SECTION II.

MESMERINE.

THE East wind blows-it pierces between the very joints of our bones, we look not up to the vane for proof: we feel it: What is it? Where does it come from? An effect cannot be produced without a cause. There is an influence, a disagreeable, pain-giving influence, impregnating our very flesh and bones with discomfort. The blight passes over districts of the country: We see nothing but haziness for a few hours; unnoticed by the active man of business, but the plants have felt it, and they droop and die.

Atmospheres have a powerful effect upon man. The close, muggy day produces heaviness, and depression of spirits; thinking and acting appear alike paralyzed. Let those atmospheres pass off, and what is called a fresh clear one supply their place, and the change on the physical organization of man is at once apparent. He breathes, he lives, he moves, and he acts, with vivacity and pleasure.

Electricity in the air, if in excess, has a powerful effect on the human body; causing headache and producing uneasiness throughout the body. Electrical storms, when vertical, appear to have a power over men, like the moon over the waters; suctionizing the blood upwards, and producing what is called determination of blood to the head. Ozone streams off the ocean, and, being inhaled, the body permeated with it, is affected by its power.

Galvanic electricity, or force, liberated by the rapid oxidation of metals, is susceptible of being thrice attenuated; and each attenuation as much more refined and subtle than its predecessor;—as atmospheric electricity is more refined and subtle than atmosphere; yet still they are below the refinement and subtlety of that nervous power by which the nervoussystem is maintained in all its healthful integrity—a fit blending or union point for mind and matter. Man has

iron in his blood, and therefore is susceptible to magnetic

currents.

These and other mighty soul powers from material substances, affect men, and animals, and vegetables; come from whence they will, they have an origin, a substance, a power for good or evil; I mean qualitively, because, though they produce sickness to one description of matter, they are life to another. Take as an example, the periodical wind called the Harmattan, which blows between the latitudes 15 north and 1o south, three or four times a-year; from the interior of the African continent towards the Atlantic coast. Its duration at each period is from one to six days, and its force very moderate. A fog always accompanies the wind. One of the characteristics of this wind and fog is extreme dryness. When continued for any time, the foliage of the orange and lemon trees exposed to it, becomes shrivelled and withered. So extreme is this dryness, that the covers of books, even when closed, locked in chests, and enveloped in linen cloth, are curved by it, just as if they had been exposed to the heat of a strong fire. The panels of doors, frames of windows, and the furniture, are often cracked and broken by it. Its effects upon the human body are not less marked. The eyes, lips, and palate are parched and painful. If the wind continues unabated so long as four or five days, the face and hands grow pallid. The natives endeavour to counteract these effects by smearing their skin with grease.

Considering all these effects, it might naturally be inferred that the Harmattan must be highly insalubrious; yet observation proved it to have the extreme opposite quality. It was found that its first breath completely banished intermittent fevers. Those who had been enfeebled by the practice of excessive bleeding, then prevalent there, soon recovered their strength. Epidemic and remittent fevers, which had a local prevalence, disappeared as if by enchantment. But the most wonderful effect of this atmospheric phenomenon was, that it rendered infection in

communicable, even when applied by artificial means, such as inoculation.

There was at Wydah, in 1770, a British slave-ship called the Unity, having on board a cargo of above 300 negroes. The small-pox having broken out among them,' the owner resolved on inoculating those who had not taken the natural disease. All those who were inoculated before the commencement of the Harmattan took the disease, but of seventy that were inoculated on the second day after its commencement, not one took the infection; yet after the lapse of some weeks, when the Harmattan ceased, these seventy negroes took the natural disease. Soon after they were attacked by it, the Harmattan recommenced, and the disease almost immediately disappeared.

The country over which the Harmattan blows, for more than a hundred leagues, is a series of extensive plains covered with verdure, with a few patches of wood here and there, and intersected by a few rivers, with some small lakes.

