Mesmerised Read Online Free Page B

Charcot pulls a gold watch on a long chain from his top jacket pocket, testing its weight in his hands.
    ‘Hypnotism, gentleman, is not just entertainment for the café-concert. It is supreme power over the neurological functions of the human brain. Please watch carefully. Look up Manon!’
    Marguerite shoves the patient from behind. She falls forward a step and looks up at Charcot. He starts to swing his pocket watch before her eyes.
    ‘Do not blink. Just watch, Manon.’
    Her head flops towards her chest.
    ‘Look up!’ Charcot cries.
    Manon lifts her head again and Charcot clicks his fingers suddenly in her line of vision.
    ‘Your grief will come out!’
    Marguerite Bottard licks her lips and smooths her pinafore with her hands.
    Manon lifts herself up and yells heartily for several moments. Then her eyes focus on something in the middle distance. For several seconds she is quiet. She starts to cry. ‘Don’t leave me. Please, don’t leave me. I can’t go through this again. No, no, no, don’t make me go through this again.’ And she collapses in a sobbing heap.
    ‘Aha!’ Charcot turns towards us medics, a slight smile appearing on his thin lips as if he has just won the war. He bends down and clicks his fingers once again in front of Manon’s face. She doesn’t move. The sound of her weeping is unnerving. I’m not the only one to squirm in my seat.
    The nurse and a student haul Manon off the floor. They make a support with their arms behind her back and walk her out through the door. We hear their footsteps slapping marble into the distance.
    ‘So you see gentlemen, we have power at our liberty to overwhelm our patients. We can transfix them. We can ignite their emotions. We can induce hysteria. And this morning you have witnessed just an iota of our capabilities as scientists and physicians. Gentlemen, we are on the threshold of great discovery.’

 
     
     
     
    At H ome
    April 17th, eve
     
    ‘Besides the stomach, the tongue and the mouth are the parts most susceptible to the medicinal influences; but the interior of the nose is more especially so … .’
    Samuel Hahnemann , Organon of Medicine.
     
    My kitchen/dispensary is almost finished. There are now half a dozen shelves along the wall facing the window. They support my brown bottles of mother tinctures: Chamomilla , Calendula, Arnica – all plants from the compositae family. Pulsatilla, Staphisagria , Aconite from the ranunculaceae , and so on and so forth.
    I have twenty- one of these bottles all in all, and one very large, transparent, glass decanter, which is full of pure alcohol. I keep it on the floor. My high-potency liquid remedies are in a big cupboard at the top, in medium-sized blue bottles. Crude minerals that I have collected over the years are at the bottom. Next to the cupboard is an Admiral’s chest with over a hundred small drawers filled with little vials of pillules: different remedies, in different potencies, in alphabetical order. Opposite are the sink, the gas stove and the surface where I make and dispense.
    My pharmacy has a semi-circular window with frosted glass that shields me from the sight of the well. There is no gaslight, so I have quite a few candles burning on plates. Moonshine stubs the window. I sit on a stool in front of the worktop grinding down phosphorus with a porcelain pestle and mortar. Voices rise up through the well and squeeze through the glass.
    ‘My God, I’ll hit you if you ever come home with another woman’s sweat on your clothes.’ – Two shadows in the window like puppets. Both have an arm raised as if to strike. I try to concentrate on Phosphorus.
    ‘You’l l not hit me because I’ll hit you first.’
    ‘Th en I will cut off your balls to make soup.’
    ‘But you won’t, my dear, because I will have murdered you first. But tell me, why are we fighting when nothing has happened, Mathilde? We’re fighting and nothing’s happened, don’t you see?’ he begins to laugh.
    ‘I see. I