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34

Animal Magnetism.

or, sometimes even seconds, the patients appear constrained to close their eyes, and cannot re-open them; their limbs become rigid, and, if the effects are allowed time to develope themselves, they come to resemble M. Lafontaine's, so closely, that none but a mesmerist can detect the difference :—there is unusual insensibility, rigidity, with disturbed circulation, and restoration from this condition effected by wafting air against the face, either with the hands, or with a fan, or by blowing with the mouth, or with bellows. The rigidity and insensibility may be locally removed, by wafting the hands, as M. Lafontaine does, if the air be not obstructed, but, if a thick piece of paper be so placed, as to prevent the air being driven against the skin, and the knowledge of what we are trying be concealed from the patient, neither in Mr. Braid's, nor in M. Lafontaine's, experiments, could insensibility or rigidity be locally removed.

It is true, that many persons believe, that the phenomena are not the same, and M. Lafontaine professed to show, in what the difference consists, but he did this in so evidently unfair a manner, as to give rise to the suspicion, that he knew that there was no real difference. He was requested to try the experiments, which he professed to wish to make comparative between his own and Mr. Braid's method, under precisely similar circumstances; to allow the effects the same time to develope themselves, and to place the patients in similarly comfortable positions, but he positively refused.

Effects very similar to those of mesmerism are sometimes unintentionally produced. Nightmare and sleep-walking are familiar examples, arising from natural sleep being broken, by overloading of the digestive organs, or by some engrossing mental emotion, causing an unusually vivid dream. The effects of great surprise, or fright, rendering us, for a longer or shorter period, incapable of speech or motion, and even destroying life, are not very dissimilar to those of mesmerism; and even the few cases of natural catalepsy, which have been well recorded, appear to have their origin in some engrossing idea, or else in a nervous disorder, arising from some unknown irritation.

If the nature of these different causes of similar effects be examined, it will be seen, that, though differing in other respects, they have this in common, namely, they all produce, either one monotonous continued sensation, or confine the attention to one idea. We believe, therefore,

that this is the cause of this peculiar nervous disorder, and that catalepsy, hysteria, nightmare, and sleep-walking, reverie, extacy, and brown study, mesmerism and CORKISM, and, probably, fascination by serpents, and other animals, are all varieties of the same thing, complicated, it may be, with other disorders, but essentially the same, differing only in strength or duration, and all produced by the same cause, one sensation or idea, unnatural in its intensity or continuance.

If it be objected, that this is a very inadequate cause for such extraordinary effects, we would urge, that variety, both of impressions and ideas, is the order of nature, and that any departure from that order produces disease, or approach to it. Thus, whenever we examine any object, we do not keep the eye or the finger fixed to one point, but carry it round, so as to observe all the connected objects; neither, in thought, do we force

Sketches from the Life of an Irish Medical Student. 35

the mind to dwell upon one idea, but follow out all others associated with it; to do this excites our organs and faculties to healthful and natural action, or soothes them to easy repose; to do otherwise is to exhaust their energy, and to produce disorder and disease.

When the impressions are simply monotonous, and not exhausting, when they merely occupy the mind without exciting it, they tend to soothe us to natural sleep. They do this by withdrawing the mind from any slight impressions, without supplying it so as to keep the attention awake, and this is the cause of the lulling effects of a dull uninteresting sermon, or prosy speech, of a gentle lullaby, or of any soft murmuring sound, or of any unexciting occupation, such as counting; but this differs as much from the effects of mesmerism, as healthful excitement differs from the exhaustion of excessive or monotonous exertion.

SKETCHES FROM THE LIFE OF AN IRISH MEDICAL STUDENT.

No. I.

THE VICTIM OF TOBACCO. THE RESIDENT PUPIL'S supper.

