The Philosophy of vital motion / By Charles Bland Radcliffe.

  • Charles Bland Radcliffe
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Philosophy of vital motion / By Charles Bland Radcliffe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    the information of his arrival could have been communicated by the ordinary senses. The feelings, therefore, as well as ideas and Avords, betoken the operation of mind beyond the limits of the body where it originates. In addition to these there are also other and more tangible signs which show the extra-corporeal opera- tion of mind. In mesmerism, for example, one person is fascinated by another, and the tongue and all the muscles are removed from the dominion of conscious- ness and volition. In stammering we see how the disordered action is communicable from one child to another, or even from one adult to another; and it is the same also in more general convulsive affections, as hysteria and epilepsy. It is not to account for these phenomena by ascribing them to imitation, for the facts prove that the person is mastered by an involuntary impulse—an impulse, moreover, which does not originate with himself; for, before he wit- nessed the stammering or convulsed person who was the occasion of his seizure, he may have been per- fectly sound and healthy. It is the same also with the unthinking bravery of soldiers in action, who for the most part are absorbed, without any spontaneous effort, in the spirit of their captain. Whether in signs of depression or excitement, therefore, as exhibited in transient paralysis or involuntary action of the entire frame, or of part of the frame, there is sufficient proof