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Poe and Mesmerism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
In three of his stories, “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains,” “Mesmeric Revelation,” and “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” Edgar Allan Poe reflected the interest of his day in what was by all odds the most fascinating of the new “sciences.” Mesmerism, first as a somewhat frightening novelty in the hands of its “discoverer,” Anton Mesmer, during the closing decades of the eighteenth century, and then as the handmaiden of medicine in the first half of the nineteenth century, had achieved enormous popularity throughout Europe and the United States.1 To compare such popularity with the spread of the psychoanalytic theories of Freud, Jung, and Adler in the twentieth century is to make but a feeble analogy, considering the difference in time and the development of science between the two ages. In addition, the interest manifested in mesmerism contained far more sensationalism and mysticism, and therefore had a more direct and widespread appeal. The extent of interest becomes clear when it is realized that in 1815 a commission was appointed in Russia to investigate animal magnetism, with a “magnetical” clinic being subsequently established near Moscow; that by 1817 doctors in Prussia and in Denmark were the only ones authorized to practice mesmerism, and were compelled to submit their findings to royal commissions; and that by 1835 a clinic had been established in Holland, and in Sweden theses on the subject were accepted for the doctorate.2
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1947
References
1 “Mesmerism” and “animal magnetism” were terms used interchangeably in the nineteenth century.
2 Charles Poyen, Report on the Magnetical Experiments (Boston, 1836), pp. lxvi-lxx.
3 The collection of works on the subject in the New York Public Library, admittedly incomplete, shows nineteen books published in the United States from 1841 through 1845, and eight published in England from 1843 through 1845.
4 The committee refused to commit itself, being content to state that no collusion existed between the mesmerist and his subjects. Cf., Robert H. Collyer, Psychography (New York, 1843), p. 38.
5 As typical may be instanced the following: an anti-mesmeric article in The Yale Literary Magazine, iii (December, 1837), 61-67, containing a satire reprinted from Blackwoods for September, 1837; a letter to the New Yorker, iv (November 18, 1837), 547 f., from a doctor, defending animal magnetism in its medical use; an editorial note in the New World, iv (February 12, 1842), 111, praising the forthright stand taken by Charles Dickens, together with a letter from Dickens, at that time in Boston, supporting the cause of mesmerism.
6 Poe published three acts of an anonymously written five-act play, The Magnetizar; or, Ready for Any Body, in his Broadway Journal. The play, a completely inconsequential comedy, ran for three successive issues (September 6, 13, 20, 1845). Whether the two remaining acts were ever written, or whether Poe terminated the publishing arrangements, is not known.
7 For Poe's reliance upon Macaulay's Warren Hastings for locale, see Henry Austin, “Poe as a Plagiarist and His Debt to Macaulay,” Literature, August 4, 1899, p. 83.
8 Thus, A. H. Quinn, in Edgar Allan Poe (New York, 1941), describes it as “the realistic treatment of the supernatural” (p. 401), and G. E. Woodberry, in The Life of Edgar Allan Poe (2 vols., New York, 1909), calls it “a picturesque story of metempsychosis ascribed to the influence of Hoffmann …” (ii, 109). Palmer Cobb, in The Influence of E. T.A. Hoffmann on the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe (Chapel Hill, 1908), finds parallels in the use of the doctrine of metempsychosis by both authors (p. 50 f.). Cf., Killis Campbell, The Mind of Poe (Cambridge, 1933), p. 9 f., and Margaret Alterton, Origins of Poe's Critical Theory (Iowa City, 1925), p. 16. Whatever the facts of Hoffmann's influence upon Poe, metempsychosis is an element of minor importance in Poe's tale.
9 The mesmeric literature of the day contains numerous cases of various ailments successfully treated by mesmerism. Cf., The Zoist, i-v (1843-47), passim.
10 The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. James A. Harrison, 17 vols. (New York, 1902), v, 176. This edition will be referred to henceforth as Works.
11 Works, v, 165.
12 y, 164.
13 v, 166.
14 v, 174.
15 v, 174.
16 v, 175.
17 v, 165.
18 The Animal Magnetizer, By A Physician (Philadelphia, 1841), p. 22 f.
19 Charles P. Johnson, A Treatise of Animal Magnetism (New York, 1844), p 18.
20 Works, v, 171.
21 v, 173.
22 v, 174.
23 v, 173.
24 Complete Works (Riverside Edition, 1883), iii, 54. Hawthorne's repugnance to spiritualism and mesmerism, and his harsh delineation of Dr. Westervelt, the crafty mesmerist in The Blithedale Romance, may be recalled as a treatment of the subject from an inimical point of view.
