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THE 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUALISM 
 
 AND THE 
 
 PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT 
 OF MEDIOMANIA. 
 
 TWO LECTURES. 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERIC R. MARVIN, M. D., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGICAL MEDICINE AND MEDICAL JURISPRU- 
 DENCE IN THE NEW YORK FREE MEDICAL 
 COLLEGE FOR WOMEN. 
 
 READ BEFORE THE 
 
 NEW YORK LIBERAL. CLUB, 
 
 March 20 and 27, 1874. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 A9A K. BUTTS & CO., PUBLISHERS, 
 
 No. 36 Dey Street. 
 
 1874. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, 
 
 By ASA K. BUTTS & CO., 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C 
 
 A. K. BUTTS & CO., 
 i'HINTERS AND PUBLISHEIU, 
 
 U Dey Street, N. Y. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 It ia a sad thing that in the nineteenth century one can find oc- 
 casion to write such lectures as these. It is a sad thing that men 
 and women can be found who deserve to be spoken of as these 
 lectures speak of them, but we can not be blind to the fact that 
 there are thousands of them in the world — they themselves speak 
 of their number as comprising millions. It is not to hold them up 
 to needless ridicule that these lectures are written, nor is it 
 in any way to wound or offend them. Bitter as they are, they are 
 written in pity and love — pity for them and love for the race. 
 Their bitterness is because of their truth. These lectures are not 
 written for spiritual media. Spiritual media are beyond the reach of 
 lectures like these. They are in need of treatment which can be but 
 faintly indicated in these pages. These lectures are written to 
 save those who are about to be drawn into the meshes of Spiritual- 
 ism, and to them, without further word of preface, the author 
 recommends his lectures. F. R. M. 
 
 110 East 10th Street, New York. 
 
I. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 Materialism is both unscientific and groundless. It 
 has no root and can have none. Like Idealism, it is a 
 dream in which imagination usurps the place of reason. 
 I reject all forms of Materialism and among them Spirit- 
 ualism. Spiritualism is the heart of Materialism — it is 
 materialism of Materialism — the worst kind of Material- 
 ism. Its ghosts are material and appeal to the five 
 Behses — they have shape, color, and density ; they walk 
 and talk like men and women. Never did any form of 
 Materialism attack the soul so effectually as Spiritualism. 
 Other forms of Materialism have left the soul out and 
 ignored its existence, hut Spiritualism is an organized 
 effort to drag it into view and exhibit its earthiness. 
 Ilelvetius and Holbach denied its existence, but Robert 
 Dale Owen and Judge Edmonds would exhibit it very 
 much as 1 would exhibit a piece of timber or >tone. 
 " Here is our ghost,'' they cry ; " come and look at it." 
 
 Before proceeding to the .argument of this lecture I 
 shall endeavor to show that the soul can not be material 
 substance — can not be substance at all. It is pretended 
 that spirit is an infinitely attenuated matter — matter in a 
 perfectly raritied condition. This being the case, it is 
 claimed, and justly, that no violence i.> done to reason in 
 ascribing to spirit the properties of matter. But the po 
 
6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 sition is untenable. The air we breathe and in which we 
 live presents to the eye neither shape nor color, but it — 
 formless, colorless, and impalpable — is not spirit. Men do 
 not see the air, define its outline, or touch its substance. 
 The eye detects no difference between atmosphere and 
 vacua. I can resolve the air into its elements, and they 
 are not spirit. 
 
 But there is a substance more attenuated than air ; so 
 thin that the five senses take no cognizance of it ; so 
 light that common air sinks in it like lead. We do not 
 see, hear, taste, feel, or smell it, and yet it fills all space 
 and makes a vacuum a philosophical impossibility. We 
 should have remained ignorant of this substance but for 
 the discoveries of science. Guessed at by the ancients, 
 its existence has been demonstrated by astronomers and 
 philosophers. When Huyghens established the undu- 
 latory theory of light, he placed the last grain of proof in 
 the balance and turned the scales. This substance is 
 named ether; it fills all space, and on its great waves 
 our solar system rocks like a little boat. There is no 
 spot in the universe unfilled with matter. Here analy- 
 sis ends. We can not go behind ether and separate it 
 into elements. We seem to have arrived at the ultimate 
 element of the universe and can go no farther. We have 
 gone beyond air," and questioned ether, but have learned 
 nothing about spiritual substance. Mind and air are not 
 one, else the soul is composed of nitrogen, oxygen, and 
 carbonic acid. But ether is not spirit, and if it were it 
 could appear to no one, for it has neither shape nor color 
 and is demonstrable only by a process of reason based 
 on the wonderful sciences of astronomy and optics, 
 Spirit, then, if it be a form of matter, must be infinitely 
 more attenuated than ether — it must be so thin and sub- 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HPIRITf ALI8M. « 
 
 tile that no process of reason will demonstrate it And 
 yet there are persons who say that spirits appear to them 
 and converse with them. When I shall have spoken 
 with air and conversed with ether, then I will commune 
 with spirit. Matter is every where and every thing. If 
 spirit be a substance other than matter, it is nowhere and 
 nothing ; if it be matter, by definition, it is not spirit. 
 
 But does this argument do away with the soul ? Does 
 it abolish the spirit ? Are there, then, no factors in the 
 problem of life ? Is there no problem at all ? Far from 
 it ; the argument is for the soul and is prefatory to 
 another argument based on scientific data. It is only a 
 short path by which we arrive at those grounds on which 
 such men as Darwin, Tyndall, and Maudsley rear the 
 structure of the soul. Further on we shall inquire what 
 the scientific soul is; let us now find what the soul of the 
 Spiritualist is, and what theories are entertained with re- 
 gard to its post mortem existence. 
 
 Andrew Jackson Davis, an authority among Spiritual- 
 ists, says : " The body of the spirit (the soul) is a result 
 wrought out by the physical organization ; not that the 
 spirit is created, but that its structure is formed, by 
 means of the external body. Mind internally is not a 
 creation or ultimation of matter ; but mental organiza- 
 tion is a result of material refinement. Man's organism 
 is composed of muscles, bone, tissues, membranes, visceral 
 organs: these structures must have some specific purpose. 
 The use of a physical bone is to make a spiritual bone ; 
 even so the physical muscle makes a spiritual muscle ; 
 not the essence, but the form thereof. The use of the 
 cerebrum is to make a spiritual front brain ; even so the 
 cerebellum makes a spiritual back brain. Inside the vis- 
 ible spine is the spiritual spine invisible ; the material 
 
8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 lungs contain spiritual organs of respiration. The 
 physical ear is animated by a spiritual ear. In a word, 
 the whole outward body is a re-presentation of that 
 which is imperishable." * 
 
 " Although the spirit of man is substance and weight, 
 although it hath elasticity and divisibility and the 
 several ultimate qualifications and properties of matter, 
 yet it (spirit) obeys laws which are superior to ordi- 
 nary gravitation and superior (not antagonistic) to the 
 known physical forces." f 
 
 "1 affirm that the spirit's organization is substance ; 
 that it weighs something." J 
 
 Setting aside the nebulosity of Mr. Davis' rhetoric, we 
 gather from these quotations the following statements : 
 
 1. That man is composed of three substances, viz., 
 body, spirit and soul. 
 
 2. That the soul is the body of the spirit, and the visi- 
 ble body the body of the soul. 
 
 3. That the soul is a result of physical organization. 
 
 4. That within the physical man there is a spiritual 
 man, corresponding in form and size with its fleshy 
 exterior. 
 
 5. That spirit possesses the properties of matter. 
 
 If this be not Materialism, there is no such thing as 
 Materialism on the planet. In the statement that the 
 soul possesses the properties of matter we have the very 
 essence of Materialism — we have,- in fact, a eoneise form- 
 ula for Materialism pure and simple. That which pos- 
 sesses the properties of matter is matter. We know 
 matter only through its phenomena or properties. 
 All knowledge is relative ; there is no such thing as 
 absolute knowledge. We can define matter only by 
 
 * " The Penetralia," p. 191. fib., p. 193. +Ib., p. 196. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF 8PIRrTUALI8M. N 
 
 " enumerating its sensible qualities." Those qualities 
 we refer to substrata, but, so far as we know, they 
 are not the substrata of which they are predicated. We 
 define matter as a substance possessed of such prop- 
 erties as form, weight, density, etc., and Mr. Davis 
 declares that spirit " weighs something/' What is 
 weight ? Weight is not gravity, but it is the effect of 
 gravity. It is the measurement of that force which we 
 call gravity. It is comparative tendency to the center 
 of the earth. It is the " resultant of all the forces ex- 
 erted by gravity upon the different particles of the body," 
 and is proportional to the quantity of matter in the body. 
 What ! has the spirit particles I Mr. Davis' assertions in- 
 volve as much. What is a particle '. A group of atoms. 
 Then the soul is composed of atoms. What is an atom f 
 A portion of matter so minute as to be incapable of di- 
 vision. The soul, then, is composed of (material) atoms: 
 The whole is as the sum of its parts, hence the soul is as 
 material as the body — is the body. This is the Spiritual- 
 ism which Mr. Davis teaches, and I do not see how it dif- 
 fers from Materialism. Helvetius never propounded so 
 soul-destroying a doctrine ; his system of philosophy 
 is the most dreamy Idealism compared with this. 
 
 The soul is material. It only remains for Mr. Davis 
 to ascertain its specific gravity and chemical reaction. Is 
 it ciystalizable \ Ts it polarizable \ Is it combustible? 
 These must be interesting questions to aerial chemists. 
 
 Judge Edmonds ih an authority among Spiritualists. 
 He is a better writer than Mr. Davis, and we shall find 
 less difficulty in arriving at his meaning. He says: 
 " The soul is an independent entity or existence of itself — 
 preserving its own individuality and identity independ- 
 ent of all other existence, whether connected or discon- 
 
10 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 nected with it. It has its own peculiar attributes of 
 thought and feeling, which it can exercise independently 
 of, as well as in connection with, the body."* Here we 
 have a startling inaccuracy. The soul is described as an 
 " independent entity " — the implication is that it is im- 
 material, and yet we are told that it peforms a physical 
 function and thinks. Thought has been shown to. be a 
 function of the brain, and surely no one out of an insane 
 asylum can believe it possible for a function to survive 
 its organ — for digestion, secretion, and cerebration to go 
 on after the stomach, glands, and cerebrum are dead. 
 
 But Judge Edmonds goes on to say : " Science has 
 long spoken of the duality of man, conveying the idea of 
 two separate and distinct entities belonging to him ; but 
 how thus connected is involved in profound mystery. . 
 This quality consists of two existences." I find my in- 
 tellect unable to grasp the thought of a quality consisting 
 of existences, but so Judge Edmonds lias it. Further on 
 he says : " There is in man the emanation from God in 
 the soul — the animal nature in the body, and the connec- 
 tion of the two in what I will designate as the electrical 
 body. Hence, man is a trinity." There is here no essen- 
 tial disagreement between Judge Edmonds and Mr. 
 Davis. In another place Judge Edmonds says : " There 
 is something in man beyond what is . possessed by any 
 other animal. This is not merely the power of reasoning, 
 for .man and the animals alike possess and exert that 
 faculty. Place a man and a horse in the middle of a 
 field, and both will reason in the same way about going 
 to a neighboring biook to quench their thirst. A child 
 and a kitten will reason precisely alike in respect to the 
 
 intercourse with Spirits of the Living, "Spiritual Tracts, " 
 No. 7, p. 6. 
 
 
THK PULLOBOPHY Ol SPIRITUALISM. 11 
 
 danger of touching fire. But there is something in the 
 man and child that the horse and the kitten have not 
 got, and can not get. I may, with propriety, call this 
 1 Devotion] for it is the power of comprehending the 
 existence of a Great First Cause, and our connection 
 with it, and embraces something more than the power of 
 reasoning, and the mere capacity of the intellect to form 
 a conclusion from that reasoning. This i Devotion ' be- 
 longs to the soul, and not the body, and can be displayed 
 only by that living being which has the attribute of 
 immortality/' * 
 
 Observe, that something which is peculiar to the soul 
 and due& not belong to the body is devotion, not thought. 
 This being the case, thought is a physical function, and, 
 like the body, perishes at death, leaving the soul to sur- 
 vive with nothing but devotion. Remarkable misfortune! 
 die soul, spending eternity without thinking, reasoning, 
 or judging, does nothing but adore. 
 
 Animals, such as the horse and cat, Judge Edmonds 
 says, art' without souls, and yet think. This being the 
 case thought is in no way connected with the soul, and 
 if not connected with the soul must be connected with 
 the body, since that is the only other entity with which 
 we are acquainted. Thought, then, is a physical function. 
 This statement Judge Edmonds will not indorse though 
 his argument commits him to it. 
 
 Elsewhere Judge Edmonds calls thought an attribute 
 of the soul ; and since horses and kittens think, they have 
 souls. An attribute of the soul, according to the Judge, 
 is devotion, therefore horses and kittens, since they have 
 souls, exercise devotion. The Judge calls devotion the 
 
 ♦Intercourse with Spirits of the Living, "Spiritual Tracts," 
 No. 7, p. 5. 
 
12 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 attribute of immortality, hence horses and kittens, since 
 they exercise devotion, are immortal. Now if thought 
 is a function of the soul, and the soul's development is 
 proportioned to the development of its functions, it fol- 
 lows that a horse has a more highly developed soul than 
 a human infant, for it is a more advanced thinker — it 
 exercises judgment, and appreciates the relations of cause 
 and effect, and a human infant does not. Now if the 
 soul is the only entity that survives death, the horse is 
 more likely to experience the joys of Paradise than the 
 human infant, and as the majority of the human race die 
 in extreme infancy the prospects of a select company in 
 the other world are remarkably poor. 
 
 We have discovered the Spiritualist's idea of the soul. 
 It is an entity immaterial in its nature and yet possessed 
 of material attributes. In other words, it is a monster so 
 monstrous as to be unthinkable. A fine basis, this, for 
 the religion of the future. 
 
