The power of the mind over the body : an experimental inquiry into the nature and cause of the phenomena attributed by Baron Reichenbach and others to a "new imponderable" / by James Braid.

  • Braid, James, 1795?-1860.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The power of the mind over the body : an experimental inquiry into the nature and cause of the phenomena attributed by Baron Reichenbach and others to a "new imponderable" / by James Braid. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/40 (page 8)
    “ The sensation is rather unpleasant than agreeable, and is like an aura: in some cases warm, in others cool; or it may be a pricking, or the sensation of the creeping of insects on the skin ; sometimes headache comes on rapidly. These effects occur when the patient does not see the magnet, nor know what is doing ; they occur both in males and females, though more frequently in females ; they arq sometimes seen in strong, healthy people, but oftener in those whose health, though good, is not so vigorous, and in what are called nervous persons. Children are frequently found to be sensitive. Persons affected with spasmodic diseases, those who suffer from epilepsy, cata¬ lepsy, chorea, paralysis, and hysteria, are particularly sensitive. Lunatics and somnambulists are uniformly sensitive. The mag¬ net is consequently an agent capable of affecting the living body. The object of the author is to solve some of the disputed ques¬ tions, and to bring a number of phenomena under fixed physical laws. “ Healthy sensitive subjects observe nothing farther than the sensations above noticed, and experience no inconvenience from the approach of magnets ; but the diseased sensitive subjects ex¬ perience different sensations, often disagreeable, and occasionally giving rise to fainting, to attacks of catalepsy, and to spasms so violent that they might possibly endanger life. In such cases, which generally include somnambulists, there occurs an extra¬ ordinary acuteness of the senses ; smell and taste, for example, become astonishingly delicate and acute ; many kinds of food become intolerable, and the perfumes most agreeable at other times become offensive. The patients hear and understand what is spoken three or four rooms off, and their vision is often so irritable, that, on the one hand, they cannot endure the sun’s light, or that of a fire ; while, on the other, they are able, in very dark rooms, to distinguish, not only the outlines, but also the colours of objects, where healthy people cannot distinguish anything at all. Up to this point, however strange the pheno¬ mena, there is nothing which may not be easily conceived, since animals and men differ very much in the acuteness of the senses, as is daily experienced.”