The Sun.
London, England, 1848-10-16 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

THL ZOIST : a Journal of Cerebral Physiology and

ill esnierisnz.

At length mesmerism has been submitted to the
I experimentu2n crucis, and has not been found wanting.
It has cured an organic disease which has hitherto
always been considered incurable. It has cured
cancer. The case of cure of a true cancer of the
female breast with mesmerism, by Dr. Elliotson,
which appears in this number of the Zoist, is one
of the most important papers ever published in
the annals of medical science, demonstrating as it
does that the curative powers of mesmerism exceed
those of any other therapeutic agent with which
mankind has as yet become acquainted. " The dis-
ease cured was," says Dr. Elliotson, " malignant
and structural, and such as the art of medicine has
never been known to cure, nor the powers of
nature to shake off." The patient, Miss Barber,
is a dress-maker, residing at present at
No. 12, New-street, Dorset-square. She first applied
to Dr. Elliotson, on the 6th March, 1843, and at that
time was labouring under decided cancer in a state of
schirrus. Dr. Elliotson proposed mesmerism to her,
with a view of rendering her insensible to the pain of
the surgical operation for the removal of the part,
and accordingly she placed herself under his
care, she being unacquainted at the time with the
nature of her disease. After she had been some
time under the care of Dr. Elliotson, she was
induced to consult Mr. Brown, surgeon, of the
Edgware-road, who pronounced it to be cancer, she
then consulted Mr. Powell, surgeon, of Great Ceram•
street, who gave a similar opinion, and concluded by
recommending an immediate operation. Dr. Elliot-
son was at this time out of town. Mr. Powell took
her to Mr. Samuel Cooper, the professor of surgery
at University College, and the most learned surgeon in
this or any other country. " Poor thing," said Mr.
Cooper, "if she wishes to wait for Dr. Elliotson's return
she may, but it must be cut away then." She did await
Dr. Elliston's return, who found that during his absence
she had not been mesmerised as much as he could
wish, and who again took her in band himself, and
produced a state of sleep-waking, and by the constant,
and assiduous, and scientific application of mesmerism,
for upwards of five years, succeeded in dissipating
painlessly and imperceptibly, but perfectly and com-
pletely, the diseased mass, thus for the first time, in the
history of the medical profession, curing cancer. There
can be no mistake as to the nature of the disease, for
Dr. Ashburner, Dr. Engledue, Mr. Symes, Mr.
Hands, Mr. Powell, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Samuel
Cooper, all certify to the nature of the disease and
the present state of the patient. The three latter
gentlemen are not mesmerists, and Mr. Samuel
Cooper, it is believed, has never seen a mesmeric
phenomenon. The following observations, with
which Dr. Elliotson concludes his narrative of this
case, may, perhaps, in some measure, account for the
failure of the earlier mesmerists, and for the desue•
tude into which the practice of mesmerism fell soon
after its first discovery.
" This case proves the necessity of perseverance in
mesmerising. Five years and upwards was Miss Barber
mesmerised, and for the greater pars of the period three
times a day: remaining in the happy trance some hours
each time, and the part being locally mesmerised in her
morning and evening mesmeric sleep, which took place
in bed; and in the night the mesmeric passed into the
natural sleep. Most patients and some mesmerists have
no idea of the necessity of perseverance. I have no
patience with half the people who make a trial of mes•
mcrism, expecting it to act as though its powers were
miraculous and not natural. They almost deserve to
suffer on,

For miracle 3 are ceased,
And therefore wo must needs admit the means,
How things are perfected.'
Abp. Canterbury, Henry V., Act. i. Sc. ii.
But I know mesmerists who give up a case if there is not
improvement or some sensible effect after a mesmerise-
tion of a quarter of an hour for a few days: and who
also mesmerise far too many persons. Greatrakes and
Mr. Loutherbourg committed these faults, and thus at
length fell into disrepute.
I shall continue the mesmerism with Miss Barber
for months to come."

The present number of the Zoist also contains an:in-
teresting narrative of the cure of a supposed case of
hydrophobia by mesmerism, by Mr. IL S. Thompson,
but as other remedies were exhibited in that case we
do not insist upon it as we do upon the case of Miss
Barber, which at once and fur ever sets at rest all
question as to the therapeutic powers of mesmerism.

A MAN MADE
_OF MONEY._ By Douglas Jer-

rold.

With Plates by John Leeds.

Pail I.

This is the first part of a new serial (to be com-
pleted in six numbers), which promises well. Mr.
Jericho, " the man made of money," is a character of
which Jerrold will, we doubt not, make much. The
following extract will at once show the state of Mr.
Jericho's affairs :

" What shall we say of a man of a decent and com-
pact figure, a man of middle height ; who nevertheless
wishing to stand two inches taller in the world than
fairly beseenas him, consents to be stretched by the rack
in the hope of walking the higher for the pulline—
Now Mr. Jericho was this foolish man. lie wanted to
stand higher in the world than his simple means allowed
him; and he had submitted himself to the rack of debt,
to be handsomely drawn out. To get appearance upon
debt is, no doubt, every bit as comfortable as to get
height upon the rack. The figure may be expanded;
but how the muscle of the heart, how all the joints are
made to crack for it."

