Secondly, The mind of the patient thus entranced enters into relation with, or is attracted towards, the mind or person of the mesmeriser. I remember witnessing a most decisive instance in which the operation of this attraction was singularly manifested. The place was Dr. Elliotson’s waiting-room; the patient, a young man whom Mr. Simpson had entranced. Mr. Simpson then moved about the room, standing still at several points in it in succession. The young man seemed attracted towards Mr. Simpson, to whom he drew near each time he stopped; then he pressed against Mr. Simpson, jostling him out of his place, which he planted himself in—his countenance bearing an expression of huge delight at what he had achieved. But in half a minute he began to look anxious and uneasy; and again—his eyes being shut all the while—he set off in search of Mr. Simpson, and repeated the same scene. There exists, it would appear, an attraction between the (mind of the?) entranced person and (that of?) his mesmeriser, or (that of?) any other person with whom the entranced person has secondarily come into relation.
Then, thirdly, It may be presumed that, in phenomena which are purely mental, space and distance go for nothing. But if this supposition be admitted, it would be as easy for a mesmeriser to entrance by a mental effort a sensitive and habituated patient at a hundred miles off as at the end of the same room. The phenomenon thus viewed is wholly exoneural. The one mind is supposed to be actually sensitive to the influence of the other. Each of the two minds, though in different degrees, energizes, it may be imagined, beyond its bodily frame. And the mind of the patient feels the force of the mesmeriser’s will acting upon it, and slips as it were at once, by the accustomed track, out of the normal into the abnormal psychico-neural relation.
Still I cannot get rid of a lurking notion that, in the phenomena last considered, the Od-force contributes an element of physical or physico-dynamic influence. For, putting for the moment aside the idea of mental action, what is to prevent two living bodies, that may be in Od-relation, or in exact Od-unison, from physically influencing one another at indefinite distances?