My old friend and valued instructor, Dr. B., used to remark to his pupils in the Fever Hospital-"Gentlemen, you are not to expect that an attendance here will qualify you perfectly for private practice. Here, we have disease in the aggregate-its symptoms left to their own development,-not excited nor concealed, by the curtained bed-the darkened room-the noiseless step of the attendant-the whispered attentions of the nurse. We give it fair play here, and look it straight in the face; but, remember, you must study the Fever of Luxury, and the Fever of Poverty, separately."

No doubt we remembered this, and longed for an opportunity of studying the former-more, perhaps, for the sake of its golden accompaniments, than through a disinterested love of the profession. But the remark led me to think of the vast difference there is, between the experience of a medical student, and a surgeon in respectable private practice. All men's characters are, more or less, formed from their circumstances,

NOTE BY THE EDITOR.-As this paper is the actual production of a medical student, the sentiments it expresses must be received as those of a class, whose views of human suffering are modified by constant familiarity with its various forms. Without participating in these peculiar feelings, we gladly allow our contributor to give them expression; for, while he introduces us to strange scenes, he also shows us how those scenes are viewed by a numerous body, not over fond of communicating to the public their secret thoughts.

36 Sketches from the Life of an Irish Medical Student.

and it would be easy to trace to the pursuits of the former his proverbial recklessness of living, and the ease with which he treats all sublunary events. He stands "between the dead and the living"-a spectator, but without the responsibility of a charge; for, at best, he but acts under a superior,-the 66 grave and the gay" meet him alternately, but his attention is only called to the physical peculiarities of his patients; and, being thus left at will to please his fancy or taste, from the moral features of sickness in an hospital, or death in a dissectingroom, he wisely troubles himself very little about them; and, with a host of kindred spirits for companions, he prefers the laughing philosophy of life to its graver scenes or excitements. Be it remembered, also, that there is but little romance in a crowd; and, if we add to all this, youth, plenty of time for idleness, and uproarious spirits, "diffusive stimuli," in the shape of whiskey and tobacco, with a decided aversion to ennui, you have many reasons before you, why my time, spent in the Irish Metropolis as a Medical Student, should have been productive of more reminiscences, than mere "good cases," and difficult operations.

The "grave and the gay," however, are mixed as irrevocably in the life of youth, as in that of later years. Even to its careless eye, poverty and disease, fearfully united together, are occasionally appalling and though the highly wrought plots of an over-excited brain, or an over-worked mind, do not often appear in the lowest classes as excitants of disease, still the affections exist. Here there is no false sensibility to divert them into an unnatural channel. Let us hope, too, that, if their exhibition be more rare, yet,-like those metals, which are valuable, not alone from their scarcity, but their incorruptible nature-these too, when found, are more pure, more disinterested. Alas! that they should ever lead to death.

Here, then, sketched years ago, is my note book-lots of funmerry evenings" days and nights now gone "-jokes practical and wordy-cases of all kinds, from the queer stories of the poor lunatic, the fancies of Delirium Tremens, to the quiet, resigned feeling of the waiter on death, whose doom is marked, registered, and lectured on, till the Diagnosis is verified in the Dead Room.

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One of our best pieces of fun, " out and out," was the annual supper, which welcomed to office the new Resident Pupils every November, and allowed the old ones to express their thanks practically to their numerous friends and supporters for the past year-who had honoured them by an unfailing readiness at all times to assist in getting rid of as much whiskey punch, Guinness's porter, and other devourables, as the said Residents

thought fit to put on their table. At each returning season, then, great was the glee and excitement-how the cuppingglasses were polished up to serve the place of tumblers(do not be shocked, gentle reader, it is surely a better office to circulate, than abstract, blood)-how knives, and forks, and plates, and, in fact, all things, but the eatables, were borrowed, which could help to furnish an entertainmeut, how those, whose friends were in town, represented the terrible accident, which obliged them to sit up all night at the Hospital-how the Resident Pupils put out feelers for "tic" on all sides—and how the non-residents put out feelers for an invitation-these, and a thousand such anxieties and events, constitute the behind-thescenes bringing out of an hospital supper.

