Hidden Minds (6 page)

From its inception to the 1840s mesmerism was never endorsed as a legitimate treatment by the medical establishment. Even Puységur’s more credible methods were still regarded with considerable suspicion; however, from the 1840s mesmerism began to attract the attention of several British doctors, whose scientific credentials granted it a degree of vicarious respectability.

John Elliotson was appointed professor of medicine at the University of London in 1831. He founded University College Hospital, established a link between pollen and hay fever, and pioneered iodine treatment for goitre. In addition, he was the first doctor in England to make extensive use of the stethoscope, an instrument that many of his colleagues were happy to dismiss as a European fad.

Elliotson became interested in animal magnetism after attending various staged demonstrations conducted by visiting continental mesmerists. He was particularly impressed by the induction of anaesthesia. When in a trance state, subjects could be pinched or have their nostrils packed with snuff without showing any signs of discomfort. Such phenomena suggested that mesmerism could be used to moderate pain during surgery (the very first recorded use of ether was not until 1842 and that of nitrous oxide, 1844). In 1843, Elliotson published a pamphlet titled ‘Numerous Cases of Surgical Operations without Pain in the Mesmeric State’. This represented the first attempt to collect together existing documented cases of mesmeric surgical anaesthesia, the first of which was a mastectomy performed by Jules Cloquet in 1829.

Unfortunately, Elliotson’s reputation was diminished after his involvement with the Okey sisters – two adolescent patients who proved to be remarkably compliant experimental subjects. Elliotson used them to demonstrate the power of ‘animal magnetism’, first on the wards and then in the public theatre of the hospital. The girls could be made to go rigid, swoon, and perform astonishing feats of strength. Unfortunately, Elliotson’s demonstrations degenerated into an undignified stage show, attracting large audiences which included not only doctors, but also aristocrats, members of parliament, writers, and anybody of sufficient social rank to gain entry. The behaviour of the Okey sisters became increasingly idiosyncratic and unpredictable. They entertained Elliotson’s audiences by adopting a peculiar, childish mode of speech, by using bad language, and showing little or no respect to even the most distinguished members of the gathering. Elliotson’s demonstrations became a combination of slapstick comedy and mild sexual titillation. A subsequent investigation concluded that Elliotson was being duped by two crafty imposters – an allegation that Elliotson simply refused to accept. Eventually the hospital authorities informed Elliotson that he should refrain from practising mesmerism in the hospital and that he should discharge the elder Okey sister immediately. Elliotson responded by resigning his post.

Among the great and the good attending Elliotson’s demonstrations had been Charles Dickens. The two men became firm friends, and Elliotson taught Dickens how to mesmerise. The author subsequently experimented with his own family, and later successfully healed some of his associates. It has been suggested that Dickens’ extraordinary power to captivate large audiences at public readings of his work was in part due to the exercise of his mesmeric gift. Dickens insisted that his audience should always be able to see his face, and if the audience wasn’t responsive he was quick to complain that they were not ‘magnetic’.

Although Elliotson was spurned by his university colleagues, he was warmly accepted in Dickens’ elevated social circle and his medical practice prospered. In spite of his unwise association with the Okey sisters, Professor Elliotson’s endorsement of mesmerism was a turning point. Mesmerism had embarked on the road to respectability.

After the publication of Elliotson’s pamphlet on the use of mesmerism as a surgical anaesthetic, news began to reach London of a lone enthusiast practising in Bengal. This was James Esdaile, a Scottish surgeon with the East India Company, who ran the so called Native Hospital. Using a mesmeric trance state to induce anaesthesia, Esdaile had conducted several major operations with good results. These included arm and breast amputations as well as the removal of numerous scrotal tumours (which were endemic in the Bengali population). One of these tumours weighed more than the patient, and had to be manipulated with a rope-and-pulley system attached to the rafters. Clearly, Esdaile was a man with considerable nerve.

