Observations placeholder
Monsieur Deleuze smells a vulnerary
Identifier
011291
Type of Spiritual Experience
Inter composer communication
Hallucination
Background
A description of the experience
Death and its Mystery, At the Moment of Death; Manifestations and Apparitions of the Dying – Camille Flammarion
Source: Observations of Deleuze, librarian of the paris Museum of Natural History
Background: Mr Deleuze was one of the masters of hypnotism in the early 1820s and in this account which he gave of observations made on September 9th 1822, he had hypnotised a very sensitive subject, a young girl, who lived near the Theatre Francais.
At half past nine in the evening, as I was making a final draft of my latest interview with this somnambulist, I smelled several times, puffs of the odour of a vulnerary [medicine used in the healing of wounds].
Since my wife and my daughter, who at this season are usually in the country, were by unusual circumstances in Paris that very day, I went to see if an accident had happened to either one of them – one that would have necessitated the use of a vulnerary.
I found them very calm and did not remark this odour where they were.
I went back to my office, I experienced the same sensation.
My maid servant entered the room at this moment; nothing had happened to her either and she did not even notice that there was an odour of any sort in my room.
I then said to her ‘I am sure an accident has happened to one of my somnambulists and that she is using a vulnerarary’.
The next day I went to verify this and it was the exact truth.