The spirit-rapper; an autobiography
intervention of God.
Mr. Sowerby held with Mr. Winslow as to the reality of the phenomena,
and their natural explanation, but thought they should be divided into
two classes, one good and the other bad, as produced for a good or a bad
purpose. When produced in a good cause, for a good end, they might be
called Divine; when in a bad cause, for a bad purpose, they might be
called Satanic or diabolical. The agent is in both cases the same, and
the difference is in the mind or will that employs it.
Dr. Corning, my physician, who was a distinguished manigraph, and had
written a work, highly esteemed by the profession, on Insanity, was
quite ready to concede the phenomena called spiritual, or rather
demoniacal, and thought we were bound to do so, or to give up all human
testimony. He also conceded the connection contended for by mesmerists
between mesmerism and so-called demonic phenomena,—a connection, in his
judgment, very evident, and wholly undeniable; but he contended, with
the most eminent manigraphs of France, and indeed with the members of
the profession generally, that the marvellous phenomena recorded were
those of mania, monomania, theosophania, nymphomania, demonopathy, and
all to be explained pathologically. He included them all under the
general head of insanity, and regarded their variety only as so many
different sorts of madness. He had himself witnessed the greater part of
them in his practice, and treated them as symptoms of mania.
“That,” said Mr. Merton, “would be very satisfactory, if the limits of
madness or insanity were well defined, and if physicians could never
mistake, and treat as insane one who is only possessed or obsessed by
the devil. To include the marvellous facts of history under the head of
insanity, without having first established their pathological character,
and settled it that there is no generic or specific difference between
them and acknowledged pathological symptoms, is not to explain them. How
do you prove that a person, otherwise in perfect health, with no
disturbance of the pulse, of the digestive, or any other organs to be
detected, who on all subjects speaks rationally, but who tells you that
a spirit has possession of him, speaks through his organs, throws him
down, and otherwise maltreats him, is insane? I do not say that such a
man is not insane, but how do you prove him insane?
“Why, he exhibits the symptoms of insanity, for none but an insane man
would utter such nonsense.”
“Perhaps so, and perhaps not so. He exhibits symptoms of what you are
pleased to _call_ insanity; but how do you know that you have not called
insanity what you ought to call by another name, possession, for
instance?”
“I do not believe in possession.”
“Precisely, and therefore when you meet what is called possession or
obsession, you call it insanity. That is a convenient way of reasoning,
and not uncommon with learned physicians and physicists; but it is a
begging of the question, not its solution. You reason from a foregone
conclusion. As you yourself and all the profession treat insanity as a
disease, as symptomatic of some lesion or alteration of the physical
system, or of the organs on which the manifestations of the mind depend,
I should suppose it necessary to establish the fact of such lesion or
alteration, before concluding the presence of actual insanity.”
“Insanity, in such case, would be found to be very rare.”
“Very possibly, and perhaps it is much rarer than is commonly supposed.
It is not impossible that a large proportion of those you call insane,
and treat as lunatics, are as sound of body or mind as you or I. Where
we find, physically considered, all the symptoms of health, we cannot,
from purely mental phenomena, infer disease. That the vulgar have often
regarded as under the influence of Satan persons who were merely
epileptic, cataleptic, or insane, is no doubt very true; but it is not
impossible that the learned and scientific have committed not
unfrequently a contrary mistake, and regarded as insane, cataleptics, or
epileptics, persons who were totally free from all pathological
symptoms. How will you, dear Doctor, explain by insanity a case taken
from a thousand similar ones, which I chanced to be reading this
morning, and which is well attested. Allow me to relate it as given by
Dr. Calmeil, one of your own profession, a learned and highly esteemed
manigraph, author of a work, _De la Folie_,[4] and who entertains the
same views that you do. Missionaries who now, says M. Calmeil,[5] cross
the seas to shed the light of faith in the New World, are frequently
surprised to meet energumenes among their neophytes, whilst they
acknowledge that it is seldom that the devil takes possession of the
faithful in the mother country. The letter which I am about to report,
addressed to Winslow, a celebrated physician, in 1738, by a _worthy_
missionary, proves that the delirium of demonopathy may everywhere
become the lot of feeble and timorous souls.
-----
Footnote 4:
Paris, Chez Balliere, 1845. 2 vol. gr. in-8vo.
Footnote 5:
T. 2, p. 417.
-----
“I cannot refuse, at your earnest request,” writes the missionary
Lecour, to write you a detailed account of what took place in the case
of the Cochin-chinese who was possessed, and of whom I had the honor to
speak to you. In May or June, 1733, being in the province of Cham, in
the kingdom of Cochin China, in the church of a burgh called Cheta,
about half a league distant from the capital of the province, there was
brought to me a young man from eighteen to nineteen years of age, and
who was a Christian. His parents told me that he was possessed by a
demon. A little incredulous, I might say to my confusion, quite too much
so, in consequence of my little experience at that time in such things,
of which I had never seen an example, although I had often heard other
Christians speak of them, I examined them to ascertain if there were not
simplicity or malice in their statement. The substance of what was
gathered from them was, that the young man had made an unworthy
communion, and after that had disappeared from the village, had retired
to the mountains, and called himself only the traitor Judas.”