 Against this form of Materialism it is the duty of all 
 good men to protest. They who believe in the soul 
 must look with sorrow and contempt on this unnatural 
 delusion. 
 
 What does Spiritualism teach. with regard to the post 
 mortem*existence of the soul '? Says Robert Dale Owen : 
 " There have always existed intermundane laws, accord- 
 ing to which men may occasionally obtain, under certain 
 conditions, revealings from those who have passed to the 
 next world before them. A certain proportion of human 
 beings are more sensitive to spiritual perceptions and 
 influences than their fellows ; and it is usually in the 
 presence, or through the medium, of one or more of these 
 that ultramundane intercourse occurs."* 
 *"The Debatable Land," p. 174. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUALISM. 13 
 
 Andrew Jackson Davis says: "After the event called 
 physical death, his (man's) spirit, preserving its individ- 
 uality, and all its endowments, goes forward and gains a 
 higher and better state of existence. It becomes accli- 
 mated, so to say, to that world, and acquainted with its 
 customs, and with the great recent discovery that a com- 
 munication can be had with remaining relatives, that 
 spirit can come back and demonstrate its existence ; dis- 
 pensing not only social harmony, but also occasional moral 
 and intellectual feasts at spiritual tables."* 
 
 Mr. Davis declares, in another book,| that Spiritualists 
 commonly believe : 
 
 " 1. That departed spirits, both good and evil, contin- 
 ually float and dive about in the earth's physical atmo- 
 sphere. 
 
 " 2. That evil-disposed characters, having died in their 
 active sins, linger around men and women both day and 
 night, in order to gratify their unsatisfied passions and 
 prevailing propensities. 
 
 " 3. That all known mental disturbances, such as in- 
 sanity, murder, suicide, licentiousness, arson, theft, and 
 various evil impulses and deeds, are caused by the direct 
 action of the will of false and malignant spirits. 
 
 " 4. That certain passionate spirits, opposed to purity 
 and truth and goodness, are busy breaking up the tender 
 ties of families, and take delight in separating persons 
 living happily in the marriage relation. 
 
 " 5. That spirits are at all times subject to summons, 
 and can be 'called up' or made to * appear' in circles ; 
 and that the ' mediums ' have no private rights or powers 
 of will which the spirits are bound to respect. 
 
 " 6. That spirits are both substantial and immaterial ; 
 
 * " The Penetralia," p. 210. f " The Fountain." 
 
14 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 that they traverse the empire of solids and bolt through 
 solid substances, without respecting any of the laws of 
 solids and substances ; and that they can perform any- 
 thing they like, to astonish the investigator. 
 
 " 7. That every human being is a medium in one 
 form or another, and to some extent ; and that all per- 
 sons, unconsciously to themselves, are acting out the 
 feelings, the will, and the mind of spirits. 
 
 " 8. That spiritual intercourse is perpetual ; that it is 
 everywhere operative ; and that, being at last estab- 
 lished, it cannot be again suspended. 
 
 " 9. That the reading of books, and reflection, as a 
 means of obtaining truth, are no longer necessary to 
 believers ; that the guardian band of spirits will impart 
 to the faithful everything worth knowing ; and that, for 
 anything further, one need only wait upon the promptings 
 of intuition ; and that, in any event, ' whatever is is 
 right.' " 
 
 I, w^ho am an open and conscientious enemy of Spirit- 
 ualism, would hardly have preferred such charges against 
 Spiritualists, but Mr. Davis, who is one of their number 
 and the author of many of their books, and who ought 
 to know and doubtless does know the nature of these 
 charges, does not hesitate to urge them. In justice to 
 Mr. Davis, it must be said that he does not hold a_l the 
 articles in the above creed. His followers have outdone 
 him in credulity and he has just cause to be ashamed of 
 them. 
 
 Now what evidence does Spiritualism afford that the 
 soul survives the body ? We are told, the evidence of 
 manifestations. Every manifestation belongs to one of 
 three classes ; the physical, metaphysical, and physico- 
 metaphysical. 
 
THK PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUALI8M. 15 
 
 Physical manifestations are such as are perceived by 
 the senses. Table-tipping, spirit-rapping, and the audi- 
 ence of mysterious sounds are familiar examples of physi- 
 cal manifestations. A purely physical manifestation 
 proves nothing. The fact that you can not explain the 
 manifestation has nothing to do with the subject. You 
 can not explain the growth of a blade of grass. This 
 growth is more wonderful than the tipping of a table, 
 and yet it never suggests the existence of a soul. No man 
 ever built a theory of immortality on a blade of grass 
 or suspended such a theory from the petal of a rose. 
 The mystery of generation is unexplained — the deep- 
 est intellects have searched in vain for its hidden mean- 
 ing, but what would you think of thesanity of a man 
 who could argue thus : The causa causarum of genera- 
 tion has never been discovered — the whole subject is 
 wrapped in mystery — therefore the soul is immortal. 
 Are the revelations, poems, and speeches that fall from 
 the lips of media wonderful ? The revelations, poems, 
 and speeches that fall from the lips of sane men and 
 women are still more wonderful ; but who treasures the 
 ordinary conversation of the average man and on it 
 builds a theory of another world ? Mystery proves noth- 
 ing — it is the element that interferes with proof. 
 
 For thousands of years the electric flash illuminated 
 the midnight heavens before men looked on lightning 
 with other emotions than those' of awe and terror. They 
 could not solve the mystery of the lightning, and, savage- 
 like, they referred it to the supernatural. But shall we 
 of the nineteenth century fall into the same error ( 
 Shall we resign all strange and startling facts to the 
 realm of the supernatural ? In the name of Science, no ! 
 a thousand times no ! Let us patiently investigate and 
 
16 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 quietly wait the development of science ; and I believe 
 we will not have long to wait, for it is already clear that 
 much, if not most, of the " spiritual phenomena " are the 
 results of deliberate imposture, pitiable credulity, or 
 grievous disease. 
 
 The savage worships mystery. No fetich-worshiper 
 has been discovered so low in the scale of humanity that 
 he worshiped a stick or stone as such. They who, in the 
 long ages of the past, worshiped wood and stone wor- 
 shiped them for the power and mystery with which im- 
 agination clothed them. Convince the Hindoo that the 
 image is only stone, metal, or wood, and he w T ill kneel to 
 it no longer. Show the Egyptian that the ibis and cat 
 are in no way essentially unlike animals of their species 
 and he will stop worshiping them. In all ages of the hu- 
 man era mystery has been the secret of spiritual bondage. 
 All centuries have had fetich-worshipers. In most an- 
 cient times men kneeled before bits of stone and wood ; 
 in mediaeval times they worshiped crucifixes, pictures of 
 the Madonna, and strings of beads; and in these times — 
 O te??ipora ! O mores ! — there are men who look with 
 a semi-reverence approaching adoration on the unmean- 
 ing gestures and senseless drivel of the mediomaniae. 
 Spiritualism is, in a mild way, the fetich-worship of the 
 nineteenth century. 
 
 I am informed there are four million men and women 
 in America who believe in Spiritualism and whose minds 
 are never lifted from its delusion.* Men and women who, 
 crazed with w r onder at some trivial event, set aside the 
 teachings of philosophy and common-sense and face des- 
 
 * Judge Edmonds, in a letter to the "Spiritual Magazine" of 
 London, dated May 4, 1867, estimated the number of Spiritualists 
 in the United States, at ten millions. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF 8PTRITUATJ6M. 17 
 
 tiny with a lie ; who stand, many of them, night after 
 night, under the vaulted heavens, lighted by stars that 
 have wandered through dim centuries over trackless 
 spaces, and never lift their eyes in wonder, but are 
 wrapped in awe and transported with delight at the 
 gyrations of a three-legged table or the incoherent raving 
 of a crazy woman. 
 
 Dr. Bartol was persuaded to visit a spiritual seance, 
 where he was shown a table that tipped as though alive. 
 He was asked if it was not very wonderful. " Yes," said 
 the Doctor, " but just as wonderful when itxloes not tip." 
 
 I am not easily impressed with the marvelous. I 
 have lived a quarter of a century in a world where every- 
 thing is wonderful and where nothing is absolutely ex- 
 plicable, and 1 have become somewhat accustomed to 
 take the unexplained for .what it is worth, without jump- 
 ing at an excited solution. But if we are going to be 
 deranged with the wonderful, let us have as healthy a 
 derangement as possible. Let us go wild over the green 
 fields and blue heavens ; the stars that make the night 
 beautiful and the sun that makes the day golden ; but, in 
 the name of taste and culture let us not select a tipping- 
 table nor an illiterate phantom. 
 
 The second class of manifestations is denominated met- 
 aphysical. Metaphysical phenomena are such as appeal, 
 not to the senses, but to the consciousness of the operator. 
 
 I. have no faith in the revelations of consciousness. 
 Says Dr. Maudsley : " Consciousness can never be a valid 
 and unprejudiced witness ; for although it testifies to the 
 existence of a particular subjective modification, yet when 
 that modification has anything of a morbid character, 
 consciousness is affected by the taint and is morbid also. 
 Accordingly, the lunatic appeals to the evidence of his 
 
18 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 own consciousness for the truth of his hallucination or 
 delusion, and insists that he has as sure evidence of its 
 reality as he has of the argument of any one who may 
 try to convince him of his error ; and he is right : to one 
 
 who has vertigo the world turns round Is it not 
 
 supremely ridiculous that while we can not trust con- 
 sciousness in so simple a matter as whether we are hot or 
 cold, we should be content to rely entirely on its evidence 
 in the complex phenomena of our highest mental activ- 
 ity."* If we can not trust the consciousness of a normal 
 mind, how shall we trust that of an abnormal mind 1 If 
 we can not trust the consciousness of a sane man, how 
 shall we trust that of a medium ? 
 
 A woman who suffers from melancholia assures me 
 that she receives daily visits from the devil, who shocks 
 and grieves her by the use of profane and impure 
 language. All my arguments fail to convince her of the 
 folly of her delusion. She appeals to her consciousness, 
 and from a subjective standpoiut her appeal is resistless. 
 I tell her her consciousness is an unsafe guide ; that it is 
 deranged and must not be trusted. She replies : "I am 
 also conscious of hunger and sleepiness ; if I could 
 doubt my consciousness in one case, I would doubt it in 
 all, and I would not only dismiss the devil from my 
 thought, but I would also reject food and sleep. There 
 is nothing illogical in this. If consciousness be a safe 
 guide for an hour, it is a safe guide forever ; but if con- 
 sciousness be a safe guide, then this woman's diabolical 
 visitor is a veritable entity and not a phantom — then in- 
 deed there is no such tiling as a hallucination ; the wild- 
 est dream of the most disordered intellect is a sacred 
 truth, as real as the earth on which we stand. Conscious- 
 
 * " Physiology and Pathology of the Mind," p. 24. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUALISM. 19 
 
 uess is never a safe guide, but it does not follow that be- 
 cause she is not a safe guide she is always a false one. 
 The woman's consciousness of hunger was correct, but 
 her consciousness of the personal presence of the devil 
 was incorrect. 
 
 The third class of manifestations is more important 
 than either of the others. In it physical and metaphys- 
 ical phenomena are united and so associated as to give 
 each other significance. The table now not only tips, 
 but tips responsive to mental action ; its replies to ques- 
 tions given orally or mentally; it converses with the 
 operator and so makes manifest that its movements are 
 controlled by mental action. 
 
 Setting aside two-thirds of the phenomena, which are, 
 beyond all doubt, the results of superstition or fraud, 
 there remain a few phenomena which actually occur and 
 are more or less wonderful ; but there is nothing in their 
 nature which indicates the presence of a disembodied 
 spirit, and there are many things which make it evident 
 that no such spirit has anything to do with them. 
 
 It is an acknowledged fact, and one to which Mr. 
 Davis and Judge Edmonds have assented, that thought 
 is a function of the brain. If thought be a function of 
 the brain, it depends on that organ and can not be per- 
 formed apart from it. Hence if the movements of a table 
 or any other article of furniture are guided by thought, 
 a brain must be at hand, for without that organ you can 
 not have the function. But the brain, like all other or- 
 gans, is material and can not be possessed by a spirit, or 
 if it could be so possessed, being material, it would be 
 visible, but no brain suspended in the air is ever seen 
 
 " But," says the Spiritualist, " the table evidently does 
 respond to thought, and if thought is a function of the 
 
20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 8PrRITTTALI6M. 
 
 brain, where is the brain that moves the table V There 
 seems to be but one scientific reply, and I make it guard- 
 edly, and yet confidently and with profound acknowledg- 
 ment of the mystery. It is that the brain which moves 
 the table is always within the head of the operator. 
 
 ." But," says the operator, " I am honest and do not 
 touch the table, still it moves." Let it be admitted that 
 the operator is honest, and that the table moves without 
 actual contact with his person, is that conclusive evidence 
 that the table is removed from his intellectual control ? 
 It is far more rational to believe that the brain of a liv- 
 ing man, of whose existence I have proof, exerts an influ- 
 ence which moves the table, than that the invisible and 
 imponderable brain of a spirit, of whose existence I have 
 no proof, moves the same article of furniture. What do 
 I gain by discarding the improbable for the impossible ? 
 
 " But," says the operator, " the table replied to my 
 questions as only a second person could — it told me of 
 things I had forgotten or never knew — it responded to 
 thoughts which were not in my brain." Here the ope- 
 rator exhibits ignorance of a cardinal fact in cerebro- 
 physiology. It is now generally admitted that our 
 thoughts are usually carried on below consciousness. 
 Two-thirds of all the thoughts we think never reach con- 
 sciousness, and yet they are as necessary to our intellect- 
 ual being; as those thoughts of which we are conscious. 
 " The insensible perceptions," says Liebnitz, "are as im- 
 portant in neurology as corpuscles are in physics." These 
 unconscious thoughts, which are in some respects our 
 best thoughts, make their influence felt through our un- 
 conscious thoughts. Many of the noblest achievements 
 in art, literature, music, and science are the direct results 
 of unconscious cerebration. In fact the largest part of 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUALISM. 21 
 
 the routine of life is carried on unconsciously. We think 
 without knowing it, just as we digest without knowing it. 
 The mere fact that we were unconscious of a thought is 
 no evidence that the thought did not occur. It is fre- 
 quently said that a man can not think more than one 
 thought at a time, but it is a mistake ; there are not 
 moments when the brain is unemployed in the elabora- 
 tion of many strange and intricate thoughts of which 
 there is no consciousness whatever. 
 
