On the influence of suggestion in modifying and directing muscular movement, independently of volition / William B. Carpenter.

  • Carpenter, William Benjamin, 1813-1885.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the influence of suggestion in modifying and directing muscular movement, independently of volition / William B. Carpenter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [for the use of members.] ISopal gingtttuttGH of (0reat 'Britain* 1852. WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, Friday, March 12. Sir Charles Lemon, Bart., LL.D., F.R.S. in the Chair. William B. Carpenter, M.D., F.R.S., &c. On the'Influence of Suggestion in Modifying and directing Muscular Movement, independently of Volition. Public attention has recently been so much attracted to a class of phenomena, which has received the very inappropriate designation of Electro-Biological, or simply Biological, and so much misapprehension prevails regarding their true nature and import, that it becomes the Physiologist to make known the results of scientific investigation, directed in the first place towards the determination of their genuine- ;ness, and in the second to the elucidation of the peculiar state of the nervous system on which their production depends. With regard to the genuineness of the phenomena themselves, the Lecturer stated that he could entertain no doubt whatever; since they had been presented to himself and to other scientific en- quirers, by numerous individuals, on whose honesty and freedom from all tendency to deceive themselves or others implicit reliance could he placed. But from the account commonly given of these phenomena,— to the effect that the will of the ‘ biologized’ subject is entirely subjected to that of the operator,— he entirely dissented ; and believed that he should be able to show that the state in ques- tion is essentially one of reverie, in which the voluntary control over jthe current of thought is entirely suspended, the individual being for the time (so to speak) a mere thinking automaton, the whole course |of whose ideas is determinable by suggestions operating from with- out. The c biologized ’ individual cannot get rid of any notion with which he thus becomes possessed, by any effort of his own ; because jthe abeyance of his voluntary power alike prevents him from directing the current of his thoughts into another channel, and from having recourse to his ordinary experience for the correction of its fallacies; and so long as he is under its domination, all his conversation and actions are nothing else than an expression of it. A condition very No. 10. M