Remarkably, Esdaile had never seen a professional mesmerist induce a trance state. He based his own procedures on an account given to him by a friend, and subsequently developed a somewhat idiosyncratic technique that accommodated local influences (such as yogic breathing and stroking). Although his technique was improvised, an official investigation was impressed by his results and in due course he became the founder and superintendent of The Calcutta Mesmeric Hospital. He left India in 1851 and returned to Scotland, where he lived a relatively uneventful life of semi-retirement.

During his six years in India Esdaile performed several thousand operations on mesmerised patients. Moreover, he kept careful records and tabulated his successful results. Only sixteen deaths were reported, at a time when only 50 per cent of surgical patients were expected to survive. Sadly, Esdaile’s findings were not given the consideration and exposure they deserved because of the British medical establishment’s racist views. It was suggested that ‘natives’ of the subcontinent were so different from Europeans that they might actually enjoy surgical procedures. Therefore, it was impossible to assess the effectiveness of mesmeric anaesthesia on the basis of Esdaile’s work.

It was yet another Scottish surgeon, James Braid, who finally earned mesmerism scientific respectability; however, the task was not an easy one, and to achieve it the concept of mesmerism had to be thoroughly rehabilitated. Even a name change was necessary.

Like Elliotson, Braid’s first experience of mesmerism was at a public demonstration – on 13 November 1841. Braid was so intrigued by what he saw that, one week later, he returned to see the whole thing again (when it was repeated by popular demand). Braid was convinced that he had witnessed a genuine phenomenon; however, he was not satisfied with any of the existing explanations. Even some sixty years after Mesmer’s heyday there was still talk of emanations and magnetic fluids (particularly among stage performers who sought to sensationalise their act).

At both demonstrations Braid had observed that during ‘nervous sleep’ the subject’s eyes remained firmly closed. He subsequently concluded that the trance state had been induced by neuromuscular exhaustion, brought about through protracted staring. Two days later, to test his theory, Braid invited a dinner-party guest to stare, without blinking, at the top of a wine bottle. Within minutes the man was asleep. Braid subsequently repeated this experiment with his wife and manservant, who also obligingly fell asieep.

Braid’s initial approach, then, was to understand nervous sleep primarily as a physiological phenomenon. He later elaborated his account to the extent that he acknowledged the importance of a psychological factor – ‘focus of attention’ – as another necessary precipitant of nervous sleep. Braid’s explanatory framework is very straightforward and marks a radical departure from all that went before. Concepts such as animal magnetism, or Puységur’s ‘imposition of will’, are completely rejected in favour of more basic elements. Braid subsequently spent the next eighteen years of his life researching nervous sleep, and in 1843 renamed it
neurypnology.
He later chose another name, hypnosis, which proved to be so ‘catchy’ it soon replaced mesmerism, artificial somnambulism, and nervous sleep – going on to achieve international currency.

Braid used hypnosis to treat a wide range of problems, from spinal curvature to epilepsy. Moreover, he often provided a rationale for his successes that demonstrated his fealty to respectable science. Thus, he claimed to be able to cure deafness because the auditory nerve – an object familiar to neurologists – could be excited under hypnosis. Even so, Braid’s successes probably owed as much to the placebo effect as did Mesmer’s, Braid’s explanations were simply much more attractive to the conservative medical establishment and he was subsequently able to publish his findings in mainstream academic journals. As a direct result of Braid’s publications, hypnosis was rescued from the world of quacks, mountebanks, and music hall to be delivered safely into the hands of neurologists and physiologists; but just as the scientists were becoming used to the idea that hypnosis was respectable after all, it was more or less hijacked by a burgeoning fringe religion – spiritualism.

Among spiritualists, communication with the dead was usually accomplished after entering a trance state; but such trance states could also be conceptualised as ‘self-hypnosis’. Moreover, many hypnotic subjects began spontaneously to report receiving messages from the spirit world. Be that as it may, even though the culture of spiritualism was steeped in superstition and absurdities, certain previously unseen ‘psychological’ phenomena emerged that captured the attention of the academic and medical communities. The unexpected result was even greater scientific interest in the function and capabilities of the unconscious mind.