 To a lecturer on Spiritualism I put the question : How 
 can you see a spirit \ He replied : " Spirits assume those 
 forms which they wore on earth, and cover themselves 
 with the appearance of such articles of clothing as they 
 were accustomed to carry upon their persons in earth- 
 life, and this they do that they may be recognized by 
 their friends on earth." This, like most of the muddy 
 explanations of Spiritualism, is worse than worthless, 
 for it not only contradicts sound reason, but actually re- 
 futes itself. 
 
 Form is nothing per se. It is an attribute or quality 
 of a substance, but not a substance in itself. In itself it 
 is nothing. There is no such thing as abstract form — 
 the very idea is unthinkable. The constitution of the 
 human mind is such as to compel us to think of form as 
 indissolubly associated with substance. Now if form be 
 indissolubly associated with substance, it can be assumed 
 only by assuming the substance' of which it is a quality. 
 It is universally admitted that form or shape is a quality 
 of matter, therefore if spirits assume form they must also 
 assume the material substances of which the forms are 
 predicated. Now if spirits assume material forms, those 
 forms must be more or less visible to ordinary observers, 
 but 1 have examined with strong glasses those portions 
 
22 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 of space in which my mediumistic friends have professed 
 to see the departed and have not yet detected the pres- 
 ence of a spirit. But, it may be urged, the material with 
 which spirits clothe themselves is of so thin and subtile 
 texture as to escape observation — no eye but that of the 
 medium can see its filmy outline. But why may not the 
 chemist detect it ? I am not aware that the most deli- 
 cate chemical tests have ever detected the presence of a 
 spirit. There are chemical tests that respond to the 
 slightest change in temperature — to the faintest move- 
 ment in the air — balances that tremble under the stroke 
 of a sunbeam, and yet they are never disturbed by these 
 denizens of the other world. But, does the Spiritualist 
 protest against this effort to find out the spirit by phys- 
 ical processes % I reply that I am not searching for the 
 spirit, but for the material substance with which the spirit 
 clothes itself; that, surely, is a legitimate object of scien- 
 tific investigation. This substance surely is not so subtile 
 as ether, for it has form, and ether has not, and yet ether 
 was discovered by scientific processes. Why, then, may 
 not this substance be so discovered ? 
 
 Why, if this substance is invisible to the ordinary eye, 
 is it visible to the eye of the medium % I have examined 
 a large number of living eyes through the opthalmoscope 
 and a still larger number of dead ones through the micro- 
 scope—I have examined the eyes of Spiritualists and 
 Materialists, Christians and Atheists, and have not dis- 
 covered any peculiarity in the organ of vision which 
 might produce this wonderful exaggeration in the sense 
 of sight. 
 
 To say that a spirit assumes a form is to say that it 
 assumes a spiritual or material form. To say it assumes 
 a spiritual or material form is to say it assumes a spiritual 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUALISM. 23 
 
 or material substance ; but if a spirit be really spiritual, it 
 can not assume a spiritual substance, since it is already 
 spiritual. But if it assume a material substance, we 
 should be able to discover that substance by physical 
 processes ; we can not so discover it, therefore belief in 
 its existence is unscientific. 
 
 Do not misunderstand me. I do not deny that inex- 
 plicable phenomena of a supposed spiritual nature are 
 presented at seances and circles. I have seen phenom- 
 ena which I do not pretend to explain. What I w^ish to 
 say is, that if for every inexplicable phenomenon there 
 were fifty thousand just as inexplicable, I would not be- 
 lieve in Spiritualism, for there is no connection whatever 
 between the phenomena of Spiritualism and the theory 
 of Spiritualism. I find no fault with the Report of the 
 Committee of the London Dialectical Society, but I do 
 utterly despise the charlatans who tamper with that re- 
 port, and wrench from it inferences unwarranted in the 
 premises. The committee testified to the occurrence of 
 certain phenomena, but, true to scientific training, it plant- 
 ed itself on facts and from them drew no dreamy fancy 
 and no visionary hypothesis. A sub-committee held 
 forty meetings for careful and honest experiment, and 
 it's testimony, though far from conclusive, is worth the 
 testimony of a thousand untrained experimenters.* 
 
 It has been my fortune to know media of all degrees 
 of intellectual attainment, and 'my experience in their 
 peculiar department of legerdemain is not insignificant. 
 
 * " Report on Spiritualism of the Committee of the London Dia- 
 lectical Society, together with the Evidence, Oral and Written, 
 and a Selection from the Correspondence." London : Longman, 
 Green, Reader and Dyer. 1871. A. K. Butts & Co., New York, 
 
 See Appendix to this book. 
 
24 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 I divided the phenomena of Spiritualism into three classes. 
 I now make a twofold division. All the manifestations 
 of Spiritualism are either spurious or genuine. Half of 
 the manifestations are either patently spurious or want- 
 ing in scientific evidence of their genuineness. The other 
 half I subdivide into the more or less explicable and into 
 the completely inexplicable. Certain phenomena of Spir- 
 itualism are genuine — that is the 2^ ien 07?iena are genu- 
 ine. The hypothesis which Spiritualists endeavor to 
 build on these phenomena is altogether another thing. 
 These phenomena are largely the results of disordered 
 nervous action, and will be treated of in another lecture. 
 Certain physiological and natural laws which have been 
 recently discovered are explaining many of the wonders 
 of spiritual intercourse. Cerebro-physiology, with its 
 marvelous doctrines of unconscious cerebration, auto- 
 matic thought and action, the corelation of thought with 
 other forces in the universe, and the physical basis of mem- 
 ory, is sending light into the dark things of modern 
 witchcraft. 
 
 "There's nothing happens but by natural causes, 
 Which in unusual things fools can not find, 
 And then they call thein miracles." 
 
 A lady applied to a medium for news concerning her 
 deceased husband. The medium, a tall, middle-aged 
 woman of average intellect, after several gasps as if for 
 breath, nervous twitches of the facial muscles, etc., passed 
 into a trance, during which she reported to my friend the 
 presence of a gentleman whose face and hair resembled 
 those of her deceased husband. But, to the astonishment 
 of the lady, the ghostly gentleman was attired in canvas 
 garments, and on his coat the medium discovered brass 
 buttons stamped with the manufacturer's name. After a 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUALISM. ^5 
 
 moment of thought the lady suddenly recollected that 
 her husband was a chemist and frequently when in the 
 laboratory protected himself against certain chemical 
 preparations by the use of canvas garments. This was 
 enough for the lady. She did not stop to investigate. 
 It did not occur to her mind that the medium's vision 
 pre-existed in her own intellect and that she had after all 
 learned nothing new. In her delight 'she believed the 
 vision, loaded the astonished medium with gifts, and 
 became a convert. 
 
 But what does this revelation, which is typical, really 
 prove. It proves the immortality of that suit of clothes 
 as much as it does the immortality of the man who wore 
 them. The lady's husband was not a whit more immor- 
 tal than the buttons on his coat. But if that gentleman's 
 buttons and pantaloons are immortal, why is not every 
 button on the planet and every pair of pantaloons just as 
 immortal. In other words, why may we not all spend 
 eternity wearing out our old clothes? Wearing them 
 out, did I say ? No, they are immortal ! Horrible an- 
 ticipation ! they have eternal youth. 
 
 But we have not yet reached the bottom of this delu- 
 sion; there are depths of intellectual degradation of 
 which we have not yet spoken. 
 
 In an Atlantic city a number of ladies and gentlemen 
 have united with disembodied spirits and formed a society 
 having a constitution, by laws, and a roll of membership. 
 This membership roll contains the names of disembodied 
 spi.its as well as those of living men and women. 
 All candidates — men, women, and ghosts — are re- 
 ceived into the society only on a two- thirds vote of the 
 members present, whether embodied or disembodied. 
 These ladies and gentlemen assemble every month and 
 
26 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIK1TTJALISM. 
 
 solemnly and deliberately read the minutes of the society 
 into the air, firmly convinced that a band of celestial 
 members hovers near. After reading the minutes 
 they await the action of the celestials, who, if they do 
 not amend the document, signify their approval by raps 
 upon the table. 
 
 One other instance of remarkable credulity and we 
 close this lecture w r ith a few thoughts concerning the 
 scientific soul. 
 
 There is a medium in this city who advertises that he 
 will cure all diseases, whether chronic or acute, by the 
 imposition of hands or the use of magnetic papers. He 
 states that his success in the treatment of disease has 
 been so remarkable that regular physicians, fearing an 
 injury to their practice, frequently threaten his life, but 
 then his disinterested devotion to the welfare of the race 
 has induced him, by aid and counsel of the spirits, to 
 bear all manner of persecution for the Kingdom of Heav- 
 en's sake. Through his circular he promises to remove 
 cancer, cure gout, rheumatism, consumption, dyspepsia, 
 JBright's disease and heart disease ; also to foretell future 
 events, name lucky numbers and bring about happy mar- 
 riages. This gentleman's treatment for Bright's disease 
 is sufficiently unique to merit public notice. The treat- 
 ment consists in pasting pieces of colored paper over the 
 patient's kidneys. These papers are magnetized and 
 contain the words " life," " light," " health," " no more 
 calomel," "progression," etc. Evidently this spiritual 
 physician is no anatomist, for a patient failing to get relief 
 under regular treatment visited this doctor and returned 
 with papers pasted a considerable distance from her kid- 
 neys. His treatment for other disorders, which the occa- 
 sion forbids my mentioning, is to make passes over the 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUALISM. 27 
 
 afflicted parts. These methods of treatment are pro- 
 nounced strictly spiritual. 
 
 What I have said of this medium is true, and yet 
 there are many men and women in New York who 
 consult him in preference to an honest and scientific 
 physician. 
 
 Are not these things very sad ? To me Spiritualism 
 seems the most mournful calamity that has ever happened 
 to the human race — it is a revival of the dark ages in the 
 noonday of the nineteenth century. 
 
 We will now speak of the scientific soul. What is it? 
 Physicians once believed in a nervous fluid which was 
 supposed to circulate in the nerves as blood circulates in 
 the artero-venous channels. Alexander Munro declared 
 in 1783 that the nerves are tubes or ducts conveying a 
 fluid secreted in the brain, the cerebellum, and spinal 
 marrow. Willis, who lived during the reign of Charles 
 II, taught the existence of a nervous fluid, as did most 
 of the early neuro-physiologists, and I am sorry to say 
 that the theory is not yet wholly dead, for Dr. Richard- 
 son has recently published a paper, entitled " Theory of 
 a Nervous Ether," in which he seeks to revive faith in a 
 nervous fluid. 
 
 Modern physicians, as a class, reject the theory of a 
 nervous fluid. I have dissected, pulverized, dissolved, 
 and chemically analyzed various nervous tissues and cen- 
 ters without finding other fluids than those necessary to 
 the nutrition and anatomical constitution of nerve tissue. 
 That which is liberated at nervous centers and is the 
 secret of nervous impulse is not a fluid — it is a force. 
 1 say liberated at nervous centers, not generated, for I 
 do not believe that force is generated anywhere. There 
 never was and there never will be more force in the uni- 
 
28 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 verse than there is to-day. The utilization of force by 
 the brain is thought — this utilization is the function of 
 that part of the brain which we call the cerebrum. Here 
 we arrive at the scientific soul — it is nervous energy. A 
 soul finer than any metaphysical entity — thinner than a 
 ghost — purely immaterial. The soul is not dust. 
 
 " Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 
 Was not written of the soul." 
 
 What soul known to the Spiritualist has so fine a texture 
 as this soul of science ? — a soul so ethereal that none hear 
 its mystic footfall on the grosser highway of the air, and 
 yet not so subtile as to elude the patient student who 
 takes Nature at her word. This is a soul worth possess- 
 ing — that is corelated with its fellow forces and so unites 
 us with the glorious processes of the universe. Away 
 from our little brains, into the forever of space, float 
 waves of motion. Ceasing to be waves of nervous mo- 
 tion, they reach the air and become waves of atmospheric 
 motion. The thought you think may vibrate the other 
 side of the universe in the trembling of a flower or the 
 majestic sweep of a planet. We are one with every ob- 
 ject on the earth and with the dear old earth itself; and 
 as our planet glides through the fathomless abysses we 
 know the rythm of her cosmic motion throbs in our 
 little brains and pulsates in every breath we breathe. 
 
 " Know'st thou th' importance of a soul immortal ? 
 Behold this midnight glory — worlds on worlds ! 
 Amazing pomp : redouble this amaze ! 
 Ten thousand add ; and twice ten thousand more ; 
 Then weigh the whole ; one soul outweighs them all, 
 And calls th' astonishing magnificence 
 Of unintelligent creation poor. " 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUALISM. 29 
 
 Every one recognizes the fact that the body changes 
 from moment to moment. You have not the same bodies 
 with which you were born — your bodies are not the iden- 
 tical bodies you possessed yesterday — nay, they are not 
 exactly the same bodies with which you entered this 
 room. Every moment a cell is born — every moment a 
 cell dies. What has been said of the body is true of the 
 soul. The soul like the body is neither fixed nor change- 
 less. You have not the same soul you had yesterday. 
 No, nor the same soul with which you entered this room. 
 Forces are forever arriving in your brain and departing. 
 These forces are using you and you are using them — 
 reaching your brain they serve its purpose and are your 
 soul. Having served its purpose they cease to exist as 
 thoughts, change their form and go on other missions. 
 Science has demonstrated the existence and immortality 
 of the soul and has given to the demonstration a mathe- 
 matical certainty. The soul is immortal in its own na- 
 ture, and in history, and in the race. 
 