25 I, 210 (Works, xii, 123). Newnham's book was reviewed in detail the same month in The Zoist (iii, 102-116). The precision of this review reflects only too clearly upon Poe's superficial treatment of the book.
26 xxix, 247 f. (Works, xvi, 113-115).
27 Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend (1798-1868), poet, graduate of Eton College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge; B.A., 1821; M.A., 1824; entered the clergy, but was kept from active service by illness.
28 The revision and enlargement consisted solely of the addition of a “Notice to the Second Edition” of 22 pages, bringing the book up to date.
29 2 vols. (New York, 1926), ii, 688 n. Allen's reference to Davis's books will be found in ii, 758 n. The possible connection between Davis and Poe was suggested to Allen by S. Foster Damon, who, in his Thomas Holly Chivers Friend of Poe (New York, 1930), limits the influence of Davis on Poe to Eureka (p. 158 f.).
30 New York, 1857.
31 Page 317.
32 New York, 1868, p. 18 f.
33 Boston, 1868.
34 Page 63.
35 Works, xiv, 173.
36 Quinn, op. cit., p. 419.
37 Works, v, 241-254.
38 Ibid., p. 242.
39 Facts in Mesmerism, p. 51.
40 Page 10.
41 William Lang, Mesmerism, Its History, Phenomena, and Practice (Edinburgh, 1843). William Lang of Glasgow, as he was referred to, was a friend of Townshend, who wrote a supplement for the 1844 edition of Land's book. In this work Lang pays tribute to Townshend's contributions to mesmerism, quoting portions of Facts in Mesmerism which contain the word “sleepwaking” (pp. 29, 31). Although Lang approves in the main of Townshend's use of the word, he does not himself use it in the book, adhering instead to the more formal “mesmeric sleep.”
42 Quinn, op. cit., p. 429.
43 Graham's Magazine, xxxii, 179. This section of Marginalia is neither reprinted nor listed in the bibliography of Works (xvi).
44 Page 338.
45 Would Poe have been especially attracted to the latter case because the subject's initials were E—A—?
46 Cf. ante, p. 1077.
47 To say that phthisis was a favorite illness of romantic literature is to overlook, perhaps, the morbid perversity with which Poe transferred his own wife's fatal malady to so many of his characters.
48 Works, VI, 154-166.
49 Page xvi.
50 Works, vi, 158.
51 Ante, p. 1090.
52 Published by Thomas T. Watts. Woodberry, in his Life of Edgar Allan Poe, attributes the authorship of Rambles and Reveries to Watts (ii, 407) ; Campbell, in The Mind of Poe, repeats the error (p. 169 n.).
53 Pages 33-47.
54 ii, 63.
55 Page 37 f.
56 Works, vi, 157.
57 Graham's Magazine, xxxii, 179.
58 Dr. R. W. Haxall's Dissertation on the Importance of Physical Signs in the Various Diseases of the A bdomen and Thorax, which Poe reviewed in the Southern Literary Messenger for October, 1843 (Works, IX, 164-166), contains similarities of language only, as does the contemporary classic work in the field, Laennec's Diseases of the Chest, translated from the French by John Forbes (New York, 1838).
59 Joseph Jackson, in his edition of The Philosophy of Animal Magnetism by a Gentleman of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1928), attempts to attribute this book to Poe. His argument is ingenious but inconclusive. All that can now be said is that Poe may have had a hand in it; there is no evidence that he did. The problem at best is moot.
60 It will be noted that in the Marginalia for March, 1848, Poe nowhere takes the stand that his fiction was intended to hoax. His insistence upon the differentiation between “sleepwaker” and “sleepwalker” (cf. ante, p. 1089) appears to be a deliberate attempt to beg the issue, and his statements throughout avoid the larger problem. Against this may be set his successive references to animal magnetism: Broadway Journal, II, 174, 255 (in “Words with a Mummy”), 390 f.; Graham's Magazine, xxxii, 178 f.; John W. Robertson, Edgar A. Poe (San Francisco, 1921), p. 316; T. O. Mabbott, “The Letters from George W. Eveleth to Edgar Allan Poe,” Bulletin of the New York Public Library, xxvi, 180; James Southall Wilson, “The Letters of Edgar A. Poe to George W. Eveleth,” Alumni Bulletin, University of Virginia, xviii, no. 1, 47; Works, xvii, 268 f., 276, 284 f., 342; xvi, 71.
61 I am much indebted to Professor Nelson F. Adkins of New York University for his valuable editorial suggestions.