The spiritualist movement was inspired by the life and works of the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. He wrote a number of exegetical works – allegedly under the tutelage of spirits and angels – and described transcendental journeys in books such as
On Heaven and its Wonders and on Hell
(1758). After his death his visionary teachings were promulgated by a religious sect – the Swedenborgians. Congregations were soon established in northern Europe and, shortly after, America. By the mid nineteenth century the concept of communicating with the dead had become popularised under the banner of spiritualism, whose priest-class – mediums – typically entered a trance state to receive information from favoured spirit guides.

As the movement grew, spiritualist meetings became increasingly theatrical, seances being often enlivened by table-turning, rapping, and the occasional lévitation. But such occurrences could easily be dismissed as conjuring tricks (stage magic had become something of an art during the course of the eighteenth century); however, other spiritualist phenomena were far more difficult to explain away – most notably,
automatic writing
and automatic
drawing.

In the 1840s a number of spiritualists began to produce literary and artistic works that had been completed while entranced. It was subsequently claimed that these works were accomplished under the influence of spirit guides. Because the writing and drawing was performed without volition, the term ‘automatic’ was employed to describe the manner in which they were executed. A perplexing feature of these automatic phenomena was that sometimes works of outstanding quality were produced by individuals who had received little or no formal education. For example, Andrew Jackson Davis, the son of a New York leather worker, wrote numerous books of scientific and philosophical interest, including
Principles of Nature
(1847), which became a best-seller. Moreover, examples of automatic drawing were so technically proficient – and distinctive – the ‘automatic style’ exerted an influence on the early symbolists.

For those who wished to account for automatic phenomena without recourse to spirit communication, the unconscious became an invaluable explanatory concept. In 1854, for example, Michel Chevreul suggested that all messages from the spirit world might be nothing more than a transliteration of unconscious thought. Chevreul – a sceptic with impeccable credentials – had already demonstrated in 1833 that the movements of the divining rod were unconsciously directed by the dowser.

Automatic writing and drawing were subsequently considered as further examples of the richness of unconscious life. As the romantics had suggested, the engine of imagination was probably submerged below the awareness threshold. Therefore, entranced mediums were simply surrendering control of their hands to the creative genius of the unconscious; however, the fact that many mediums claimed to be taking dictation or receiving instruction from spirit guides suggested another intriguing possibility – that parts of the unconscious could evolve into fully fledged secondary (or even tertiary) personalities. The unconscious might actually be inhabited by lesser selves -amalgams of inaccessible memories that had become organised around a kind of proto-identity.

This arresting idea (that parts of the unconscious could acquire the properties of an independent identity) resonated with a rare medical phenomenon that had been observed (but never explained) since the end of the eighteenth century – split or
multiple personality.

As early as 1791, Eberhardt Gmelin reported a case of what he described as ‘exchanged personality’. The case in question was a young German woman who regularly swapped her Teutonic sensibilities for those of a French aristocrat. When her alter ego took over she spoke only French and adopted gallic affectations, and when she reverted she had no knowledge of events witnessed as a Frenchwoman, It should be noted that, even in this pioneering case study, there is no suggestion that the woman was the victim of possession. Multiple personality was understood to be a purely psychological phenomenon.

After Gmelin a few cases of multiple personality were reported in the literature, but the proper scientific study of the phenomenon did not begin until the publication in 1840 of a monograph by a general practitioner -Antoine Despine. In this work, Despine reported the case of an eleven-year-old girl suffering from paralysis. During the course of her treatment she developed the habit of slipping into an altered state of consciousness, in which she became ill-mannered but also miraculously recovered the use of her legs. Eventually, her polite and impolite personalities fused together. Despine’s study failed to arouse a great deal of interest in academic circles, but from the 1840s onwards cases of multiple personality were recognised and reported with increasing frequency.