It is to be remembered that every time protoplasm undergoes disintegration, specific odours are set free.  We have seen how sulphuric acid, or heat, when boiling or roasting meat, brings out the specific animal odour.  But it is an established fact in science, that every physical or mental operation is accompanied by disintegration of tissue; consequently we are entitled to say that with every emotion odours are being disengaged.  It can be shown that the quality of those odours differ with the nature of the emotion.  The prescribed limits prevent further pursuit of the subject; I shall, therefore, content myself by drawing some conclusions from Professor Yaeger’s theory in the light of the Esoteric Doctrine.

The phenomena of mesmeric cures find their full explanation in the theory just enunciated.  For since the construction and preservation of the organism, and of every organ in particular, is owing to specific scents, we may fairly look upon disease in general as a disturbance of the specific scent of the organism, and upon disease of a particular organ of the body, as a disturbance of the specific scent pertaining to that particular organ.  We have been hitherto in the habit of holding the protoplasm responsible for all phenomena of disease.  We have now come to learn that what acts in the protoplasm are the scents; we shall, therefore, have to look to them as the ultimate cause of morbid phenomena.  I have mentioned before the experiment of Mons. Ligeois, showing that odoriferous substances, when brought in contact with water, move; and that the motion of one odoriferous substance may be inhibited, or arrested altogether, by the presence of another odoriferous substance.  Epidemic diseases, and the zymotic diseases in particular, have, then, most likely their origin in some local odours which inhibit the action of our specific organic odours.  In the case of hereditary diseases, it is most likely the transmission of morbid specific odours from parent to offspring that is the cause of the evil, knowing, as we do, that in disease the natural specific odour is altered, and must, therefore, have been altered in the diseased parent.

Now comes the mesmeriser.  He approaches the sick with the strong determination to cure him.  This determination, or effort of the will, is absolutely necessary, according to the agreement of all mesmerisers, for his curative success.  Now an effort of the will is a mental operation, and is, therefore, accompanied by tissue disintegration.  The effort being purely mental, we may say it is accompanied by disintegration of cerebral and nervous tissue.  But disintegration of organic tissue means, as we have seen before, disengagement of specific scents; the mesmeriser emits, then, during his operation, scents from his own body.  And as the patient’s sufferings are supposed to originate from a deficiency or alteration of his own specific scent, we can well see how the mesmeriser, by his mesmeric or odoriferous emanations, may effect a cure.  He may supply the want of certain odoriferous substances in the patient, or he may correct others by his own emanations, knowing, as we do, from the experiment of Mons. Ligeois, that odorant matter does act on odorant matter.