The Sun.
London, England, 1862-06-24 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR OF THE MIN.

SlR,—While the general newspaper world has
been giving us solemn infallible dicta as to the
necessity of a granite obelisk for the late lamented
Prince Consort, or aesthetic homilies (that no one
regards) in opposition to Mr. Palgrave at Soutb
Kensington, you have been telling us cogently of
the annual progress of " Mesmerism," under the
forlorn hope led by Dr. Elliotson. True, scientific
facts have very little chance in the present day
when opposed to quackery and shallow "sensation"
mountebankry. All honour, therefore, to Dr.
Elliotson, who, " through good report and evil
report"--in spite of the shallow success of grave,
grotesque college authorities, who love grim rou-
tine—in spite of journalism, the mill-stone round
the neck of all medical progress—and in spite of the
difficulties of Mesmerism itself, and they are not a
few—contrives to give the thing a fair trial. A
wretched tragedy has occurred at Manchester. And
Dr. Alfred Taylor says his chemical acids, alkalies,
or such tests, are at fault as to whether the children
were killed or slept the chemical sleep of death
under charcoal fumes or chloroform. But there is
a psychical side of the matter, and a physiological
side of it, naarly allied to mesmerism and chloro-
form, of which he is innocent, that would at once
clear the affair up ; but, like the Smethurst case, it
is more chemically orthodox to ignore the psycho-
logical pedantry of doctors, and (under favour ?) to
make a mess of the thing, than to clear it up by
the traces left in the system by chloroform or that
kind of sleep..
The cases under Mesmerism in Ihe Sun of the
21st inst. seem to be badly chosen. No doubt Dr.
Elliotson gets tired of the subject as he advances in
years. It is with the object of congratulating, in a
small way, and cheering him up, that I write these
few lines. The nervous system is no longer the
tabula rasa it used to be. This exquisite assem-
blage of organs-
- the soul's frail dwelling-place,"

is undoubtedly affected by mesmeric passes—just
as certainly as that the monotone of a droning,
moaning, woeful, certain woe-begone passionless
sermon affects us undoubtedly to sleep—as certain
as that if you exhaust one of the five senses, the
other four, for want of association of sensorial ideas,
become sleepy and confused—the true secret of the
deliquium in the droning sermon, of tobacco smok-
ing, or, indeed, of ordinary sleep at night, from the
exhaustion of the muscles and their "sense" during
the turmoil of the day.
Mesmeric passes produce this exhaustion, and
sleep, and deliquium, and ought to be valuable in
neuralgic pains, rheumatism, &c., as well as in
small surgical operations; let us only choose the
cases properly.—Yours, &e.,
CHARLES KIDD, M.D.
Sackville-street, Piccadilly, June 22.

Tn E EXPLOSION AT BIRMIN
HAM, Monday Evening.—The continued search among
the ruins has resulted in the discovery of another
body, making nine deaths in all, including the
two sons of tho proprietor. The number of cases
admitted as in•patients at the hospital is fourteen.
and there are about the same number cf out-patients,
The cause of the explosion still remains a mystery.
It appears, however, from the evidence of the survivors,
that the percussion powder was kept in an iron safe in the
cellar of the premises, and shortly before the occurence one
of the Mr. Walkers went to the woman who had charge of
the mixing and filling department for the key of the chest,
and then he and his brother and the foreman went down
the cellar, and shortly afterwards the explosion, took place.