Spiritualism, Mesmerism and the Occult, 1800–1920 Vol 1

Shane McCorristine

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781138757455
• eBook ISBN: 9781000559453
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This edition provides an insight into the dark areas between Victorian science, medicine and religion. The rare reset source material in this collection is organized thematically and spans the period from initial mesmeric experiments at the beginning of the nineteenth century to the decline of the Society for Psychical Research in the 1920s.

APPARITIONS AND SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS

DOI: 10.4324/9781003112785-1

Christoph Friedrich Nicolai, ‘A Memoir on the Appearance of Spectres or Phantoms Occasioned by Disease, with Psychological Remarks. Read by Nicolai to the Royal Society of Berlin, on the 28th of February, 1799’, Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry and the Arts, 6 (1803), pp. 161–79.

John Alderson, An Essay on Apparitions, in which their Appearance is Accounted for by Causes Wholly Independent of Preternatural Agency (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, & Green, 1823), pp. vii–x, 13–53.

Past Feelings Renovated; or, Ideas Occasioned by the Perusal of Dr. Hibbert’s Philosophy of Apparitions Written with the View of Countering any Sentiments Approaching Materialism, which that Work, However Unintentional on the Part of the Author, may have a Tendency to Produce (London: G. B. Whittaker, 1828), pp. 88–106.

William Chapman, Nocturnal Travels; or, Walks in the Night. Being an Account of Ghosts, Apparitions, Hobgoblins, and Monsters (London: Houlston & Son, 1828).

Thomas Forster, Illustrations of the Atmospherical Origin of Epidemic Diseases, and of its relation to their Predisponent Constitutional Causes, Exemplified by Historical Notices and Cases, and on the Twofold Means of Prevention, Mitigation, and Cure, and of the Powerful Influence of Change of Air, as a Principal Remedy, 2nd edn (London: Meggy & Chalk, 1829), pp. 71–8, 82–5.

Robert Paterson, An Account of Several Cases of Spectral Illusions, with Observations on the Phenomena and on the States of Bodily Indisposition in which they Occur’ Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, 59 (1843), pp. 77–102.

Charles Oilier, Fallacy of Ghosts, Dreams, and Omens; With Stories of Witchcraft, Life-in-Death, and Monomania (London: Charles Oilier, 1848), pp. 3–40.

John Netten Radcliffe, Fiends, Ghosts, and Sprites: Including an Account of the Origin and Nature of Belief in the Supernatural (London: Richard Bentley, 1854), pp. 156–226.

Selections from the Papers of the Phasmatological Society (Oxford: Phasmatological Society, 1882), pp. 1–52.

In 1799 Christoph Friedrich Nicolai (1733–1811), a German bookseller, publisher and philosopher of a sceptical disposition, read a paper to the Royal Society of Berlin describing how he had seen fantastic apparitions during a period of considerable stress and melancholy in his life.¹ Translated into English in 1803, ‘A Memoir on the Appearance of Spectres or Phantoms occasioned by Disease’ attained cult status as a paradigmatic case in the psychological literature of nineteenth-century Europe. In this Nicolai outlined in a cool and rational manner the connections he noted between the state of his health and the appearances, focusing especially on the importance of being bled. Ruminating upon this very graphic illustration of the connection between bodily dis-equilibrium (in the form of disordered venereal circulation), the natural vivacity of the imagination and the appearance of spectres in the visual sphere, Nicolai described it as a lesson for philosophers and sceptics to be both more credulous of accounts of ghost-seeing and at the same time less credulous of such phenomena which show ‘how far the human imagination can go in the external representation of pictures; it may also admonish those well-disposed persons not to ascribe to their visions any degree of reality, and still less to consider the effects of a disordered system, as proofs that they are haunted by spirits’.

Modelling himself on the new breed of psychological investigators, Nicolai distinguished his response to the appearance of ghosts from those of the insane, the fanatical, the superstitious or the lovers of the marvellous who would have readily imparted reality to these hallucinations, while he ‘made them subservient to my observations, because I consider observation and reflection as the basis of all rational philosophy’. This decision by Nicolai not to ascribe any objective reality to his visions, not to believe in what he saw and what was presented to his senses proved a landmark test-case on the length to which practitioners of the new empirical psychology were prepared to go in the pursuit of knowledge of the internal and external worlds. In contemporary cultural terms it also demonstrated a courageous amount of faith in the powers of self-observation and the strength of the medical imagination to map out the Gothic shadows of the psyche.

