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 disintegr