Observations placeholder
The remarkable case of J
Identifier
007892
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Letters on Mesmerism – Harriet Martineau
J. had for six years been subject to frequent severe pain in the left temple, and perpetually recurring inflammation of the eyes, with much disorder besides.
She is active and stirring in her habits, patient and cheerful in illness, and disposed to make the least, rather than the most, of her complaints. She had, during these six years, been under the care of several doctors, and was at one time a patient at the Eye Infirmary at Newcastle; and the severe treatment she has undergone is melancholy to think of, when most of it appears to have been almost or entirely in vain.
She herself assigns, in the trance, a structural defect as the cause of her ailments, which will prevent their ever being entirely removed ; but, from the beginning of the mesmeric treatment, her health and looks have so greatly improved, that her acquaintance in the neighbourhood stop her to ask how it is that her appearance is so amended. There was in her case certainly no “imagination" to begin with; for she was wholly ignorant of Mesmerism and had no more conception of the phenomena she was about to manifest than she has consciousness of them at the moment.