In the early nineteenth century, important texts were written on the physiology of ghost-seeing by the physicians John Ferriar of Manchester – An Essay toward a Theory of Apparitions (1813) – and Samuel Hibbert of Edinburgh – Sketches of the Philosophy of Apparitions (1824). Another treatise came from John Alderson, an English physician who studied in Edinburgh but was based in Hull for most of his professional life. Alderson was heavily involved in the medical, literary and philosophical associations of Hull and wrote pamphlets on fever, paralysis and agriculture. Alderson’s views on apparitions were originally delivered to the Literary and Philosophical Society of Hull in 1805, then published in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal in 1810, and finally revised and published as a pamphlet entitled An Essay on Apparitions in 1823. Declining to pathologize cases of ghost-seeing, Alderson argued they were ‘well-founded’ and universal because they were caused by ‘perfectly natural’, physiological causes, such as injuries to the head, bad digestion or mental conditions such as guilt or depression. He further suggested that mystics such as Swedenborg could perhaps throw themselves into a state in which they could really see the spirit world. In the movement away from diagnoses which relied upon moral or psychiatric judgements, we can begin to trace the emergence of modern medical theories of the hallucination which allowed for a rational, sane subject who could see ghosts but also be receptive to cures and therapies.

Through stressing the influence of the bodily senses in their theories of spectral illusions, Ferriar, Hibbert and Alderson stressed that people who experienced spectral illusions were neither insane nor ghost-seers, but merely peripherally affected by abnormal impressions and could be treated by such down-to-earth methods as bleeding and the application of active purgatives. The secular implications of theories which anchored the supernatural in the venereal fluctuations of the body were easily detected by contemporaries who believed that the antiapparition philosophy behind the spectral illusion model could be considered as approaching anti-clericalism, or even materialism at times, in its hostility to accounts of ghosts, spirits, and visions purporting to be real. Thus preliminary remarks upon the assured religious beliefs of the author were common among the anti-apparition philosophers who were keen to annul any charges of atheism brought against them. For instance Ferriar’s disclaimer read:

observe, however, that the following treatise is applicable, in its principles, to profane history, and to the delusions of individuals only. If any thing contained in the ensuing pages could be construed into the most indirect reference to theological discussions, the manuscript would have been committed, without mercy, to the flames.²

Despite such assurances, the perception that the anti-apparition project was a danger to public morality and the very foundations of theological belief never fully disappeared. Before the arrival of the modern spiritualist faith in Britain in the 1850s, the ghost-believing counter-discourse against the spectral illusions theory took the form of religious and biblical arguments in favour of the reality of ghosts and collections of tales designed to destroy ‘Sadducean’ arguments. The next document in this volume, Past Feelings Renovated (1828), was a book-length attack on Hibbert’s views especially, with its anonymous author marshalling scriptural, traditional and philosophical arguments against the latter’s theory of‘mental unconsciousness’. The alienists and medical philosophers arguing for the spectral illusions theory now faced one of the fundamental problems of nineteenth-century British psychiatric discourse: the socio-cultural necessity of allowing for a transcendental element in the workings of the mind, both conscious and unconscious.

William Chapmans instructive pamphlet, Nocturnal Travels; or, Walks in the Night (1828) articulates an increasing desire to exert social control over the world of ghosts and monsters. Chapman’s main point is that ‘ [i] t is very unwise to frighten children’ and despite a humorous tone throughout, he argues that superstition is not only erroneous but also dangerous to the development of children. Central to the discourses of Enlightenment, of course, were the establishment of contrasts between a past dominated, sometimes excusably, by superstition and a present time (a ‘period of knowledge and advantages’) in which the intelligent discernment of the senses was considered a paramount attribute of modern social behaviour. In this vein Chapman exposes and explains how credulous observers can see ghosts where only natural phenomena or self-deception occurs. While Chapman was concerned to fortify the young with the Scriptures and a sense of enlightened rationality, the examples he offers reveals to the modern reader the eeriness of rural nocturnal environments, where darkness, lonely spots, animals and passed-out drunks could easily inspire fear in the passer-by.³

