Observations placeholder
The dangers of surgical operations under hypnosis
Identifier
007897
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Not what you might at first assume................
A description of the experience
Letters on Mesmerism – Harriet Martineau
I will only give the remark of a gentleman on the invariable spectacle of a somnambule throwing away steel, however firmly grasped before, the moment it is touched with gold, -and usually with complaints of being burnt.
This gentleman observed how many conditions are requisite to a fair trial of mesmeric experiments, and how careless novices are of them -pointing out how the shrinking of the muscles of entranced patients under surgical operations may happen, in consistency with their unconsciousness of the pain, - the instruments being all made of steel, and the operator having probably a gold ring on his finger, of whose agency in the experiment he never thinks.