II. 
 
 THE PATHOLGY AND TKEATMENT OF 
 MEDIOMANIA. 
 
 In approaching the subject of rnediomania we feel that 
 we are treading on dangerous and uncertain ground. 
 The pathology and treatment of mental disorders are so 
 unsettled and inaccurate that it seems rashness to treat of 
 them. But the insane are with us and we can not escape 
 them. They appeal for sympathy and assistance, and so- 
 ciety demands protection. It is the duty of the physician 
 to both mitigate the suffering of the insane and protect 
 society against their depredations. The former duty he 
 accomplishes by studying the nature of insanity and 
 applying such remedies as mitigate the symptoms or cor- 
 rect the disorder. The latter duty he accomplishes by 
 detecting the malingerer or feigner of insanity and by 
 providing suitable hospitals and asylums for the deranged. 
 
 Unsettled as cerebral-pathology is, the treatment of in- 
 sanity is possible; and not only possible but attended with 
 results the brilliance of which is eclipsed only by their 
 usefulness. 
 
 All treatment must rest on a recognition of the fact 
 that insanity is a disease of the brain and not of the 
 mind. Mind is a word which signifies a force resulting 
 from and liberated by nervous action.* It never exists 
 
 * " Hammond on Diseases of the Nervous System." p. 234. 
 
/ 
 
 32 THE PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT 
 
 apart from the nervous system and can not be spoken of 
 as an entity. It is to the brain what pulsation is to the 
 heart. Let the heart become the seat of disease and im- 
 mediately that organ ceases to beat with accuracy and 
 vigor ; lot life be extinguished and the heart ceases to 
 beat altogether. Let pathological changes occur in the 
 tissue of the brain and immediately it fails to think with 
 wonted delicacy and correctness ; let life be extinguished 
 and it ceases to think altogether. The pulsation of the 
 heart is not an entity — it is motion ; nor is thought an 
 entity — it is a function. Thought, like light and heat, is 
 a mode of motion. When the brain dies thought goes 
 where motion goes when the wheel stops. 
 
 Let us clearly understand that insanity is a disease of 
 the brain. Were it a disease of an immaterial entity it 
 could not be treated with drugs nor by mechanical ap- 
 plications, since all such agents are material in their 
 nature and can affect only material substances ; but since 
 it is a disease of the. brain, it may be successfully treated 
 as other diseases are, by the application of physical rem- 
 / edies. 
 
 How do we know that insanity is a disease of the brain ? 
 We know it in many ways which it is foreign to our 
 purpose to mention ; but, in general, it may be said that 
 since intellection is always discovered in connection with 
 material entia and is entirely controlled, so far as we 
 know, by states of matter ; it is evidently a function of 
 matter. In the treatment of insanity we discover that a 
 leech, the abstraction of a few ounces of blood, the ad- 
 ministration of a few grains of opium, or the application 
 .of ice to the head, or of warm fomentations to the feet, 
 will not only modify, but change and even abolish, the 
 phenomena of derangement. All these agents — the 
 
OP MEDIOMANTA. 33 
 
 leech, opium, ice, and warm fomentations — are material 
 agents and affect material substances, and so modify the 
 phenomena of mental derangement. 
 
 Insanity, then, is a disease of the brain, and must be 
 treated not only by psychological, but by physiological, 
 agents. In using the term psychological agent or med- 
 icine, do not understand me to mean any agent or medi- 
 cine that is not material, for, so far as we know, there is 
 no substance other than matter in the universe. I mean 
 by a psychological agent an agent that is not subject to 
 those tests which usually detect material substances. 
 Thus a grain of opium is a physical agent — it has 
 weight, density, color, odor, and taste. Taken into the 
 blood, it finds the nerves and acts on them mechanically. 
 But a kind word is a psychological agent — it can not be 
 weighed, it has no color, nor shape, nor density and so we 
 call it psychological; yet a kind word and a grain of 
 opium are both material agents. A kind word consists 
 of certain waves of air which differ from those constitut- 
 ing a harsh or a rude word in being less rapid and forc- 
 ible. Every sound of your voice is a vibration of air ; the 
 length, rapidity, and number of the vibrations determine 
 the sense of what you are saying. A kind word consists 
 of vibrations of air, and air is a material substance capa- 
 ble of separation into its elements, oxygen and nitrogen. 
 Take away the oxygen and nitrogen and where is your 
 kind word ? You could not speak either a kind or 
 cruel word in vacuo, because the two elements of a 
 word do not exist in a vacuum, and both these ele- 
 ments, oxygen and nitrogen, are material in their na- 
 ture. A kind word follows all the laws of sound — 
 it moves in waves. Striking an obstruction, like an 
 ocean billow, it rebounds into space and we call the 
 
34 THE PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT 
 
 recoil an echo. A kind word striking certain sub- 
 stances at certain angles may, like ocean spray against 
 breakers, be dashed into fragments of discordant sound. 
 A kind word may be refracted in passing through strata 
 of air of different densities : thus, a word may leave 
 your lips with the gentleness of a whisper and be made 
 to strike the ear. of the listener with the sound of thunder 
 or of cannon. Two words, like two waves of water or 
 light, may be hurled against each other and so made to 
 produce perfect silence. So thoroughly material is the 
 very kindest word ever spoken that we may say of it that 
 its loudness is inversely as the square of the distance from 
 its source ; and the song of a lover, the sob of a woman, 
 and the gentle counsels of a tender mother have their 
 equivalents in light, heat, and motion. We may even 
 measure the velocity with which a word travels. A 
 word spoken in an atmosphere at the temperature of 
 freezing water travels, no matter how kind it may be, 
 about 1,090 feet per second. We may trace the word 
 farther— we may actually trace it out of hearing. 
 
 But, it may be urged, behind the kind word there is a 
 benevolent will that gives it existence. True, but that 
 will, like gravity, cohesion, and chemical affinity, is a 
 force and only a force. You could not intellectuate a 
 benevolent intention in a non-respirable atmosphere, 
 because in such an atmosphere there would be wanting 
 an element necessary to mental motion — namely, oxygen. 
 You can no more think without oxygen than you can 
 breathe without it, and what I have said of oxygen is 
 true of other substances. Throw a little phosphorus into 
 the stomach and the brain suddenly lights up with the 
 brilliance of great and noble thoughts ; take the phos- 
 phorus out of the system, and the dull brain, like the 
 
OF MEDIOMANIA. 35 
 
 smouldering ember, dies on the hearth of the cerebrum. 
 
 Insanity, then, is a disease of the brain and must be 
 treated on a rational and scientific basis. A writer on 
 insanity asks : " When one man thinks himself a king, 
 another a cobbler, and another that he can govern the 
 world with his little finger, can physic make him think 
 otherwise ?"* Yes, it can, and we will show that it can. 
 It can, because insanity is a disease of the brain and not 
 of the mind. Were I obliged to prescribe for the mind 
 as an entity, I should throw up my arms in despair ; I 
 should as soon think of prescribing for an apparition or 
 of administering drugs to a shadow. 
 
 Insanity is a word used to signify the whole family of 
 intellectual derangements. This family is a large one and 
 we have selected for this evening's study that member 
 of it known as mediomania, or the insanity of mediums. 
 Mcdiomania is a very ancient form of derangement — the 
 name is modern, the phenomena ancient. The earliest 
 histories of civilization record both rare and typical cases 
 of this interesting disorder, and mediaeval chronicles 
 are filled with the fairy-tales, marvelous revelations, and 
 cruel fate that marked the progress of the disorder. Un- 
 civilized men in uncivilized ages observed the phenomena 
 but mistook their import, and modern science is only just 
 beginning to ravel the mystery and suggest methods of 
 rational treatment. 
 
 Ov yap ti vvv ye xdx fj £'>) «AA.' aciei tcote 
 Zrj rovro, xovBsit oiSev &£ otov <pavrj. 
 
 Sophocles. 
 
 Mediomania, though usually sympathetic, is occasion- 
 ally idiopathic. Its causes are predisposing and exciting. 
 With regard to the predisposing causes of mediomania 
 
 * Dr. E. Willis on Mental Derangement. 
 
36 THE PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT 
 
 and its allied neuroses, conflicting opinions are held by- 
 eminent pathologists. There are those who mention 
 among the prominent predisposing causes of mediomania 
 —sex, age, natural heritage and civilization. S.ex, age, 
 and civilization enter into the account ; they frequently 
 determine the nature and modify the phenomena of 
 insanity, but the absurdity of mentioning them among 
 the causes of any form of intellectual disorder must be 
 evident to the most careless observer. No one is insane 
 because she is a woman, nor because she is civilized, nor 
 because she has reached a certain age ; and yet if she be 
 insane, the existing civilization will largely determine the 
 nature of her derangement, and her sex and age will play 
 their part in deciding the character of the disorder and 
 the fate of her intellect. 
 
 Different civilizations and different phases of the same 
 civilization call out and develop more or less markedly 
 different qualities of mind and emotions of heart. Has 
 it ever occured to you that all great civilizations with 
 which history is acquainted have originated in the do- 
 mestic circle. The various civilizations have been dis- 
 tinguished by the different homes and social customs, and 
 the social atmosphere largely determines mental health. 
 No age nor civilization known to man has been without 
 its insane, nor has any race been wholly shielded, either 
 by its savageness or culture, from the plague of mental 
 disorder ; but the character of the derangement has varied 
 with every civilization, because of the variance of the pre- 
 disposing causes growing out of the different civilizations. 
 
 The periods in history specially marked by mental 
 disorders are those called transitional. They are the 
 intercivilized periods — that is, they lie between great civil- 
 izations. In these, old civilizations disintegrate and new 
 
OF MEDIOMANIA. 37 
 
 ones form. They are the skeptical periods, in which 
 men, having lost faith in the old, have not yet learned to 
 believe in the new. They are the periods in which old 
 homes are destroyed, established codes of morals abol- 
 ished, and ancient gods dethroned, preparatory to the 
 establishment of new homes, purer morals, and better 
 gods. Such periods are often marked by wild crusades, 
 fierce wars, fanatical religions, and inhuman infidelities. 
 Whole nations become suddenly deranged, and disor- 
 dered mental action leads the army and rules the state. 
 Such periods are eras of moral and criminal epidemics. 
 The ages which witnessed the great epidemics of charea- 
 mania, lycanthropia, demonomania, Theoinania, pyro- 
 mania, demonopathia, melancholia, and panphobia were 
 transitional, and I believe the age in which we are living 
 is transitional. The change, so far as we are concerned, 
 is from the old civilization, growing out of the last inter- 
 pretation of the English Charter, to a new civilization 
 which has not yet defined itself. It, like other ages, has 
 its subtile predisposing causes and its epidemics of in- 
 sanity. The asylums of old England and New England 
 are filled with the unfortunate victims of modern delusions 
 —men and women who entertain new theories of the 
 universe, remarkable interpretations of scripture, and 
 new and improved religions ; who have discovered pan- 
 aceas, solved the social problem, and harmonized the 
 universe — and, alas for the age ! that so many who 
 should be comfortably lodged in respectable asylums find 
 their way to the pulpit, the press, and the rostrum. 
 
 There were ages when the Old World was overrun with 
 half-naked dancers, flagelants, and lycanthropes ; and 
 others when it was afflicted with witches and sorcerers ; 
 and still others when it was tormented with the presence 
 
38 THE PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT 
 
 of saints, priests, and inquisitors; and now we are 
 plagued with reformers, ghost-believers, inventors of 
 universal sciences, and discoverers of perpetual affinity. 
 So things have gone on, and so they will continue to go 
 on until the law of development shall have made some- 
 thing more of us than we are at present.* 
 
 Sex and age, though not in themselves predisposing 
 causes of mediomania, modify the phenomena of that de- 
 rangement and make possible many of those conditions 
 which give rise to it. There are certain physical con- 
 ditions, arising from functional and organic disturbances of 
 the sexual organs, which occasion this and other forms of 
 insanity. Sexual insanity is such insanity as arises from 
 or results in sexual derangement. In women the sexual 
 system is more complicated, both as to structure and 
 function, than in men, hence those forms of insanity 
 which are associated with derangements of that system 
 are more frequent among women than among men. 
 Mediomania, while it often attacks men, and from other 
 than sexual causes, more frequently assails women, and 
 is usually preceded by a genito or venerio-pathological 
 history. Men are more likely to suffer from such cere- 
 bral disorders as apoplexy, hemiplegia, ramollissement, 
 and general paralysis, while women are subject to such 
 disorders as chorea, hysteria, and utromania. More 
 women become insane than men, but more men die from 
 insanity than women. The word mediomania, though 
 not actually synonymous with the word utromania, is very 
 closely allied to it in meaning. The word mediomania 
 does not positively designate a pathological condition, for 
 it has grown out of a vulgar belief with regard to cer- 
 
 *See "Epidemic Delusions" by the author. New York: Asa 
 K. Butts & Co., Publishers. 
 
OF MEDIOMANIA. 39 
 
 tain phenomena, yet it fills a previously unoccupied space 
 and must not be discarded until a better word shall have 
 been coined. 
 
 Uterine disorders, whether functional or organic, sel- 
 dom fail to result in some form of hysteria or of its allied 
 neuroses, and no nervous disorder is oftener thus exhibited 
 than mediomania. 
 