“On this statement, and after some difficulties,” resumes the
missionary, “I went to the hospital where the young man was detained,
fully resolved to believe nothing, unless I saw marks of something
superhuman. I began by questioning him in Latin, a language of which I
knew he had not the least tincture. Extended as he was on the ground,
frothing at his mouth, and violently shaken, he rose immediately on his
seat, and answered me very distinctly, _Ego nescio loqui latine_. I was
so astonished and frightened that I withdrew, with no courage to
question him any further....
“However, some days after, I recommenced with some probationary
commands, taking care to speak always in Latin, of which the young man
was ignorant. Among other commands, I ordered the demon to throw him
forthwith upon the floor. I was instantly obeyed, but he was thrown down
with so much violence, all his limbs being stretched out and rigid as a
crowbar, that the noise was rather that of a falling beam than of a man.
Wearied and exhausted, I thought I would follow the example of the
Bishop of Tilopolis on a similar occasion. In the exorcism, I commanded
the demon, in Latin, to bear him to the ceiling of the church, feet up
and head down. Forthwith his body became stiff, he was drawn into the
church to a column, his feet joined together, his back set against the
column, and, without the aid of his hands, he was run up to the ceiling
in a twinkling, as if drawn up by a pulley, without any act or motion of
his own, suspended with his feet glued to the ceiling, and his head
hanging downwards. I made the demon confess, as I intended to confound
and humble him, and to compel him to quit his hold, the falsity of the
pagan religion. I made him confess that he was a deceiver, and at the
same time compelled him to acknowledge the sanctity of our religion. I
held him suspended in the air, his feet adhering to the ceiling and his
head down, for more than half an hour, but not having sufficient
constancy, so much was I frightened at what I saw, to continue him there
for a longer time, I ordered the demon to place him at my feet without
harming him. He forthwith cast him down, as a bundle of dirty linen, but
without his receiving the least injury. From that day the young man,
though not entirely delivered, was much relieved, and his vexations
daily diminished, especially when I was in the house, and after about
five months he was wholly released, and is now perhaps the best
Christian in Cochin China.”
“Pass over the effect of the exorcism, if you please,” resumed Mr.
Merton, “and tell me what you think, Doctor, of the facts in this case,
which Dr. Calmeil concedes, and which, if he did not, it would not
amount to any thing, for this is only one case out of a thousand.”
“I will say,” replied the Doctor, “with M. Calmeil, that I am very much
obliged to the good missionary for not withholding his account, for he
has described, without knowing it, the phenomena of religious
monomania.”
“It strikes me,” replied Mr. Merton, “that Dr. Corning has not well
examined the case. That some of the phenomena may be regarded as
symptoms of insanity, I do not question, but if I understand insanity,
it is a derangement, an access of what properly belongs to one in his
normal state, but not the accession of something preternatural. It may,
in some respects, sharpen the senses, revive the memory, and render the
faculties, or at least some of them, morbidly active; but I have never
understood that it could enable a man to understand and speak a language
which he had never learned, and of which, in the full possession of all
his faculties, he knew not a word. I can easily understand that in
delirium a man may fancy that he is possessed, and act on the conviction
that he is, but I do not understand how delirium alone can enable a man,
however agile, to climb to the ceiling of a church, his back against a
column, with his feet fastened together, and without using his hands or
arms, and to remain by the simple application of his feet to the ceiling
for one half an hour with his head down, carrying on all the time a
close controversy in this very inconvenient position, and finally
dropping upon the pavement without the least injury. Such a delirium
would, to say the least, be very extraordinary, and I suspect the Doctor
has never found a similar delirium amongst any of his numerous patients
who were unquestionably insane. I will venture to say that however
striking the delirium, the thing is absolutely impossible without
superhuman aid.”
“Part of it is hallucination,” replied the Doctor.
“Whose hallucination? The young man’s, or the missionary’s?” asked Mr.
Merton. “Not the missionary’s, for there is no pretence that he was
insane; and not the young man’s, because the question turns not on what
he saw, or fancied, or imagined, but on what another person, the
missionary, saw.”
“Probably the facts are much exaggerated,” replied Dr. Corning. “The
missionary confesses that he was greatly frightened, and being so, he
may, without impeachment of his honesty, have failed to be strictly
accurate as to the details.”
“Then you question the relation. That alters the case. Let us take,
then, the case, also well attested, of the nuns of Uvertet, which, about
1550, caused for a long time so much astonishment in Brandenburg,
Holland, Italy, and especially in Germany. The nuns were at first
awakened and startled by plaintive moanings.... Sometimes they were
dragged from their beds, and along the floor, as if drawn by their