Chapter XII: Letter XI

SUPPLEMENTAL.—Abnormal neuro-psychical relation—-Cautions necessary in receiving trance communications—Trance-visiting—Mesmerising at a distance, and by the will—Mesmeric diagnosis and treatment of disease—Prevision—Ultra-vital vision.

The principal alterations made in “the Letters” for the present edition comprise an expansion of my account of “trances of spontaneous occurrence,” and the introduction of greater precision into our elementary conceptions of the relations of the mind and nervous system.

Letters V., VI., VII., and VIII., establish that the most startling phenomena in popular superstitions, and the most wonderful performances by mesmerised persons, are but repetitions of events, the occurrence of which, as symptoms of, or as constituting, certain rare forms of nervous attacks, have been independently authenticated and put on record by physicians of credit. Letters II. and IX. exemplify the mode in which superstition has dressed up trance-phenomena; as letters III. and IV. display the contributions she has levied on sensorial illusions, the Od force, and normal exoneural psychical phenomena.