 Mediomania has its own peculiar phenomena, and the 
 best way of bringing them before you is by reciting a 
 case, with the history of which I am familiar : 
 
 Mrs.W., aged 23, of nervous temperament, and delicate 
 habit, was seized with a sharp pain over the axis of 
 the lumbar vertebra. This pain was repeated at irregu- 
 lar intervals and followed by syncope. The syncope 
 alternated with a state of nervous exaltation known as 
 ecstasis. During the ecstasis she was, to use her own 
 words, "entranced with joy." The ecstasis would last 
 from a few minutes to many hours. When I first saw the 
 patient she was recovering from a prolonged attack of 
 ecstasis and was suffering profound exhaustion. Her pulse 
 was rapid, feeble, and irregular ; her limbs were cold ; 
 pupils dilated ; cheeks flushed ; lips dry ; tongue heavily 
 coated and bordered with a broad red line running 
 from base to apex and sharply defined; and the respiration 
 was rapid, shallow and sighing. To such questions as I 
 asked her she returned evasive answers and seemed to be 
 endeavoring to conceal her thoughts and emotions. I saw 
 her the second time while she was entranced and remained 
 with her until she recovered normal consciousness. About 
 this time visions were presented to her of which she spoke 
 with great reserve. Her husband told me she had 
 spoken to him of a communication which she had re- 
 ceived from their dead child. Desiring to discover the 
 
40 THE PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT 
 
 patient's intellectual condition, I held with her a long 
 and somewhat enthusiastic conversation concerning the 
 immortality of the soul. At first I received nothing but 
 a general consent to the doctrine, but suddenly, and with- 
 out preparing her mind for the declaration, I confessed 
 to her not only a belief in the doctrine of personal immor- 
 tality, but possession of convincing proof of a life to come ; 
 I declared myself able to see a spirit child, and, having 
 previously examined the husband on the subject and 
 inspected the family photographs, I accurately described 
 the little spirit of her child. This was more than she 
 could endure. Turning her keen, luminous eyes toward 
 the window, she said in a hoarse whisper, "It is my little 
 Harry ! where do you see him ?" Following the direc- 
 tion of her eyes I took the hint and promptly replied, " In 
 front of the window." Before the conversation ended the 
 patient confessed that she was in daily communication 
 with the spirit of her child and that her whole life was 
 spent in the alternate excitement and depression which 
 accompanied these spiritual communications. She was 
 afflicted with obstinate amenorrhoea, and physical examin- 
 ation revealed retroversion of the uterus. The case 
 passed at my request into the hands of an obstet- 
 rician with whom I visited the patient. During the treat- 
 ment of this case I had an opportunity of witnessing many 
 of the most wonderful phenomena of Spiritualism. 
 
 The trances which accompany and are part of the phe- 
 nomena of mediomania may, like other forms of hysteria, 
 be divided into convulsive and non-convulsive. Thenon- 
 vulsive is the form usually met with. 
 
 The convulsions of mediomania resemble very closely 
 those of epilepsy, but are usually less violent. The limbs 
 and trunk are agitated, the head is thrown backward, the 
 
OF MEDIOMANIA. 41 
 
 legs are violently retracted and extended, the body twists 
 and writhes as if in great agony, the pomum A dami pro- 
 jects, the face is flushed, the eylids are closed and trem- 
 ulous, the nostrils distended, the jaws shut, the hands are 
 flung wildly in every direction — they sometimes beat the 
 breast with rapid and mechanical strokes or are thrown 
 into the air as if endeavoring to grasp something; occa- 
 sionally the patient plucks her hair or rends her clothing. 
 The respiration is labored, deep, and irregular. The 
 heart palpitates. Frequently in the intervals of the 
 paroxysms the patient gives utterance to disconnected sen- 
 tences or fragments of sentences more or less connected 
 with the delusion occupying her mind. 
 
 Now with all this there is usually little or no distortion 
 of the countenance, and the face wears a very calm and 
 satisfied expression. Soon the convulsions cease and the 
 patient becomes quiet. The quiet is sometimes complete, 
 but usually broken and watchful. The patient is exceed- 
 ingly tremulous, and a sudden draft or a slight noise 
 will induce a repetition of the convulsion. A word or look 
 of sympathy or tenderness will act like magic. The 
 moment the patient finds herself the object of attention 
 or conversation she will be seized with a most violent 
 convulsion. These attacks may be repeated many times, 
 with short intervals of quietness. 
 
 Another and more common form of mediomaniacal con- 
 vulsion is that in which the patient becomes suddenly 
 unconscious, and in which such phenomena as slow and 
 interrupted breathing, turgid neck, and flushed cheeks 
 are prominent, while the violence of convulsion is greatly 
 abated. The patient recovers weary in body and melan- 
 choly in mind. After the paroxysm a large quantity of 
 pale, limpid urine is passed. These phenomena, like those 
 
4:2 THE PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT 
 
 of kindred forms of hysteria, seem to be dependent on 
 functional disturbance of abdominal or thoracic viscera, for 
 the symptoms are such as naturally arise from disturbance 
 of the ganglionic system. 
 
 In mediomania of a non-convulsive character the loss of 
 consciousness is seldom complete, and it frequently hap- 
 pens that a mediomaniac is able to answer questions and 
 converse fluently while deeply entranced. They who 
 have attended spiritual meetings and lectures will call to 
 mind many examples of this wonderful power. The 
 partial loss of consciousness which occurs in this dis- 
 order does not attend the onset of the attack, but is 
 gradual in its invasion. The larynx is never closed, 
 hence that peculiar, heavy, sighing inspiration which 
 is almost characteristic of the non-convulsive spiritual 
 trance. 
 
 Mediomania occurs in both sexes, but, more frequently 
 in women, especially at puberty or the menopausis, or at 
 some period between puberty and the menopausis. It 
 seldom occurs early or late in life ; children and old women 
 are not often its victims. 
 
 Mediomaniacs are usually young women in whom the 
 process of menstruation is interfered with. They are 
 feeble and debilitated ; they have pale faces and cold 
 extremities; they have feeble and depraved appetites, 
 and a dislike for animal food ; they will eat strange and 
 unwholesome things and will, frequently, refuse all kinds 
 of food, pretending to their friends that they have eaten 
 nothing for whole weeks. A very public and remarka- 
 ble example of this morbid propensity for deception is 
 found in a Mrs. J. C. Darling, of Canawaugus, N. Y. — a 
 mediomaniac who pretends to have remained twenty days 
 without eating. During this time she was busily 
 
OF MEDIOMANIA. 43 
 
 engaged in watching a corpse which she believed would 
 be reanimated in six months. 
 
 Another prominent predisposing cause of medio- 
 mania is found in Natural Heritage. Concerning 
 natural heritage there exist many shades of opinion. I 
 believe in natural heritage, but not in any interpretation 
 of it which makes disease an entity. Disease is not an 
 entity, nor is it ever inherited. We receive nothing 
 from ancestry and bequeath nothing to posterity but 
 material organisms. How, then, can mediomania be the 
 result of a previous neurosis in an ancestor ? 
 
 We know it to be a law of nature that like produces 
 like ; roses produce roses and violets produce violets ; 
 from animals of the forest and beasts of the field men are 
 not generated ; the fish gives rise to the fish, the reptile 
 to the reptile, and the mammal to the mammal. And 
 not only do the animal and vegetable kingdoms repro- 
 duce their peculiarities of species, but also of families and 
 individuals. Our children bear not only the impress of 
 their humanity and nationality, but of the family with 
 which they are connected ; they exhibit the peculiar vices, 
 virtues, and eccentricities of their parents. That they have 
 head, limbs, and trunk and stand erect is an incident of 
 their species and serves to distinguish them as human 
 beings. That they have high cheek-bones, copper -colored 
 skins, and long straight hair; or that they have thick lips, 
 black skin, and curly hair ; or that they have delicately 
 outlined features, and fresh, ruddy complexions — is an 
 incident of their race, and serves to distinguish them as 
 Indian, Negro, or Caucasian. But that they have our 
 own peculiarities, not only of species and race, but of 
 family, is an incident of their individuality, and serves to 
 distinguish them as our own children. What does the indi- 
 
44 THE PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT 
 
 vidual transmit to its child ? Individuals bequeath to pos- 
 terity organisms more or less like their own, subject, 
 however, to laws which are, from time to time, altering 
 and developing the race. Nothing is bequeathed but 
 flesh and blood : diseases are never bequeathed. Men 
 possessed of pathological stomachs are likely to bequeath 
 diseased stomachs to their children — they will not be- 
 queath dyspepsia, but they will bequeath what is worse — 
 the physical basis of dyspepsia. They will not bequeath 
 dyspepsia because there is no such thing as dyspepsia; 
 dyspepsia is a disease, and diseases are not things. All 
 abnormalities of function are referable to anatomical de- 
 rangements : there are physical causes for all the phe- 
 nomena in our organisms. 
 
 Now, if it be true that like produces like, our organisms 
 must be, within certain limitations, like the organisms of 
 our parents, and not only must we inherit physiological or 
 pathological lungs, livers, and stomachs, but normally or 
 abnormally organized brains. And if it be true that 
 organic disease leads to functional derangement, it follows 
 that since thought is a function of the brain, abnormally 
 organized brains are productive of disordered mental 
 action, and such brains may be inherited. What is true, 
 in this respect, of one portion of the nervous system is 
 true of all portions — the ganglionic nervous system as 
 well as the cerebro-spinal. 
 
 Mediomaniacs do not always reproduce their disorder 
 in their progeny, nor does their neurosis always assume 
 the same type when reproduced. Like other disorders, 
 mediomania is a member of a family from which it is not 
 easily alienated. Hysteria, chorea, utromania, and me- 
 diomania are all in one group, and though not always 
 attended by the same causes they are very closely related- 
 
OF MEDIOMANIA. 45 
 
 Hysteria or mediomania in the first generation may be- 
 come chorea or melancholia in the second, open insanity 
 in the third, and idiocy in the fourth : the merciful laws of 
 nature usually forbid that there should be a fifth genera- 
 tion. 
 
 The exciting causes of mediomania are, so far as have 
 been ascertained, in no way essentially different from 
 causes which bring about other forms of insanity. They 
 are usually divided into physical and moral or psychical, 
 but in the last instance there is no such thing as a moral or 
 psychical cause, since every phenomenon occurring in the 
 system has a physical basis for its antecedent. 
 
 Mediomania occasionally manifests itself in sporadic 
 cases, but is usually epidemic. Its present manifestation 
 is in connection with modern Spiritualism, from the prac- 
 tices of which it has derived the prefix of its name. The 
 epidemic does not appear to be decreasing, though fortu- 
 nately its victims are now almost altogether from the vul- 
 gar and illiterate classes, and scientific men do not seem 
 to be liable to the contagion. It numbers among its 
 victims a few men and women of talent and genius, but 
 they were attacked years ago. Had they remained free 
 from the disorder up to the present day, they would not 
 how be very susceptible to its influence. The fact is, 
 Spiritualism has lost its hold on the higher classes, and 
 is spreading with fearful rapidity among the rude and 
 illiterate. Whole communities are given over to its in- 
 fluence. Its believers have their organizations, places of 
 worship, mediums, books, and papers, and they are as sin- 
 cere, earnest, and fearless as were the Flagelants, Lycan- 
 thropes, and Crusaders of the Middle Ages. 
 
 Mediomania, hysteria, and allied neuroses are conta- 
 gious — not by the reception of morbific particles into the 
 
4 b THE PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT 
 
 system, but through that tendency to imitate which 
 haunts the nervous system like a ghost, urging it to 
 strange and frantic deeds. This tendency to imitate is 
 seated in all minds, whether educated or ignorant, but its 
 most prominent parts are played in the lives of the rude 
 and illiterate. 
 
 The tendency to automatic imitation is greatly increased 
 in highly sensitive nervous temperaments, consequently 
 its history is oftener repeated in the lives of women than 
 in those of men. Women are capable of more fanaticism 
 than men ; they are also capable of more devotion. In 
 the Middle Ages two thirds of the witches were women, 
 and now more than two thirds of the spiritual media are 
 women. This has always been so, and I suppose it is 
 right it should be so. Women are naturally more sensi- 
 tive, impulsive, and enthusiastic than men, and it is well 
 for them that they are so ; but they must exercise great 
 care that these fine qualities do not become deranged, and 
 it is necessary to such o.are that they cultivate many of 
 those qualities of mind which are more completely devel- 
 oped in the male temperament. That woman has the 
 most symmetrical, balanced, healthy, and perfect tem- 
 perament who with the sweetness of womanhood unites 
 the strength of manhood, and that man has the most 
 complete and rounded temperament who to the strength 
 of manhood joins the fineness, gentleness, and sweetness 
 of womanhood. Were I going to found a new religion 
 I should address my revelations to women ; were I going 
 to found a new philosophy I should address my arguments 
 to men. Both elements are permanent — the religious 
 and the logical — and I can not imagine a period in the 
 future history of man when he will not both feel and 
 think. 
 
OF MEDIOMAN1A. 47 
 
 A neurosis in no way essentially different from hysteria 
 is what is known as utromania. . Utromania frequently 
 results in mediomania ; indeed, at the present day the two 
 are seldom entirely dissociated. Many women undergo 
 perceptible mental disturbance at every menstrual epoch. 
 The dangers of puberty are greater to girls than to boys, 
 and more girls between the ages of twelve and eighteen 
 become insane than boys.* I dread to treat no form of 
 insanity more than utromania, for of all derangements it 
 is the most violent and persistent, and yet it is a 
 very common disorder. The angle at which the womb 
 is suspended in the pelvis frequently settles the whole 
 question of sanity or insanity. Tilt the organ a little 
 forward — introvert it, and immediately the patient for- 
 sakes her home, embraces some strange and ultra ism — 
 Mormonism, Mesmerism, Fourierism, Socialism, oftener 
 Spiritualism. She becomes possessed by the idea that 
 she has some startling mission in the world. She forsakes 
 her home, her children, and her duty, to mount the ros- 
 trum and proclaim the peculiar virtues of free-love, elect- 
 ive affinity, or the reincarnation of souls. Allow the 
 disorder to advance and it becomes a chronic malady, 
 and, alas ! the once intelligent, cultivated, and pure woman 
 sinks through a series of strange isms and remarkable 
 affinities until she reaches the despicable level of the 
 demi mo?ide. 
 
 Utromaniacs imbibe very strange notions, and, what 
 is remarkable, they reflect the spirit of the age with 
 great accuracy. In the classic ages of Greece and 
 
 *For further study of the subject see " On the Influence of Sex 
 in Hereditary Disease," by Dr. Sedgwick in the " Medico-Chirur- 
 gical Review," April and June, 1868. 
 