Tormented by his wife, and by his wife's family
(Jericho has married a widow), the unfortunate man
imprudently gives utterance to a wish. "I wish I
was made of money," says Jericho, and a busy fiend
hovering near takes him at his word. Jericho falls into
a deep sleep, and even as the rib ofAdam was extracted,
so is the heart of Jericho, but instead of being made
his wife, it is transformed into a bundle of bank notes,
and restored to his side, for the use of his wife. For
a description of the manner in which this was per-
formed we refer our readers to an interesting conver-
sation between two fleas who, perched on Jericho's
nightcap, beheld the whole operation, which conver-
sation is faithfully reported in this the first part of
A Man Made of Money.

THE POTTLETON LEGACY. By Albert Smith.

Parts I. and 11.

This new serial promises to be the best novel that
Albert Smith has yet produced. There is the foun-
dation laid for a most interesting narrative in the
manner in which the legacy is left, and the death-bed
scene of the miserly old woman, who leaves this
legacy, is described with great power. His descrip-
tions of rural scenery are extremely picturesque, in
fact, they are word-paintings, and his characters are
well conceived and admirably contrasted. The hero-
ine Annie Mailland is one of the gentlest, most warm-
hearted, and most unsophisticated of human beings ;
being a complete contrast to the Misses Twinch, with
whom she is thrown into contact, and who, sisters of
the village attorney, are, par excellence, the ladies of
Pottleton. These ladies are thus described :
" There were the two Misses Twine!), sisters of the
lawyer, who, conceiving that they had been neglected
through lite, revenged themselves upon a small portion
of mankind, by visiting the poor, but never giving them
anything except advice : and would stop small children
in the road when taking their father's dinner to the field,
and ask them, with great severity, the hardest parts of
the Catechism, such as "I desire," and their duty to-
wards their neighbour, of which personage each one had
a different 'notion according to their residence. The
eldest Miss Twinch had lately taken some strange reli•
gious fancies into her head—at least, so the villagers
thought, who had great belief in the creed their fathers
had professed before them. They attended their morn-
ing and evening service on the Sundays with constant
zeal, when the pleasant bells called them to worship;
but this was not enough for Miss Twinch. She would
watch the old woman who went in to beat the hassocks
and clean the church, and steal in too, for what she
called her private devotions. Indeed, once she was nearly
cured by being locked in by mistake, and passed a win-
ter's night in the old carved oak family pew, formerly
belonging to the Grange, where she was found the next
morning on the ceevion of a wedding, more dead than
alive. She had also worked something with a hard Latin
name, to put upon the altar, for lack of employment in
the slipper and brace embroidery line—the young men
of the locality having ceased to throw out even any
straws of hints that they want( d such things, for Miss
Twinch's sinking hopes to clutch at. She had besides
been more than once suspected of having once walked to
the site of the abbey with uncomfortable pebbles in her
shoes, after she thought that she hadidone wrong in
going to a party at Farmer Grant's; at which, by the
way, no one asked her to dance, even in Sir Roger de
Coverley, which we take to be always a great asylum
for the neglected. But finding that the pebbles all cut
holes in her stockings she had given up the pilgrimage
for the future."

We have Sherrard a rough villain, a railway gauger,
plotting against Philip Hammond, who is evidently
intended to be the hero of the story, and aided and
assisted in his machinations by Mr. Wyndham Flitter
a thorough bred cockney, swell scamp, who amuses
himself episodically by pigeoning Mr. Tiddy Spooner,
an exceedingly "flat" young gentleman just " let
loose" upon town from the university, where he has
previously been kept rather tight in hand. Here is a
goodly assemblage of personages, and Mr. Albert
Smith will manage them after a fashion so effeotive as
to amuse the reading public for many months to come,
or we are much mistaken. The illustrations by Phis
are admirable ; there are two to each part.

POST-OFFICR ACCELERATION IN VIE NORTIL.--•
This expression will be best understood when we men-
tion that our papers and letters from Edinburgh, which
formerly were delivered at four o'clock in the afternoon,
are not now delivered, under the new arrangement, till
next morning, making an acceleration, in Post-office
phraseology, but a delay, according to our notions of
common sense, of no less than twenty or twenty-two
hours. Further, all letters now arriving at seven
o'clock A.M., per the morning mail
i from the south, in-
tended for the Mearns, have to lie n our post-office till
next morning at five o'clock, making a delay in this case
also of twenty-two hours. In all our experience of
Post office acceleration we must say that the present is
the most extraordinary we ever heard of; and it is really
such that it is beyond human forhearanee.—Montrose
Standard.