Here we have a minor evil for a major good. So it is throughout nature. Many influences may be evil, or rather considered evil, that are a positive good to the mass. A fierce wind, and heavy rain, may cause damage in the city, but the purification of the air, by the blowing away of pestiferous vapours, and the washing away of putrescent substances, produces health and longevity to the inhabitants. We have the same principle in vegetable substances growing in our gardens, and woods; poisonous to man, but medicinal to instinctive animals and birds; who, by that wonderful power, instinct, eat and are healed. All those vegetable substances give out a fragrance more or less cognizant to the man's sense of smell, and even of taste; and that smell partakes of the nature of the substance from which it comes; and is a substance emanating from the plant, as surely as the fogs and atmospheres come from a substance, and are inhaled by human lungs; and also in most instances pierce through the clothes, and enter by the pores. of the skin into the body. Let us take musk,-a minute portion mixed with the mortar of one of the Oriental mosques,.

700 years ago, gives out its power, its substance, its smell, as full and powerful now as ever. Sulphur and tobacco fumes permeate the body through and through. If persons of a delicate organization, imbibe pernicious smells or emanations; they suffer, droop, and die. The emanations proceeding from all substances, we had under consideration when attention was drawn to an examination of the body and soul (pages 38 to 52); and on that one grand principle of "emanations," from all animate and inanimate substances on earth, stands the bulwark of Mesmerine, shedding itself from man, as from all other substances; the waves of mental opposition may rise high, and dash furiously against it; but it stands so firm as a truth in nature, that the angry surges only dash themselves into drops, and foam. Man physically is a part and parcel of nature around him, subject to the same laws of affinity and repulsion—or in other words, of sympathy, and antipathy;— with their intermediate states or degrees of power and action.

The power of "Mesmerine" may be observed in the sick chamber; let the patient be afflicted with small-pox, putrid fever, or other contagious disease; and when a stranger comes into the room, if ventilation has been neglected, the effluvia or "mesmerine" which has streamed from the afflicted is offensive; and if the visitor be in a negative or sickly condition, he imbibes a portion of that effluvia. Sometimes the point or sting of the vapour or disease, with lightning speed, darts upon the stranger, leaves the patient, who recovers; and enters the receptive body of the visitor; and if we could see the operation in action, we should be witness to a phenomenon similar to that we call the thunder-bolt, when the point of the fluid darts out and penetrates the atmosphere through the weakest of its negative parts, and enters and kills its receiver; we should witness the disease in the form of a thunder-cloud, surrounding the invalid, and discharging itself by a point of light on the new influence placed within its power. Well is it for man that his organs of sight are so

opaque as to prevent him from seeing the more inner or subtler operations of nature. If he were witness to them, life would be a task, fearful and severe; those emanations, and lights, and tempests, would so occupy his energies, and so cloud his vision of the solid, on which he has to depend for support; that life under such a phase would be a misery, and death happiness. It is these death-clouds which hang over the patient, and which are seen and felt by sensitive animals (such as the dog) and cause the frequent occurrence of " 'death-tokens" by howling under the windows of the afflicted; the dog passing perceives that which we do not, and his fear finds vent in howlings. Dogs are excessively sensitive to smell, and carry it to such a degree, that where the effluvia or mesmerine proceeding from any human being is agreeable to them, they will follow and endeavour to make friends with those they never saw before: even roughness has little effect, they will run off, only to draw near when opportunity offers.

The law of positive and negative runs through nature. The giver and receiver must be in different conditions, and throw off different effluvia; and if we could see the operation, we should find that each effluvia had a substantive existence, as real as the physical human body; all in nature are both receivers and givers, are positive to some powers, and negative to others; all have what is scientifically called Polarity. The very magnet which draws the needle is a receiver and giver; it receives an influence or atmosphere which penetrates its solid, and passes off imbued with the nature of the metal it passes through, and that power is so strong, as I have in past pages stated, that it jets out the emanation, lays hold of the iron, if sufficiently powerful, and draws it to itself. In one sense, all seen substances are negatives, as it is only the ethereal influence which enters at one end, and passes off at the other; in another sense, they are positives, as the influence while so passing through becomes a negative, and receives of the special quality of the substances passed through; which, borne on the atmosphere,