48 THE PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT 
 
 Rome they were sibyls, priestesses, and vestal virgins ;* 
 in the darker days of the Middle Ages they were witches, 
 saints, and worshipers at sacred shrines ; and in these 
 times they are what the age makes them. They drift 
 with neither rudder nor compass on the tide of human 
 affairs, the sport of every wind that blows. They 
 usually conceive the idea that they are reformers, though 
 themselves wofully in need of reformation. They adopt 
 strange modes of dress, and conduct themselves in so 
 eccentric a manner as to attract attention. They enter- 
 tain bitter and unnatural dislike for everything which has 
 helped to make their lives happy, useful and pure. 
 They trample upon the sacredness of their marriage re- 
 lations and despise their religious obligations. They 
 regard their husbands as tyrants bent on their enslave- 
 ment, and they are likely to forsake their homes for po- 
 rtions of public trust for which they are unfitted. 
 
 Every one is acquainted with utromaniacs, for this is 
 the age of utromania. They assemble in strange and 
 eccentric meetings, which they advertise with sad audacity 
 in every daily print. 
 
 It was my fortune to attend one of these singular 
 meetings under the most favorable circumstances. In a 
 dark, dingy room, with still more dingy furniture, in a 
 
 * Thus the " divine rage " of the sibyl is portrayed by Virgil in 
 the ^Eneid (Book IV.) : 
 
 11 Her color changed ; her face was not the same, 
 And hollow groans from her deep spirit came. 
 Her hair stood up, convulsive rage possessed 
 Her trembling limbs, and heaved her laboring breast. 
 Greater than human kind she seemed to look, 
 And with an accent more than mortal spoke ; 
 Her straining eyes with sparkling fury roll, 
 When all the god came rushing on her soul." 
 
OF MEDIOMANIA. 49 
 
 narrow street, in a city many miles from this, I attended 
 a meeting of these strange and pitiful creatures. The 
 meeting was called for the purpose of discussing what 
 they termed a " Harmonial Philosophy." Around a long 
 and somewhat dilapidated table sat eight or ten of these 
 unfortunate beings, with here and there a male enthusiast 
 to keep them company. At the head of the table sat 
 a lank, tall, angular woman whose ashy countenance 
 made the scene, if possible, even more dismal. There 
 was spread before her a map, which she said was a map 
 of celestial circles, and on which she eagerly gazed. I 
 requested a seat by her side. After several minutes of 
 silence, raps on the table informed the party that I was 
 not in "harmonic condition," and must endeavor to be- 
 come " psycho-passive." After a little maneuvering and 
 a great deal of diplomacy, I came to occupy a seat on the 
 left of this woman — she would not permit me to sit upon 
 her right. The poor woman was evidently suffering 
 from some displacement of the womb and aggravated 
 hysteria resulting therefrom — she had all the usual symp- 
 toms, not excepting the nervous twitches and tremors, 
 globus hystericus, and sighing respiration. We were all 
 requested to join hands, when I took the opportunity 
 to examine the woman's pulse without her understanding 
 the operation. The pulse was short, quick, nervous, and 
 irregular. I could not time it without exciting sus- 
 picion. The skin was dry and' cold and the secretions 
 were suppressed. I afterward gathered from her conver- 
 sation that she was a sufferer from constipation" and sub- 
 acute gastric symptoms. Being weary of examining the 
 woman by strategy, I asked the bold question, What is 
 the Harmonial Philosophy ? The following paragraph 
 in my note book is from her very lucid reply : 
 
50 
 
 THE PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT 
 
 " The Harmonial Philosophy, which is our religion, is 
 this : The grand ultimate of all thought, to bring all to 
 a higher ultimate ; or, in simpler words, to establish static 
 states of psychic condition on this mundane plane which 
 shall correspond with the highest manifestations of con- 
 scious intelligence in the sphere of disembodied thought 
 — that is, to make a spiritual way from the psychic terres- 
 trial to the psychic plane of the celestial ; hence we are 
 all brothers and sisters, and hold all things in common, 
 and are as the angels in heaven, pure." Here you 
 have the incoherence of ordinary insanity united with 
 the peculiarly bombastic style which characterizes the 
 average lunatic. 
 
 I asked the woman if the spirit by which she was con- 
 trolled could communicate with me by writing, for, said I, 
 it may be a Hebrew prophet. (My suggestion with regard 
 to the Hebrew prophet evidently settled the nature of 
 the communication.) Whereupon she seized a pencil and 
 nervously scribbled the following : 
 
 If, said I, one may judge from this specimen neither 
 Moses nor the Children of Israel are skillful penmen, and 
 
OF MEDIOMAN1A. 
 
 51 
 
 it seems to me they should have communicated in 
 Hebrew, whereupon she was moved to write the follow- 
 ing : 
 
 oTj a c 
 
 But, said I, this is not Hebrew ; whereupon followed 
 one of the most remarkable communications it has ever 
 been my fortune to receive from the inhabitants of the 
 other world : 
 
 But how shall we treat such patients ? I did not have 
 an opportunity of practicing upon the weird sister whose 
 communications I have presented ; but had I been called to 
 do so, 1 should have satisfied myself as to the condition 
 of the pelvic organs and should have shaped my treatment 
 accordingly. I should have endeavored to tone up the 
 system with such tonics as strychnine, iron and quinine in 
 connection with a liberal diet. I might have resorted to 
 electricity, but as the patient entertained singular notions 
 with regard to the electric current, perhaps the exhibition 
 of a battery would have been injurious. I should have 
 looked to the patient's habits, which I fear were not very 
 
52 THE PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT 
 
 moral. I should have recommended a moderate amount 
 of exercise and should have secured to the patient plenty 
 of refreshing sleep. I should also have removed her 
 associates and given her healthier surroundings, and I 
 should have recommended but one husband, for I am 
 informed she had three. 
 
 The treatment of convulsive mediomania regards (1) 
 the paroxysm, and (2) the interim between the paroxysms. 
 During the paroxysm it is the duty of the physician to do 
 all in his power to prevent the patient from injuring her- 
 self. Her clothing should be loosened ; and if she uses 
 her hands and teeth so as to injure herself or others, she 
 should be forcibly restrained. Open the windows or 
 doors so as to give her plenty of fresh air, but be careful 
 that you do not expose her to a draft. If the patient is will- 
 ing to swallow, the attack may be shortened by the exhi- 
 bition of such articles as asafoetida, valerian, and am- 
 monia. Asafoetida and spiritus ammonige may be com- 
 bined as in the following prescription : 
 
 Spiritus Ammoniae Aromatici .f. 3 i. 
 
 Tincturse Asafoetida. . . f. 3 iij. 
 
 M. 
 
 Dose : A teaspoonful every three hours. 
 
 A favorite prescription is one combining tinctura 
 asafcetidce, tinctura castori, and spi?'itus ammonice 
 aromatici. I am a believer in Hoffman's anodyne, and I 
 like it in combination with laudanum as in the following 
 prescription prepared by Dr. Benjamin Ellis : 
 
 I* 
 
 Spiritus ^Etheris Compositi f. 3 iij 
 
 Tinctura Opii gtt. lxxx. 
 
 Aquae Cinnamomi f. § vj. 
 
 Fiat mistura. 
 
 Signa — A tablespoonful every two hours. 
 
OF MEDIOMANIA. 53 
 
 If the patient will not or can not swallow, she may be 
 induced to do so by the application of some stimulating 
 volatile substance to the nostril. If this fails, resort may 
 be had to enema. An excellent enema is made by mixing 
 asafoetida and turpentine. Mediomaniacs are usually 
 constipated, and it is the duty of the physician when first 
 called to a case to discover the condition of the intestinal 
 viscus. 
 
 In mediomaniacal insanity favorable results have fol- 
 lowed the administration of cannabis indica or Indian hemp 
 — not the tincture, which is unreliable, but the extract, 
 and if you choose you may combine it with the bromide 
 of potassium. Where the insanity is associated with 
 dysmenorrhoaa, I can not do better than recommend cam- 
 phor combined with opium and hyoscyamus or conium. 
 If necessary you may exhibit your sedative by hypo- 
 dermic injection ; medicines so exhibited act with greater 
 promptness than when given by the stomach, and are 
 less likely to irritate that organ. The injection should 
 be made upon the inner side of the upper arm or in some 
 other place where the skin is thin. 
 
 Attention has been called to the fact that the erotic 
 element i-s likely to enter very prominently into all forms 
 of hysterio-mania. Hysteriomaniacs and mediomaniacs 
 are proverbially erotic, egotistic, and religious. 
 
 The first symptoms of sexual derangement which a phy- 
 sician is likely to detect are love of solitude, irritability 
 of temper, offensive and steadily increasing egotism, and, 
 a little later, great irresolution and profound and un- 
 natural religiosity. Soon the face betrays the derange- 
 ment — its features droop, the eye gains a sudden and spas- 
 modic brilliance, the lips and tongue become dry and 
 hot ; and, sometimes, the glands in the neck and axilla 
 
54r THE PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT 
 
 become enlarged and tender. The face is subject to 
 sudden flushes, followed by great pallor, and, as the dis- 
 ease progresses, persistent thirst, loss of appetite, and 
 insomnia supervene. Strange and interesting psycho- 
 logical phenomena now make their appearance. The 
 patient shuns society, and is suspicious and revenge- 
 ful. He divides his time between devotional and sex- 
 ual rapture. Soon the intellect becomes involved, 
 and some pronounced form of mental derangement ap- 
 pears. 
 
 Profound and protracted religious excitements are 
 productive of aidoiomania. Religious revivals, spiritual 
 seances, and Romish pilgrimages seldom fail to result in 
 epidemics of sexual impropriety. The lives of saints, 
 priests, ecstatics, devotees, and media, are so many 
 records of sexual derangement. St. Theresa and St. 
 Catherine de Siene, who, in nightly trances, believed 
 themselves folded in the arms of Jesus, were nympho- 
 maniacs ; and the love festivals, holy loves, and sera- 
 phim-kisses, are believed by physiologists to have in- 
 dicated points of union between religion and sexual 
 erethism. 
 
 When to religious excitement there is added solitude, 
 sexual derangement is almost sure to follow. Says Lecky, 
 in speaking of the anchorites: "With such men, living 
 such a life, visions and miracles were necessarily habitual. 
 All the elements of hallucination were there. Ignorant 
 and superstitious, believing, as a matter of religious con- 
 viction, that countless demons filled the air, attributing 
 every fluctuation of his own temperament and every excep- 
 tional phenomenon in surrounding nature to spiritual 
 agency ; delirious, too, from solitude and long-continued 
 austerities — the hermit soon mistook for palpable realities 
 
OF MEDIOMANIA. 55 
 
 the phantoms of his brain. In the ghastly gloom of the 
 sepulcher, where, amid mouldering corpses, he took up 
 his abode ; in the long hours of the night of penance, 
 when the desert wind sobbed around his lonely cell, and 
 the cries of wild beasts were borne upon his ear — visible 
 forms of lust or terror appeared to haunt him, and strange 
 dramas were enacted by those who were contending for 
 his soul. An imagination strained to the utmost limit, 
 acting upon a frame attenuated and diseased by macera- 
 tions, produced bewildering psychological phenomena, 
 paroxysms of conflicting passions, sudden alternations of 
 joy and anguish, which he regarded as manifestly super- 
 natural. Sometimes, in the very ecstacy of devotion, 
 the memory of old scenes would crowd upon his mind. 
 The shady groves and soft, voluptuous gardens of his 
 native city would arise, and, kneeling alone upon the 
 burning sand, he seemed to see around him the fair 
 groups of dancing girls, on whose warm, undulating limbs 
 and wanton smiles his youthful eyes had too fondly dwelt. 
 Sometimes his temptations sprang from remembered 
 sounds. The sweet, licentious songs of other days came 
 floating on his ears, and his heart was thrilled with the 
 passions of the past." * 
 
 The religous and sexual instincts are very closely united 
 — so closely united as to be inseparable. Derangement 
 of one is usually followed by derangement of the other. 
 Great religions are born in those countries in which the 
 sexual szstem ripens early — in the torrid East or South- 
 east, China, India, Arabia, Egypt and Palestine. In these 
 countries puberty occurs at a very early period and the 
 sexual system is very keenly developed. In the East 
 everything matures early and fades rapidly. Wild and 
 *" History of European Morals," vol. II, p. 124. 
 
56 THE PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT 
 
 marvelous vegetation covers the earth with foliage almost 
 in a day and withers in an hour, and, like the fruits of the 
 field, many of those human functions which ripen the 
 soonest fade earliest. Puberty arrives in both sexes at 
 ten or twelve years of age and marriage occurs at twelve 
 or fourteen, and women at twenty-five or thirty are 
 wrinkled, faded, and old. 
 
 The golden land of the Southeast, where sacred story 
 tells us the race was born, is very appropriately the cradle 
 of those two essential elements, the sexual and the 
 religious. Buddha, Confucius, and Mohammed could 
 never have founded their immortal religions in England 
 or America, for we are too cold-blooded and slow in our 
 development and too thoughtful in our culture to seize 
 very suddenly the revelations of the heart. Go to the 
 Northern world, where the Eskimo glides on his wooden 
 sledge over fields of ice, and burrows his way, like the 
 arctic bear, down into the bosom of the snow — where 
 puberty comes at eighteen and green old age hangs her 
 leafy laurel on almost every brow — did any very great 
 religion ever originate there ? What Eskimo prophet 
 ever sent his revelations echoing down the corridors of 
 history ? None ; none ! 
 