The next document extracted comes from Thomas Forster’s Illustrations of the Atmospherical Origin of Epidemic Diseases (1829). Forster (1789–1860) was a curious combination of naturalist, astronomer and phrenologist, but who had graduated in medicine from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and studied under the eminent surgeon John Abernethy (1764–1831) at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. Forster was convinced of the power of air, atmosphere and weather to affect the mind and bodily health, and held that disease was epidemical, that is, capable of being carried by air and could affect people suffering from melancholy especially. Forster’s interest in the influence of atmosphere and meteorology on well-being was hardly unique at the time, as mesmerists and astrologers, as well as more conventional medical practitioners, were well aware of the relationship between mood, body and weather conditions.⁴ Forster was also concerned about the ‘ocular spectra of children, who go to bed ‘with irritable nervous systems’ and see ghastly faces in the dark.⁵ In a short section on spectral illusions included here, Forster asked how we can distinguish real objects from false, even when the image is perceived alike through the sensorium. In common with other theorists, Forster proposed a strong connection between dreaming and ghost-seeing, but unlike Ferriar and Hibbert, he integrated a phrenological outlook. When the nervous system is in a morbid state, Forster suggested, the ‘Organ of Supernaturality’ is irritated, often due to a change in the weather, and can, due to its proximity to the ‘Organ of Ideality’, produce images of thought which can deceive the person into seeing things that are not really there. Although Forster argued with the leadingphrenologist Johann Spurzheim (1776–1832) over the existence of an Organ of Supernaturality,⁶ his description of the mind as having a ‘laboratory of imagination’ and being capable of being influenced by ‘the chemistry of fancy’ simultaneously strikes a modern tone.

Robert Paterson was vice-president of the Anatomical Society, a member of the Obstetrical Society and a physician at the Leith Dispensary and Casualty Hospital in Edinburgh. An Account of Several Cases of Spectral Illusions’ (1843) is one of a series of case histories and articles which Paterson published in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal in the 1840s on topics as varied as obstetrics and the brain. This particular article on the subject of spectral illusions was interesting enough outside its immediate readership to merit discussion in the Phrenological Journal ⁷ Representing the upsurge in the ghost-seeing accounts of the middle and upper classes sent to learned journals, Paterson assured his readers about the unassailable respectability of his patients. In one case a Miss N. was convalescing at home during a storm while her father was at church. As the storm progressively got worse, Miss N. began to suspect that her father had been killed and it was in this state of mind that she suddenly saw his ghost sitting in the chair by the fire. For thirty minutes the spectral illusion remained there, impervious to the lady’s touch or attempts at communication: her father returned from church unharmed soon after. Explaining this case as due to either a disordered digestive system or congestion of the ‘cerebral membranes’, Paterson went on to explicitly make the connection between the phenomena of these ‘dreams or illusions’ and their gradual transition from simple dreams to ‘the ravings of insanity’.

Charles Oilier (1788–1859) was a well-known publisher, critic and writer in London before and during the Victorian period. Between 1817 and 1823 Oilier was engaged in a publishing partnership with his brother James, releasing works by authors such as William Hazlitt, John Keats, Percy B. Shelley, Leigh Hunt and Charles Lamb. In later life Oilier wrote Fallacy of Ghosts, Dreams, and Omens; With Stories of Witchcraft, Life-In-Death, and Monomania (1848), a work which opened with a link to his beloved Shakespeare. In this extract from Fallacy of Ghosts Oilier outlines many of the standard objections to ghost-belief, including their inability to typically appear in daylight or in crowds, and the frequency with which ill people see ghosts. Oilier thus expressed the sceptical view of many in the mid-nineteenth century scientific community when he wrote:

It may be laid down as a general maxim, that anyone who thinks he has seen a ghost, may take the vision as a symptom that his bodily health is deranged. Let him, therefore, seek medical advice, and, ten to one, the spectre will no more haunt him. To see a ghost, is, ipso facto, to be a subject for the physician.

Oilier’s view implies that ghost-seeing is something of a moral failing which could only be combated by ‘self-possession’ and a policing of the senses. Other medical voices made it clear that ghost-seeing could be explained by illusion, deception or superstition.

In Fiends, Ghosts, and Sprites (1854), John Netten Radcliffe (1826–84), an epidemiologist and medical superintendant, argued that ghosts represented the ‘retention’ of ancient and pagan beliefs about the world. As witnessed in the peasant folklore of the nineteenth century, such beliefs, Radcliffe suggested, were an ever-present, if declining, part of society. This approach anticipated the late-nineteenth-century anthropological discourse of superstition as degeneration and ‘survival’ of primitive cultures in enlightened modernity. This extract from Radcliffe’s work discusses the occurrence of hallucination among people who are terrified, bereaved and injured. Radcliffe exemplifies the increasing use of the term ‘hallucination’ in preference for ‘spectral illusion’ to describe how

by the action of the imagination and the emotions alone, the changes going on in the nervous cent...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• General Introduction
• Select Bibliography
• Introduction
• Apparitions and Spectral Illusions
• Illusions and Hallucinations
• Editorial Notes