Jane Jennings to Faraday   13 July 1846

Cork July 13

Dear Sir

An almost irresistible desire compels me to address you in hopes I may be able to suggest what may be beneficial to your health. I have read with the deepest interest your late discoveries and felt pain when I read your note saying that your memory and health were not so good as formerly¹ - immediately on reading this I longed to ask you had you ever tried mesmerism, but feared that even if you were inclined to try it - where could a good mesmeriser be found for the mesmerism of an unhealthy person is most injurious I said to myself. I now write because having had a pretty long experience in practical mesmerism, and having by its means cured some diseases considered as incurable I feel I can no longer be silent and am now anxious to ask you to try what I would hope might do you good next to mesmerism that is simple galvanism so gentle as barely to be felt, I have induced the mesmeric sleep by galvanism thus applied[.] The experiment was suggested by Dr. Ashburner who succeeded in inducing sleep by applying the positive end of a galvanic battery on the back of the neck the negative end on the feet - reversing the experiment caused the sleeper to awake. Are you aware that if the eyes are weakened by over exercise the memory becomes also weakened? such is the case however - and now dear Sir you will smile perhaps at a total stranger taking so deep an interest in the restoration of your health but for many years I have felt an anxiety about your health which I cannot well account for - if you were a believer in mesmerism I would say perhaps there was mesmeric sympathy. (I have felt actual physical pain from sympathy with those in pain.) I fear that you are now over exerting yourself attend to the counsel of a friend who injured her own health by over mental exertion some years ago. For the last 19 months I have been daily engaged mesmerising the poor for various diseases - and have so far been very fortunate in being the means of curing - one case of St. Vitus's dance one of Epilepsy - a most frightful case of nervous spasms, a case of great depression of spirits, pain in the back and dimness of sight for five years. This latter case was cured in five mesmerisings and there has been no return for twelve months. I do not know if you are inclined to believe or to laugh at the healing power ascribed to mesmerism I hope the former - if the latter I would ask you have you tried galvanism very gently continued for half an hour daily the positive end of the battery on the back of the neck the negative end to be held in the hands. This induced a few days since a deep sleep in a patient of mine she is a somnambulist and when asleep told me she got warm and felt just as if I had mesmerised her to sleep - the negative end if placed on the neck I find with Dr. Ashburners produces wakefulness - amongst my poor patients I possess one singularly sensitive when in the mesmeric sleep. She is a young women in humble life most truthful & amiable have long known her the wife of a working shoemaker she was almost dying of asthma and rheumatism when her brother-in-law happened to read some newspaper article on mesmerism and tried to mesmerise his sister & succeeded in inducing a very deep sleep out of which she awoke greatly relieved and at length was by mesmerism restored to health - when asleep she manifested the singular phenomena of describing places she had never herself seen - this power she lost in a sleep in which she got a fright - after some time the power of introvision manifested itself, she has cured many persons by her prescriptions - her advice has done so much good that I keep an account of her prescriptions. No one for a considerable time has mesmerised her but myself as this singular power is said to be lost under different mesmerisers - she is never mesmerised to gratify curiosity - of late her health has been delicate in consequence of being in bad confined air and she has requested mesmerism so that I take the opportunity when her own health requires mesmerism to bring her any friends who are in need of her advice. When in the sleep one day she told me never to tell her when awake what she said in her sleep as it would injure her - an ablution of cold water with drinking one or two tumblers of water before breakfast she recommends to most of those she prescribes for she never prescribes medicine having in her waking state a horror of medicine - one of her prescriptions a few weeks since was so diametrically opposed to that of two medical men that I will just tell it to you. A lady a friend of mine was under the care of two medical men for a pain in the calf of her leg so severe that she could not move or touch it - they could not discover the cause of the pain and ordered perfect rest and friction of some linament, but all in vain the confinement and anxiety of mind as she feared she would never recover the use of her leg, quite took her appetite. I then offered when next I mesmerised my patient for her own health to bring her to examine my friends leg - as soon as my patient was in the mesmeric sleep she examined my friends leg and stomach and head her head was in a good state she said but her stomach was very bilious, to cure this she prescribed an emetic of two tumblers of warm water to be at once taken to tickle her throat - to do the same the next day & the day following with regard to her leg it was not of much consequence it was only some of the veins that were out of order to walk no matter what pain it gave her or she would be injured, to stupe it with equal parts of very hot water and vinegar, using friction of a flannel dipt in the vinegar and water downwards from under the knee down to the feet for 15 minutes night and morning. My friend finding that she was only getting worse under the advice of her two medical men both surgeons resolved to follow my patients advice; but when she attempted to put her feet to the ground the pain was very severe however she persevered and in a short time was able to walk about her room with but little pain and that evening took a walk next was nearly well - several of her prescriptions have been of great use to others as well as to those to whom they were directly given. I am thinking that perhaps if you were willing to confide to me perhaps my patient might do you good. Since I was very young I have had a great desire to try and cure persons - and if I had not been a women, I would have been a physician I consider myself an old women now having for so many years being thus engaged - not in giving medicine (for I consider nature is our best physician) but in urging on all who come to me for advice to live temperately - drink water freely take no stimulants, except very very weak tea and coffee and to have more influence with our poor who take to excess all stimulants, I have been a teetotaller even before Father Matthew² and for the last 3 years have not tasted tea or coffee that I might induce others to take it weak. I enjoy the best health & spirits more particularly since I have become a mesmeriser I would not enter into these particulars but I have been unconsciously led to do so I must conclude by again saying that reading your writings for so many years and having long felt grieved at your health not being good - you have become to me a friend an unknown one it is true but one I cannot help feeling very much interested in. I am no longer young but I feel as I grow older that "the world is our country and all mankind our countrymen"³[.] Hoping you are not under the care of medical men unless they be Hydropathists & mesmerisers and galvanisers I beg to remain with sentiments of esteem and respect

Yours truly | Jane Jennings

I enclose my address - should you favor me with a line.

You are I think acquainted with Sir Robert Kane and with Mr. W. Hincks⁴ Editor of the Inquirer they are both particular and intimate friends of mine and of my family.

I open this to make a remark that persons who live in houses with the walls painted with lead paints have been injured - will iron vessels be found more healthful? it would also be desirable to find out.

Endorsed by Faraday: Mesmeric stuff | Jennings 1

Address: Michael Faraday Esq | Royal Institution | 21 Albemarle Street | London

Postmark: 17 July 1846