The spirit-rapper; an autobiography
legs.... Their arms and lower extremities were twisted in every
direction.... Sometimes they bounded in the air and fell with violence
upon the ground.... In moments in which they appeared to enjoy a perfect
calm, they would suddenly fall backwards and be deprived of speech....
Some of them, on the contrary, would amuse themselves in climbing to the
tops of trees, when they would descend, their feet in the air and their
heads down. These attacks began to lose their violence after a duration
of three years. A very singular madness this, which, as the
_Dictionnaire des Sciences Médicales_ says, ‘extended over _all_ the
convents of women in Germany, particularly in Saxony and Brandenburg,
and gained even Holland,’ and it might have added, also, Italy. ‘All the
miracles,’ it continues, ‘of the Convulsionaires, or of Animal
Magnetism, were familiar to these nonnains, who were regarded as
possessed. They all foretold future events, leaped and capered, ran up
the sides of walls, spoke foreign languages, &c.’ You may read the
fourteen well authenticated cases recorded by Cotton Mather in his
Magnalia, and you will find that all these, and similar phenomena, were
exhibited by the bewitched or possessed in Massachusetts near the close
of the seventeenth century, and known under the name of ‘Salem
witchcraft,’ though only a portion of them occurred in that famous town.
Do you include all these under the head of insanity?”
“Cotton Mather was a pedant, vain, arrogant, and ambitious of power, and
I did not expect to hear him cited as an authority,” replied the Doctor,
in evident vexation.
“Cotton Mather,” Mr. Merton replied, “was one of the most learned and
distinguished men in New England in his time, and, though I am of
another parish, I respect his memory. I do not cite his opinions; I
merely cite him as the recorder of facts which either he himself had
witnessed with his own eyes, or which had been confessed or proved
before the courts of the colony, and thus far at least his authority is
sufficient. But I will ask you to explain on your hypothesis the
phenomena exhibited by the Ursuline Nuns of Loudun, France, in the
seventeenth century, and the authenticity of which both Bertrand and
Calmeil, as well as others, admit were triumphantly vindicated.”
“I know the case to which you refer,” answered Dr. Corning. “It is the
case of a certain number of nuns who took it into their heads that they
were bewitched by one Urban Grandier, whom they had refused to accept as
their director,—a man of a scandalous life, a great criminal, who
deserved to be executed as he was, if not for sorcery, at least for his
crimes. I see nothing in this case but the usual symptoms of
demonopathy, or religious monomania.”
“The physicians of the time thought differently, and there were then and
there physicians of great eminence who were consulted, and required to
make to the authorities twenty-five or thirty elaborate reports on the
case. But let us recall some of the facts.
“Shortly after, Grandier, a bad priest, was refused by these ladies as
their director; he passed by the convent, and threw a bouquet of flowers
over the wall, which was taken up and smelt of by several of the nuns.
From that moment the disorder commenced. Up to that moment all these
ladies were in the enjoyment of the most perfect health, and strictly
correct in their deportment. They were all connected with families of
distinction and of high birth, and had been carefully brought up, and
yielded to none in their education, their intelligence, their piety,
their virtues, and their accomplishments.
“After some weeks of silence, in which they had sought relief from their
vexations by religious exercises, prayers, fasts, and macerations,
without avail, recourse was had to exorcism. The phenomena then assumed
gigantic proportions. One religious, lying stretched out on her belly,
and her arms twisted over her back, defied the priest who pursued her
with the Holy Sacrament; another doubled over backwards, contrived to
walk with the nape of her neck resting on her heels; another still,
shook her head in the most singular and violent manner. The exorcist
says he had _frequently_ seen them bent over backwards, with the nape of
their neck resting on their heels, walk with surprising swiftness. He
saw one of them, rising from that posture, strike rapidly her shoulders
and breast with her head. They cried out as the howlings of the damned,
as enraged wolves, as terrible beasts, with a force that exceeds the
power of imagination. Their tongues hung out black, swollen, dry, and
hard, and became soft and natural the moment they were drawn back into
the mouth.
“During the intervals of repose, the afflicted ladies sought to return
to their religious exercises, to resume their industry and the
deportment proper to their rank and their state. But on the arrival of
the exorcist nothing was any longer heard but blasphemies and
imprecations. Then the nuns would rise, pass their feet over their
heads, throw their legs apart, with entire forgetfulness of modesty.
Then came what Dr. Calmeil calls hallucinations, which made them
attribute their state to the presence and obsession of evil spirits. The
Abbess, Madame Belfiel, while replying to the questions of the exorcist,
heard a living being speaking in her own body, as it were a foreign
voice emanating from her pharynx. They all heard a voice distinctly
articulated, proceeding from within them, stating that evil angels had
taken possession of their person, and indicating the names, the number,
and the residences of the demons.