 Religions which do not utterly ignore women find their 
 largest number of adherents among them. More women 
 are converted than men, and there are few churches in 
 the world that do not count more women than men 
 among their communicants. Conversion usually occurs 
 at puberty. Few people are converted before puberty 
 and still fewer after the climacteric. The periods at 
 which women embrace religious faiths and enter churches 
 are puberty, catamenial periods, and the menopausis. 
 Children and old persons seldom experience what is called 
 
OF MEDIOMANTA. 57 
 
 religion. When religious experience comes to a very 
 young child, its parents will do well to consult a physi- 
 cian, for they have reason to fear an unnatural pre- 
 cocity dangerous to the nervous system of the child. But 
 it should be remembered that there are certain circum- 
 stances and conditions which hasten puberty. Physicians 
 who are called to witness nervous phenomena of a relig- 
 ious nature in a girl should remember that women of cer- 
 tain races mature very early. Jewesses, negroes and 
 Creoles, having decended from ancestors who dwelt under 
 the "vertical rays of the torrid zone,'' carry the fire of the 
 tropics in their blood, and menstruate early. Brunettes are 
 more precocious than blondes ; the dark-haired and black- 
 eyed develop earlier than the light-haired and blue-eyed; 
 the fleshy are more sluggish than the slender; and 
 the nervo-bilious temperament ripens before the lym- 
 phatic or phlegmatic. Idleness, wines, spices, coffee, 
 tea, music, dissipation, and city life all tend to hasten 
 puberty. 
 
 It is frequently said that a man's religion stamps it- 
 self upon his temperament and comes to so affect his nerv- 
 ous system as to appreciably modify its phenomena. This 
 .is true, but the converse is as true. The religious faith 
 not only determines but is determined by the nervous status. 
 While you will find no two temperaments exactly alike, 
 you will find a certain thread of resemblance which unites 
 more or less closely all members of a faith, and makes of 
 them one body. Every distinct form of religious faith has 
 its own physiological and psychological peculiarities — 
 Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity, each have their 
 peculiar nervous foundations, and what is true of a great 
 religion is more or less true of its divisions and sub- 
 divisions. Calvinists, Arminians, and Romanists, no 
 
58 THE PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT 
 
 more digest alike than they think alike. It is an error 
 to suppose that religion affects the brain only : it affects 
 every viscus in the body, and is in turn affected by every 
 viscus. Under one religion you will find a certain family 
 of diseases prevalent, and under another another, and 
 physicians, especially cerebro-pathologists, will find, in 
 studying cases, that they can not afford to leave the relig- 
 ious tenets of the patients out of consideration. Women 
 of certain denominations are more prolific than women 
 of other denominations, and this is owing to the fact that 
 the organs of generation both in themselves and their 
 husbands are under the control of the nervous system, and 
 the nervous system in the face of a great religious con- 
 viction is, like the sensitive leaf, a plant in a rushing 
 wird. 
 
 Now all this is especially true of Spiritualism. There 
 is no religion on earth so exciting as Spiritualism. No 
 religion burns up so much tissue or uses so much nervous 
 energy as Spiritualism. Operating upon the human 
 organism, it converts more oxygen into carbonic acid 
 than any other religion with which I am acquainted ; 
 consequently it is more injurious to health than any 
 other religious faith, and its occurrence in the sensitive 
 nervous system of a young girl is dangerous in the ex- 
 treme. 
 
 In order to discover the pathological conditions estab- 
 lished in the system by Spiritualism, I instituted several 
 experiments which, though not sufficiently exact to be 
 conclusive, indicate some of the physical results of medio- 
 mania. 
 
 I selected ten patients under treatment for nervous dis- 
 orders, of which seven were women and three men. 
 Of these ten five professed to be media in one way or 
 
OF MEDIOMAtflA. 59 
 
 another. Four of the five were sufferers from disorders 
 peculiar to their sex; the other subject was a man. I sub- 
 jected three specimens of urine from each patient to care- 
 ful and comparative analysis and discovered that in every 
 case the urine of the media was loaded with phosphates. 
 There was also a deficiency in the amount of urea, the 
 average quantity beiDg only about 240 grains per diem. 
 The deficiency in urea I suppose to be due to the non- 
 nitrogenous diet of the patients, for you remember that I 
 directed your attention to the fact that hysteric-maniacs 
 and mediomaniacs usually avoid animal food. The ex- 
 hibition of a moderate quantity of animal food to one 
 patient increased the number of grains of urea eliminated 
 in a very few hours. As some of you may not be familiar 
 with the constituents of urine I take the liberty of men- 
 tioning them. 
 
 COMPOSITION OF THE URINE.* 
 
 Water 938.00 
 
 Urea 30.00 
 
 Creatine 1.25 
 
 Creatinine 1.50 
 
 Urate of soda, 
 
 " potassa, V 1-80 
 
 11 ammonia, J 
 
 Coloring matter and ) 20 
 
 Mucus, ) 
 
 Biphosphate of soda, 
 Phosphate of soda, 
 
 11 " potassa, J-....' 12.45 
 
 " " magnesia, 
 
 11 ". lime, 
 
 Chlorides of sodium and potassium 7.80 
 
 Sulphates of soda and potassa 6.90 
 
 1000.00 
 
 * From the analyses of Berzelius, Lehmann, and Bacquerel, as 
 given by Dalton in his " Human Physiology," p. 836. 
 
80 THE PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT 
 
 Deposits of uric acid exhibited broken and fragmental 
 crystals. Why the crystals were fractured I do not 
 know. 
 
 URIC ACID EXHIBITING BROKEN CRYSTALS. 
 
 A healthy adult usually consumes about seven pounds 
 of food^r diem, and in the same time discharges from 
 the system the same amount of effete material. He 
 takes into the system oxygen, water, albumen, starch, 
 fat, and salts ; and he discharges carbonic acid, aque- 
 ous vapor, perspiration, water of the urine, urea, 
 salts, and feces. Food having been taken into the 
 system combines with the tissues and becomes part 
 of their substance, and the condition of these tissues 
 determines the character of their several functions, and 
 among them that of thought. Hence a man's diet is 
 more or less responsible for his convictions, and a man 
 has no right to employ such diet as in any way interferes 
 with correct cerebration. Many a noble friendship has 
 been destroyed and many a rash deed performed from 
 want of sufficient pepsin to effect the digestion of a 
 certain article of food in a given time. Physicians are 
 beginning to understand this and look very closely at 
 the diet of the insane. 
 
OF MEDIOMANIA. 61 
 
 It is difficult to prescribe a regular and uniform diet 
 in any form of mental disorder, for circumstances so 
 modify cases as to make exceptions to all rules. But in 
 general it may be said that the spiritual medium should 
 be placed on a partially meat diet. The diet which I 
 employ in ordinary melancholia might be appropriately 
 employed in the treatment of mediomania. Give plain, 
 nutritious food, poultry, game, fish, mutton, and beef, 
 and in many cases you will find alcoholic stimulants use- 
 ful adjuncts. 
 
 The constipation which marks mediomania, and of 
 which I have spoken, will frequently disappear under the 
 influence of the stimulus of the increased amount of food. 
 If, however, the colon is distended by hardened masses 
 of scybala they must be removed by enema. Active 
 purgation should be avoided. A lady who was more of 
 a medium than she cared to confess was frequently dis- 
 turbed at night by what she took for a spirit-hand. This 
 hand was very cold and when placed in contact with her 
 sensitive skin caused great nervous disturbance. The 
 spirit-hand was usually placed over the pit of the stomach. 
 When once thoroughly awakened by the hand, she found 
 it difficult to sleep again. I advised her to eat a sand- 
 wich and drink a glass of wine immediately after waking. 
 This she did and obtained partial relief, and a few grains 
 of chloral completed the cure. 
 
 Before closing this lecture, I again direct your at- 
 tention to the relations which the sexual and religious 
 instincts bear to each other. It is an interesting and 
 singular fact that the special indulgence in religious ex- 
 ercises undermines the fabric of morality. Moderate use 
 of the various instincts and faculties is right and health- 
 ful, and the religious instinct is as much entitled to 
 
62 THE PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT 
 
 exercise as other instincts ; but I wish to make you be- 
 lieve that its over-exercise or exclusive exercise is pro- 
 ductive of sexual immorality. Those men and women 
 who in all ages of the world have been set apart for 
 religious purposes have been notoriously impure. The 
 same thing is true to-day. Priests, monks, nuns, saints, 
 media, ecstatics, aud devotees, are famous for their im- 
 purities. But scientific pursuits tend in another direc- 
 tion. By liberating the intellect, enlarging the affec- 
 tions, and cooling the temper, they encourage and foster 
 calmness and purity. Geologists, botanists, doctors, and 
 chemists, are, on the average, healthier and purer people. 
 
 Through all avenues the protean insanity enters. It 
 imitates every disorder and forges the signature of every 
 emotion. It glows in the kindling glance of the enthu- 
 siast, dreams in the revery of the mystic, and, flash- 
 ing along the highway of genius, it gilds the fine culture 
 of the student. It sits by the poet while he sings in the 
 ear of nations. It blinds the man of science, and cheats 
 with splendid promises the noble and the great. It is 
 in the prisoner's cell, the den of drunkenness, and the 
 dwelling-place of crime, and from homes where Want 
 has written infamy and shame it goes up to revel with 
 courtiers and dine with kings. 
 
 Who will chain the shadow ? In and out our doors 
 the phantom glides with noiseless feet, but with a 
 breath whose perfume poisons. Often before her pres- 
 ence is suspected the mischief is accomplished. We 
 track and hunt her down with all the enginery of mod- 
 ern science, and often while we shout for victory her 
 spectral finger writes defeat upon our banners. Through 
 all avenues she escapes and advances. She enters by the 
 gateway of the cerebro -spinal system and rides 6n the 
 
OF MEDIOMANIA. 63 
 
 lightning of the motor nerves. She enters through 
 arterial channels and floats on shining disks of blood down 
 long generations. She is inspired with the common air 
 and touched by the hand of daily labor. No one-sided 
 philosophy will explain her nature, and no routine prac- 
 tice dispel her enchantment. Only the earnest student 
 who studies her without fear and without prejudice will 
 learn the secret of her enchantment and so dissolve the 
 spell. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 The following is the Report on Spiritualism of the sub-commit- 
 tee No. 1 of the London Dialectical Society: 
 
 " Since their appointment on the 16th February, 1869, your sub- 
 committee have held forty meetings for the purpose of experiment 
 and test. 
 
 "All of these meetings were held at the private residences of 
 members of the committee, purposely to preclude the possibility of 
 pre-arranged mechanism or contrivance. 
 
 14 The furniture of the room in which the experiments were con- 
 ducted was on every occasion its accustomed furniture. 
 
 44 The tables were in all cases heavy dining-tables, requiring a 
 strong effort to move them. The smallest of them was five feet 
 nine inches long by four feet wide, and the largest nine feet three 
 inches long and four and a half feet wide, and of proportionate 
 weight. 
 
 " The rooms, tables, and furniture generally were repeatedly sub- 
 jected to careful examination before, during, and after the experi- 
 ments, to ascertain that no concealed machinery, instrument, or 
 other contrivance existed by means of which the sounds or move- 
 ments hereinafter mentioned could be caused. 
 
 " The experiments were conducted in the light of gas, except on 
 the few occasions noted in the minutes. 
 
 44 Your committee have avoided the employment of professional 
 or paid mediums, the mediumship being that of members of your 
 sub-committee, persons of good social position and of unimpeacha- 
 ble integrity, having no pecuniary object to serve, and nothing to" 
 gain by deception. 
 
 44 Your committee have held some meetings without the aid of a 
 medium (it being understood throughout this report that the word 
 4 medium' is used simply to designate an individual without whose 
 presence the phenomena described either do not occur at all, or 
 with greatly diminished force and frequency), purposely to try if 
 they could produce, by any efforts, effects similar to those witnessed 
 
66 APPENDIX. 
 
 when a medium was present. By no endeavors were they enabled 
 to produce anything at all resembling the manifestations which 
 took place in the presence of a medium. 
 
 " Every test that the combined intelligence of your committee 
 could devise has been tried with patience and perseverance. The 
 experiments were conducted under a great variety of conditions) 
 and ingenuity has been exerted in devising plans by which your 
 committee might verify their observations and preclude the possi- 
 bility of imposture or of delusion. 
 
 ''Your committee have confined their report to facts witnessed 
 by them in their collective capacity, which facts were palpable to 
 the senses, and their reality capable of demonstrative proof. 
 
 " Of the members of your sub-committee about four fifths entered 
 upon the investigation wholly skeptical as to the reality of the 
 alleged phenomena, firmly believing them to be the result either of 
 imposture or of delusion, or of involuntary muscular action. It 
 was only by irresistible evidence under conditions that precluded 
 the possibility of either of these solutions, and after the trial and 
 test many times repeated, that the most skeptical of your sub-com- 
 mittee were slowly and reluctantly convinced that the phenomena 
 exhibited in the course of their protracted inquiry were veritable 
 facts. 
 
 "The result of their long-continued and carefully-conducted 
 experiments, after trial by every detective test they could devise, 
 has been to establish: 
 
 " First. That, under certain bodily or mental conditions of one 
 or more of the persons present, a force is exhibited sufficient to set 
 in motion heavy substances, without the employment of any mus- 
 cular force, without contact or material connection of any kind 
 between such substances and the body of any person present. 
 
 ' ' Second. That this force can cause sounds to proceed, distinctly 
 audible to all present, from solid substances not in contact with, 
 nor having any visible or material connection with, the body of 
 any person present, and which sounds are proved to proceed from 
 .such substances by the vibrations which are distinctly felt when 
 they are touched. 
 
 " Third. That this force is frequently directed by intelligence. 
 
 " At thirty-four out of the forty meetings of your committee 
 some of these phenomena occurred. 
 
 " A description of one experiment, and the manner of conducting 
 it, will best show the care and caution with which your committee 
 have pursued their investigations. 
 
APPENDIX. 07 
 
 " So long as there was contact, or even the possibility of contact, 
 by the hands or feet, or even by the clothes, of any person in the 
 room, with the substance moved or sounded, there could be no 
 perfect assurance that the motions and sounds were not produced 
 by the person so in contact. The following experiment was there- 
 fore tried: 
 
 " On an occasion when eleven members of your sub-committee 
 had been sitting around one of the dining-tables above described 
 for forty minutes, and various motions and sounds had occurred, 
 they, by way of test, turned the backs of their chairs to the table, 
 at about nine inches from it. They all then knelt upon their 
 chairs, placing their arms upon the backs thereof. In this position , 
 their feet were of course turned away from the table, and by no 
 possibility could be placed under it or touch the floor. The 
 hands of each person were extended over the table at about four 
 inches from the surface. Contact, therefore, with any part of the 
 table could not take place without detection. 
 
