Human magnetism : its claims to dispassionate inquiry, being an attempt to show the utility of its application for the relief of human suffering / by W. Newnham.

  • Newnham, W. (William), 1790-1865.
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Human magnetism : its claims to dispassionate inquiry, being an attempt to show the utility of its application for the relief of human suffering / by W. Newnham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    what they have prejudged to he an outrageous system of quackery ; and they have branded with the obloquy of mountebanks, all those who have professed to practise, or to believe the principles of magnetism. Yet, by so doing, they have placed themselves in a false position,—for it is their province to examine phenomena which are brought before them, and not to deny their existence,—especially when those phenomena are said to be precisely similar to others, whose existence as diseased function is acknow- ledged, and with which are associated the same order, of unexplained but still undeniable manifestations. 2. Magnetism, in the course of its history, has been associated with many absurd and false opinions and illu- sions ;—and, as is almost unversally the case, the doctrine itself has been confounded with those occult and untenable systems which have been grafted upon it. This associa- tion has been fostered, if not produced, by the attempt to explain what in the present state of our knowledge is in- explicable ;—and to substitute the vagaries of the learned for the less brilliant but more useful record of observations, and registry of facts. The attempt to generalize from a small number of observations, and to theorize even before these facts have been thoroughly established, and ade- quately tested, is almost sure to result in that kind of fanciful association, which has no basis save Hypothesis, and is precisely opposed to the conclusions which arise from the observation and comparison of facts collected under different circumstances—at distant places—by various but upright and honest observers—of diversified calibre of mind, and habits of thought; whose united ex- perience being brought together—and its elements being tested by comparison, and separated by careful analysis, and classified and arranged, would by-and-by show, in