlooked the important part which the
mental act of fixed attention plays in this matter] or by acting strongly on the
imagination, or by any means that could favour self-mesmerization, as you will
perceive from the following resumé of my practice:—
    During the last six years I have performed upwards of 300 capital operations
of every description, and many of them of the most terrible nature, without in-
flicting pain on the patients; and, in every instance, the insensibility was
produced in this fashion.
    All knowledge of our intentions was, if possible, concealed from the patients;
and if they had never heard of mesmerism and painless operations, so much
the better. They were taken into a darkened room, and desired to lie down and
shut their eyes. A young Hindoo or Mussulman then seated himself at the
head of the bed, and made passes, without contact, from the head to the
epigastrium, breathing on the head and eyes all the time, and occasionally
resting his hands for a minute on the pit of the stomach. This often induced
the coma deep enough for the severest surgical operation in a few minutes;
but the routine was for me to examine the patient at the end of an hour, and
if he was not ready, the process was repeated daily. Taking the average, the
operation, of whatever description, was usually performed on the fourth or
fifth day.
    Probably as many more cases were subjected to the trance for medical
purposes, and were usually treated in the same way, for its convenience to
both parties.
    The enclosed remarkable case of clairvoyance, with transference of the
senses to the epigastrium, will show that the mesmeric control of the system
may be obtained, when the patient is not only asleep, but in a state of
intense natural coma.
    I have also entranced a blind man, and made him so sensitive, that I could
entrance him however employed, (eating his dinner, for instance) by merely
making him the object of my attention for ten minutes. He would gradually
cease to eat, remain stationary a few moments, and then plunge, head fore-
most, among his rice and curry.
    Numbers of madmen have been entranced in the lunatic asylum of Calcutta;
and I performed a mesmeric operation on one man who had cut his throat.
    I frequently desired the visitors of my hospitals to pretend to take the
portraits of patients, and to engage their attention as much as possible, by
conversing with them. I then retired to another room, and reduced them to
statues, without the possibility of their suspecting my intentions.
    How such phenomena can be accounted for, without presuming the
existence of a physical power transmitted from the operator to the subject,
passes my comprehension. That the mesmeric virtue can be communicated
to inanimate matter, is a physical fact, of which I am as well convinced as
of my own existence. It was my common hospital practice to entrance patients
for the purpose of having their sores burned with Nitric Acid, by giving them
mesmerised water to drink.
    Community of taste, and thought-reading, are among the most common of
the higher mesmeric phenomena; and how they are to be explained, except by
the transmission of the operator’s sensations, through his thought-stamped,
nervous fluid, sent to the brain of the subject, I cannot conjecture.
    "Important, if true", you will probably say. I can only say, that healthy senses,
a natural power of seeing things as they really are, and an earnest desire to
know the truth, whatever it may be, are perfectly useless for the acquisition
of knowledge, if all I have related is not perfectly true.
    Till such facts are known to medical men and natural philosophers, it is surely
premature to dogmatise about the only source of the mesmeric phenomena.
    It happened, curiously enough, that the sleeping Faqueer of Lahore had
attracted my attention about the very time your interesting account of him
appeared, and I had actually written to Sir Henry Lawrence, begging him to
procure us information on the subject; but my departure from India, shortly
after, prevented my prosecution of the subject.

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