 "In less than a minute the table, untouched, moved four times; 
 at first about five inches to one side, then about twelve inches to 
 the opposite side, and then in like manner four inches and six 
 inches respectively. 
 
 " The hands of all present were next placed on the backs of their 
 chairs and about a foot from the table, which again moved as be- 
 fore, five times, over spaces varying from four to six inches. Then 
 all the chairs were removed twelve inches from the table, and each 
 person knelt on his chair as before; this time, however, folding his 
 hands behind his back, his body being thus about eighteen inches 
 from the table, and having the back of the chair between himself 
 and the table. The table again moved four times in various direc- 
 tions. In the course of this conclusive experiment, and in less than 
 half an hour, the table thus moved, without contact or possibility 
 of contact with any person present, thirteen times, the movements 
 being in different directions, and some of them according to the 
 request of various members of yoursub-committee. 
 
 " The table was then carefully examined, turned upside down, 
 and taken to pieces, but nothing was discovered to account for the 
 phenomena. The experiment was conducted throughout in the full 
 light of gas above the table. 
 
 " Altogether, your sub-committee have witnessed upward of fift} r 
 similar motions without contact, on eight different evenings, in the 
 houses of members of your sub-committee, the most careful tests 
 being applied on each ocsasion. 
 
68 APPENDIX. 
 
 " In all similar experiments the possibility of mechanical or other 
 contrivance was further negatived by the fact that the movements 
 were in various directions — now to one side, then to the other; now 
 up the room, now down the room: motions that would have 
 required the cooperation of many hands or feet; and these, from the 
 great size and weight of the tables, could not have been so used 
 without the visible exercise of muscular force. Every hand and 
 foot was plainly to be seen, and could not have been moved with- 
 out instant detection. 
 
 "Delusion was out of the question. The motions were in vari- 
 ous directions, and were witnessed simultaneously by all present. 
 They were matters of measurement, and not of opinion or of 
 fancy. 
 
 " And they occurred so often, under so many and such various 
 conditions, with such safeguards against error or deception, and 
 with such invariable results, as to satisfy the members of your sub- 
 committee by whom the experiments were tried, wholly skeptical 
 as most of them were when they entered upon the investigation, 
 that there is a force capable of moving heavy bodies without 
 material contact, and which force is in some unknown manner 
 dependent upon the presence of human beings. 
 
 " Your sub-committee have not, collectively, obtained any evi- 
 dence as to the nature and source of this force, but simply as to the 
 fact of its existence. 
 
 "There appears to your committee to be no ground for the 
 popular belief that the presence of skeptics interferes in any manner 
 with the production or action of the force. 
 
 "In conclusion, your committee express their unanimous opinion 
 that the one important physical fact thus proved to exist, that 
 motion may be produced in solid bodies without material contact, 
 by some hitherto unrecognized force operating within an undefined 
 distance from the human organism, and beyond the range of mus- 
 cular action, should be subjected to further scientific examination, 
 with a view to ascertain its true source, nature, and power. 
 
 "The notes of the experiments made at each meeting of your 
 sub-committee are appended to this Report." 
 
The Martyrdom of Man. 
 
 By Win wood Reade. 12mo, cloth, pp. 543, $3.00 
 
 41 It is a splendid book, you may depend upon it! It is the best thing 
 Trnbner (ttie great London house) ever published." — Charles Bradlaugh. 
 
 " The author has traveled extensively in Africa and the East, and, musing 
 among unknown tribes and the crumbling ruins of past greatness, has de- 
 veloped a historic spirit not unlike that which Gibbon tells us he himself 
 was inspired with amid the relics of ancient Rome. In this spirit he has 
 
 fiven us, under the four heads of War, Religion, Liberty, and Intellect, a 
 istory of the growth of these forces, and their action and reactiou on the 
 race. We can conceive of no more attractive form for presenting a sum- 
 mary of world history to the student, and must confess to a most agreeable 
 surprise and pleasure in the perusal of the few chapters we have examined. 
 His history has a continuity, a rush, a carrying power — if we may use the 
 term— which remind us strikingly of Gibbon, and will be sure to make the 
 reader lay it aside with reluctance."— New Haven Daily Palladium. 
 
 •'There will be plenty of readers who will find in the work food for which 
 they are hungry and eager." — Boston Journal. 
 
 "Mr. Reide is now one of the most experienced of living travelers in 
 Central Africa, . . Is an able and agreeable writer, and has here amassed a 
 multitude of facts and comments into a pleasant volume."— N. Y. Times. 
 
 " Those who wish to learn the tendencies of modern thought, and to look 
 at past history from the standpoint of one who accept? the doctrine of evo- 
 lution in its entirety, would do well to read this rerrftrkable book. All the 
 radicalism of the times in philosophy and rel'urion are restated here with 
 remarkable vigor and force." — The Daily Graphic. 
 
 44 We consider the book dangerous in the highest degree, the more so as its 
 brilliant rhetoric and very audacity give it a fatal charm." — Hartford Post. 
 
 4i The work closes with a general summary of the whole, the author add- 
 ing to it the materials of another work following in the footsteps of Mr. 
 Darwin, whose conclusions he found confirmed by the phenomena of Savage 
 life. . . The book is printed on clear white paper from large type, and is a 
 handsome volume."— New Bedford Standard. 
 
 '" The work is one done by an honest and conscientious man; a large 
 amount of curious and recondite learning is brought together, and to the 
 readers who are attracted to the Darwinian literature, thi6 book, with its 
 quaint declarat on that 'Life is botth d sunshine,' may also be recom- 
 mended." — The Pittsburgh Evening Chronicle. 
 
 "Aeummary of universal history, combined with a diligent traveler's 
 investigation < of the phenomena of savage life. The martyrdom of the 
 race appears in the influence which war, slavery, religion and other such 
 evils have exerted upon it." — Morning Star. 
 
 "This book is likely to provoke considerable comment, for it displays 
 ability, while many of its ouiuions run counter to those cherished by mill- 
 ions of mankind. The author has traveled extensively, and read widely, 
 and his book bears evidence of having teen prepared with thoroughness 
 and care. It is packed with information of a very interesting character. . . 
 A great deal is compressed here concerning the civilization of the world 
 which cannot be as convenietrly found iu any other book of its size within 
 our knowledge."— Norwich Bulletin. 
 
 44 Persoual observation and very extensive reading— historical, philosoph- 
 ical, scientific, and geographical — have supplied the abundant information 
 of which the author has availed himself. As to religious points, he may 
 count on being considered very heterodox."— Philadelphia Press. 
 
 44 It is really a remarkable book, in which universal history is 4 boiled 
 down' with surprising skill. , . The boldest, and, so far as historical argu- 
 ment goes, one of the ablest, assaults ever made upon Christianity.— Tk» 
 Literary World. 
 
The Masculine Cross; 
 
 or, Ancient Sex Worship. 
 
 A curious and remarkable Work, containing the Traces 
 of Ancient Myths, in the Current Religions of To-day. 
 65 pp., 26 Illustrations, L2mo. Paper, 75c. ; extra 
 cloth, beveled, $1.30. 
 
 " The hope to bring within the reach of the average man of letters a 
 chapter of mythological lore which has heretofore been confined to the few 
 is one motive for offering these pages to the public. . . . The Phallic and 
 Yonijic remains found in California are, in these pages, for the first time, 
 so far as known to the author, introduced to public attention as ancient re- 
 ligious relics belonging to the prehistoric stone age."— Author's Preface. 
 
 '* It is full of the deepest research and soundest scholarship, and is clean- 
 ly withal, but it is not designed for immature minds." 
 
 " Another curiou9 and remarkable work Mr. Butts offers for sale. It 
 gives, most lucidly, the origin of the symbol of the cross, founded, as it was, 
 in the ancient worship of the masculine sexual organs. It is not, perhaps, 
 just suited to juvenile minds, but to the mature, studious, and curious, it 
 will prove of great interest."— The Truth Seeker. 
 
 Epidemic Delusions. 
 
 A Lecture, with valuable Appendix. By Dr. Fbedeeio 
 R. Marvin. Pamphlet form, 25c; limp cloth, 50c. 
 
 " This lecture attracted a good deal of attention at the time of its deliv- 
 ery."— Moore's Rural New Yorker. 
 
 "An attractive pamphlet."— Worcester Spy. 
 
 ** Is well worth preserving for careful reading."— Daily Graphic. 
 
 44 The text substantiates the writer's character as a medical man 
 
 There is a refreshing scientific and moral tendency and a permeating 
 clear-headedness. "-r-Golden Age. 
 
 " It is an interesting discussion of a most important question. . . . The 
 essay is earnest, entertaining and instructive."— The Liberal Christian. 
 
 "Is entertaining and instructive to a high degree."— The Israelite. 
 
 " Dr. Marvin is one of the rising young thinkers. The lecture certainly 
 exhibits depth of research and breadth of observation."— Troy Press 
 
 This brilliant Lecture has been handsomely published. 
 
THE SAFEST CREED, 
 
 AND 
 
 Twelve other Recent Discourses of Reason. 
 
 By O. B. FROTHLNGHAM. 
 Cloth, beveled, tinted paper, 12mo, .... $1.50. 
 
 44 These discourses manifest deep thought, thorough conviction, and 
 great ability."— Philadelphia PrebS. 
 
 " Mr. Frothingham is a gentleman of national reputation. He is not 
 an orthodox CurHiaa clergyman; on the contrary, he is an advanced 
 thinker or rationalist; yet he wields the gift of eloquence wiih a large 
 for^e. . . . The discourses embrace, besides the one which gives the title 
 to the book, a widennge of topi< s, such a-*. The Kadical Belief; The Joy 
 of a Free Faith ; The Gospel of To day ; The Scientific Aspect of Prayer ; 
 Immortales of Man ; The Infernal and the Celestial Love; and the Victory 
 over Dcaih."— The Pittsburgh Chronicle. 
 
 44 The author of these discourses is the high priest of New England 
 transcendental 'radicalism,' and is the recogniz-d exponent of this latest 
 and most genteel phase of modern infidelity. None of nis contemporaries 
 can approach him in elegance of diction. He writes gracefu ly, . . . in the 
 richest garb of flowery rhetoric." — Albany Evening Journal. 
 
 44 It presents as able an exposition of the views of the 'Radicals' in re- 
 ligion as has been offered. Mr Frot' ingham has courage, as well as sin- 
 cerity, and presents his ideas with entire frankness, and with a clearness of 
 6tyle and an intellectual strength which are likely to command for them 
 
 general attention. The book is printed on tinted paper, and is handsomely 
 ound."— Bviston Saturday Evening Gaiette. 
 
 44 A vigorous thinker, .... as eloquent as Theodore Parker, .... so 
 smoothly written that even those who cannot accept his deductions will 
 yet be scarcely able to lay the book down till it is finished."— New Bed- 
 ford Standard. 
 
 44 The ideal of Frotbingham, his God, is as noble a conception as ever 
 emanated from the brain of a human being, and the author possesses the 
 highest ability to pa ; nt Him in toe finest and most charming colors. His 
 use of the brush is that of the most accomplished artist, and thinking men 
 of every shade of opinion will find delight in the picture presented." — The 
 Jewish Times. 
 
 44 The publisher has done a good thing to bring them together in this 
 more permanent form. All the work is entirely new and very handsome. 
 The whole appearance of the book deserves the warme-t approbation. 'To 
 cherish no ilusion' might be the text of every one of tnem. There is 
 everywhere a resolute attempt to adjust thought and life to what is really 
 known, to accept the facts and then see what sustenance can be extracted 
 from them. A book like this is certain to be widely read and to produce a 
 deep impression."— Liberal Christian. 
 
 44 A very neat-looking volume, . . . and further, Mr. Frothinghara is 
 well known the country through as one of the prominent leaders of that 
 Intelligent, radical, and promising anti-theological party who call them- 
 selves Free Religionists. He is a gentleman of fine scholarly attainments, a 
 superior writer and eloquent speaker, and judged by his intellect libeiality, 
 
 Srogress, and independence, is probably the best preacher in the United 
 tates at the present day. ... On what is human, natural, practical, use- 
 ful, and liberal, he is very conclusive, instructive, and gratifying, and gems 
 of this kind are sparkling on •very page of 4 The Safest Creed.' "—Boston 
 Investigator. 
 
ANCIENT FAITHS 
 (RmUAuA in QvbOmA fjtantt*: 
 
 OR, AN ATTEMPT TO TRACE 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS BELIEF, SOCIAL RITES AND HOLY EMBLEMS 
 OF CERTAIN NATIONS, 
 
 BY AN 
 
 INTERPRETATION OF THE NAMES 
 
 GIVEN TO CHILDREN BY PRIESTLY AUTHORITY, OR 
 ASSUMED BY PROPHETS, KINGS AND HIERARCHY 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS INMAN, M.D., (London,) 
 
 Physician to the Royal Infirmary, Liverpool ; late Lecturer, successively, on Botany, 
 
 Medical Jurisprudence, Materia Medica, and Therapeutics and 
 
 the Principles and Practice of Medicine. 
 
 Author of Foundation for a New Theory and Practice of Medicine; A Treatise on 
 
 Myology ; On the Real Nature of Inflammation ; Atheroma in 
 
 Arteries ; On the Preservation of Health, &c. 
 
 Late President of the Liverpool Philosophical Society, &c. 
 
 This work, complete, 1914 pp., 8vo, and several hundred 
 illustrations. Price, $27. 
 
 Address the American Publishers, 
 
 ASA K. BUTTS & CO., 
 
 36 Bey Street, X. Y. 
 
 3850 
 

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