Does the reader know what a Resident Pupil's Room is? Imagine a small, square, distemper-coloured apartment, comprising bed-room, sitting room, coal vault, pantry, and all. One table, and many broken chairs, placed therein-in a corner, a press, with triple compartments the lowest for coats-then the bread and butter-then the lint and bandages for the patientsthe chimney-piece, with its motley array of pipes and tobacco, bottles of Tartar Emetic, and obsolete instruments of torture, called tooth forceps-in a corner, the mouldering remains of a skull; and, if you searched too closely, the heterogeneous sweepings of the aforesaid room, for one month, decently secreted, with Irish love of cleanliness, under the rug.

"Ah, Harry, my old fellow, how are you?-just come in to consult with you for a quiet ten minutes, before you make your preparations for supper" said I, as, entering this abode of Esculapius, I saluted one of its owners.

Harry Howard was as gentlemanly a specimen of the class medical, as you could meet with in a crowd of the amphibious animals. With a tall figure, and rather pensive cast of features shaded by dark hair, he had always a pleasant expression; yet till you saw him in his fifth tumbler, you would have mistaken him for a silent man—then, indeed, there was no manner of doubt; with an exquisite perception of the ridiculous, and capital imitative powers, he kept us in a kind of thraldom by his laughing dark eye; his fun, which could not be repressed, then rapidly flowed, and, long after many might have tired of his high spirits, and when he himself, perhaps, appeared to have subsided into silence, a renewed good thing would start forth to make us all merry; this was his peculiarity, and his good things came straggling at the close of a string of humbug, something like the solitary shots, which we hear at the end of a peal of musketry, the single guns, which missed fire the first time, and

38 Sketches from the Life of an Irish Medical Student.

which, if undischarged, would endanger the proprietor, were he to add a second load.

"Take a seat, my old fellow, take a seat, I expect Ralph presently. By the bye, capital name I've just hit off for him, would you guess it ?-you know he weighs fourteen stone-I call him my "dilated pupil," that's professional, eh ?"

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Capital, capital, and how does "his Greatness" bear it? "Why, as well as can be expected, though the Whale and Talbot, and a score of fellows laughed themselves sick when they heard it.

A loud and long-continued knocking at the door, mixed with varied exclamations, announced a visitor; and, half smoking a short black pipe, half singing the chorus of a sea song, called "The Whale," (from which he derived his soubriquet), entered, or rather rushed into the room, a tall, light-haired, jolly-looking young man, dressed in a blanket, curiously manufactured into one of those petticoat overalls latterly so prevalent; the aforesaid article bound with blue braid the usual striped edging dangling round his well-shaped calf and the style and title, "Irish Manufacture— Williams and Co.,” in a circular stamped on it, carefully adjusted, so as to appear like a star over the left breast. One arm encircled the rather full waist of a fat nurse, and the other, that of our friend Ralph, the "Dilated Pupil." Thus you have at full length the figure of the Whale.'

"Come in nurse, come in, never mind the Whale-ah my fat friend, are you there? sit down-hang it, sit down—well Nurse, what's the matter?"

"I can't get Mulligan to stop smokin in the ward, Sir-an Missus Skinflint, the head nurse, wont giv us no more coals to dress the turkey wid."

"Confound her impudence," said the Whale,' as taking up three or four splints for fractures, he handed them to the nurse. "Here nurse, light the fire with these, and tell Jem to go down to No. 4, for the three cupping-glasses, and the scarificator-I want the glasses for punch."

The Whale' always undertook the management of every thing in the way of suppers, &c., although only a guest. Indeed, his culinary propensities were celebrated; and he cared very little where the materials came from, so that he had enough. A brace of ducks, not wild, were to him easy matters of prey, so long as a short stick and leisure for a country ramble were allowed him.

"Jack," said Harry, addressing me, "Will you go and quiet that infernal row in No. 1-they are always fighting thereonly last night, Murphy swallowed half an ounce of ointment intended for Dooley's eye, and Dooley carefully applied Murphy's

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