“In the month of August, 1635, Gaston, Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis
the Thirteenth, wishing to judge for himself of the state of the
Ursulines, went to Loudun, and was present at several sessions of the
exorcists. The Superioress at first worshipped the Holy Sacrament,
giving all the signs of a violent despair. The Abbé Surin, the exorcist,
repeated the command he had given her, and forthwith her body was thrown
into convulsions, running out a tongue horribly deformed, black, and
granulated as morocco, and without being pressed at all by the teeth.
Among other postures they remarked an extension of the legs, so great
that there were seven feet from one foot to the other. The Superioress
remained in this position a very long time, with strange trembling,
touching the ground only with her belly. Having risen from this
position, the demon was commanded again to approach the Holy Sacrament,
when she became more furious than ever, biting her arms, &c. Then, after
a little time, the agitation ceased, and she returned to herself, with
her pulse as tranquil as if nothing extraordinary had happened.
“The Abbé Surin himself, while he was speaking to the Duke, and about to
make the exorcism, was attacked and twice thrown upon his back, and when
he had risen and proceeded anew to the combat, Père Tranquille demanded
of the supposed demon wherefore he had dared attack Père Surin. He
answered with the organs of the latter, and as if addressing him: ‘I
have done so to avenge myself on you.’ Was the Abbé Surin insane? or did
he simulate delirium?
“The Superioress, at the end of the exorcism, executed an order which
the Duke had just communicated secretly to the exorcist. In a hundred
instances it appeared that the energumenes read the thoughts of the
priest charged with the exorcism. They answered in whatever language
they were addressed, in Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, and Turkish.
They even answered M. de Launay de Razelly in the dialects of several
tribes of American savages, very pertinently, and revealed to him things
that had passed in America. Urban Grandier, when commanded by his bishop
to take the stole and exorcise the Mother Superior, who he said knew
Latin, refused, although challenged to do it, to question her in Greek,
and remained quite confused. Also, the Mother Superior remained for some
considerable time suspended in the air, at an elevation of about two
feet above the ground. In about three months of exorcism the trouble
ceased, and the Ursulines were restored, and resumed in peace their
pious exercises and their usual labors.”
“I see no reason to change my opinion,” remarked the Doctor, at the
conclusion of this recital. “It was a case of monomania, if the facts
were as stated.”
“The facts,” replied Mr. Merton, “are unquestionable. They have all the
authenticity that facts can have, and there is not the least ground for
suspecting the good faith of the parties. They were all in perfect
health, with no symptoms of any disease about them. Now, as insanity, of
whatever variety, cannot render a man more than human, I demand, if
these facts can all be brought within the humanly possible? Does
insanity enable one to assume such difficult postures as are described?
Does it enable one to bend over backwards and walk rapidly with the nape
of the neck resting on his heels; to have the extraordinary extension of
legs mentioned; to read the thoughts of others not expressed; to tell
what is passing fifteen hundred leagues off; to understand and speak
languages never learned or before heard; and to remain for some time
suspended unsupported in the air? And, above all, is insanity or madness
cured by exorcisms? No, no, Doctor. The facts in the case, that is, if
you take not one or two, but _all_ of them, are certainly inexplicable
without the presence of a superhuman power.”
The Doctor was not at all pleased with this conclusion, which he would
by no means admit. He said the conversation, if continued, might injure
his patient, and giving me a few directions, took his hat and cane and
departed, apparently in a very unpleasant humor, and muttering something
about superstition, Salem witchcraft, and the absurdity of educated men
in the nineteenth century believing in such nonsense.
CHAPTER XIX.
MESMERISM INSUFFICIENT.
Insanity explains abnormal, but not superhuman phenomena. It is a
disease of the body, not of the mind itself. The mind, being a simple
spiritual or immaterial substance, is not susceptible of physical
derangement, and mental alienation proceeds from the lesion or
alteration of the bodily organs or conditions on which the mind is
dependent in its manifestations. It is cured, when curable, by medical,
not by purely spiritual treatment; by physic and good regimen, not by
exorcisms.
A few days after the conversation I have detailed, my friends being
again present, the subject was resumed. Dr. Corning sustained his
hypothesis triumphantly by selecting such facts in the cases brought
forward as it would explain, and by denying all the rest,—a very
convenient and common practice of theorizers,—even out of the medical
profession.
Mr. Sowerby, who had made a fortune by mesmerism and spirit-rapping,
thought that only a monomaniac would attempt to explain the mysterious
phenomena in question by insanity. There was in the cases not a symptom
of mania, and the persons affected, in their moments of repose, and even
while the affection lasted, were in the normal exercise of their
faculties, and indicated no signs of mental alienation, answering
always, when answering at all, pertinently, never at random,
consecutively, never incoherently, as is the case with the insane. He
explained them, not by mental alienation, but by the accumulation or
increased activity of a great and all pervading principle, perhaps the
vital principle itself, called the mesmeric or odic principle. He had
himself produced phenomena analogous to the most extraordinary recorded
in history.
Mr. Dodson, an ex-Universalist minister, mentioned on a former occasion,
and who had just published a book on spirit-manifestations, in