The Midwest pioneer, his ills, cures, & doctors - University Library ...

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tions, mesmerism was well on its road to crowding out
phrenology.^
In the popular mind phrenology, mesmerism or animal
magnetism, faith-healing, and the galvanism of Mr. Samuel
F. B. Morse were all confused. Western newspapers in the
1840's were filled with strange goings-on. "Professors"
made the legs of dead frogs jump, communicated with
persons in adjoining rooms, "read minds," and put people
into trances in which they sometimes remembered seeing
things which they had never seen before. Dr. Phineas
Parkhurst Quimby, who in New England was treating his
patients by trance therapeutics, had his imitators in the
West. Quimby discovered that there was present in man
a "higher power" or principle of which man himself was
only a medium. Disease itself, according to Quimby, was
only an erroneous belief. If one would just think himself
in perfect health, he would be in perfect health. On the
one hand Quimby's ideas furnished the basis for one of
America's most important inventions in religion, and on
the other supplied material for the quacks and eclectics
in the borderline field between medicine and psychology.
As with other oddities, mesmerism, which appealed particularly
to mystics and those with leanings toward the
supernatural, contained a quantum of validity. It employed
the power of suggestion and stimulated the development
of hypnosis, both of which play a part in modern medicine.
On the other hand it offered a perfect opportunity for the
Cagliostros and Perkinses, with their seances and metallic
tractors,
to bedizzen the public. Perhaps the fun offered
outweighed any possibilities of damage. In 1837, when the
Columbus Theatre ended its program with the laughable
farce "Animal Magnetism," a good time was had by all.
It remained for Joseph Rodes Buchanan, energetic and
original son of Kentucky, to tie together phrenology,
animal magnetism, and medicine, into an incoherent system,
which at one time or another he labeled
anthropology, and therapeutic sarcognomy.
neurology,