Anesthesia History Association Annual Spring Meeting, Augusta, Georgia, April 18, 2009.

1. Dr. Robert Hanham Collyer
The Strange Life of a Mesmerist,
Phrenologist and Ether Controversy
Jump-Up-Behinder
A.J. Wright, M.L.S.
David Chestnut, M.D., Section on the History of Anesthesia
Department of Anesthesiology
UASOM
Birmingham, Alabama

2. Lancet’s Opinion, 1847
• “Dr. Collyer should produce something like
proof of his liberality…As yet, nothing of
this kind has been supplied, and until it is
(he) must be content to belong to the class
of jump-up-behinders.” –Thomas Wakley,
editor, 1: 163, Feb. 6, 1847

3. Robert Hanham Collyer [1814-1891?]
• Born 5 March 1814
• St. Helier, Jersey, Channel Islands, U.K.
• Father: Robert Mitchell Collyer
[1787-1859]
• Mother: Ann Elizabeth Dugarden
[abt. 1798-after 1864]

4. Channel Islands

5. St. Helier Today

6. Robert Hanham Collyer [1814-1891?]
• Graduated from Berkshire MC [Mass., 1823-
1869] in 1839
• Died, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1891?
• Sisters Sarah and Anne, living in Mobile,
Alabama, at the time, made a statutory declaration
4 September 1897 that brother Robert had died in
N.O. six years earlier
• No grave, death certificate, newspaper account or
other evidence of RHC’s death has yet been found

7. Collyer in the Literature
• “The History of Anaesthetic Discovery II.” Lancet 1:840-
844, 1870 [Probably by B.W. Richardson]
• Sykes, “The Jump-Up-Behinder” in Essays volume 3,
1982, pp 45-60
• Stoehr, “Robert H. Collyer’s Technology of the Soul” in
Pseudo-Science and Society in Nineteenth Century
America, 1987, pp 21-45
• Gibson, Pain and Its Conquest 1982 pp 38-40

8. Collyer in the Literature II
• Nygren, “Rubens Peale’s Experiments with
Mesmerism.” Proc Am Philosoph Soc 114(2):
100-108, 1970
• Schmit, “Re-Visioning Antebellum American
Psychology: The Dissemination of Mesmerism,
1836-1854” History of Psychology 8:403-434,
2005
• Hildebrandt, “’This My Likeness’: The Facts in
the Case of the Notorious Dr. R.H. Collyer” in
Daguerreian Annual 2007

9. RHC’s Publications I
• Manual of Phrenology, or, the Physiology of the
Human Brain [1838, 158pp.; 4th
ed., 1839]
• Lights and Shadows of American Life [1843,
40pp.]
• History and Philosophy of Animal Magnetism…by
a Practical Magnetizer [1843, 32pp.]

10. RHC’s Publications II
• Psychography, or, the Embodiment of
Thought; with an Analysis of
Phrenomagnetism…[1843, 44pp.]
• The fossil human jaw from Suffolk.
Anthropological Review 5:221-229, 1867

12. RHC’s Publications III
• History of the Anaesthetic Discovery by the
Discoverer [1868, 68pp.]
• Mysteries of the Vital Element in Connextion with
Dreams, Somnambulism, Trance, Vital
Photography, Faith and Will, Anaesthesia,
Nervous Congestion and Creative Function.
Modern Spiritualism Explained. [1871, 144pp.]

15. RHC’s Publications IV
• Review of the Lancet’s Article on the
History of Anaesthetic Discovery by the
Original Discoverer [1871, 15pp.]

16. RHC’s Publications V
• Exalted States of the Nervous System in
Explanation of the Mysteries of Modern
Spiritualism, Dreams, Trance,
Somnambulism, Vital Photography, Faith,
Will, Origin of Life, Anaesthesia, and
Nervous Congestion. [1873, 3rd
ed., 144pp.]

17. RHC’s Publications VI
• Automatic Writing. The Slade Prosecution.
Vindication of the Truth. [1876, 23pp.]

18. RHC’s Publications VII
• Early History of the Anaesthetic Discovery;
or Painless Surgical Operations. With
Letters to and from Sir James Y. Simpson,
Dr. Benjamin W. Richardson and Dr. Henry
Bennet. Boston versus Hartford. [1877,
72pp.]

19. Lithograph of Young RHC [?]
• Frontispiece in Lights
and Shadows [1843]
• RHC claimed in letter
to Boston newspaper
he didn’t write that
book
• Source: G. Culshaw
via Am. Antiquarian
Soc.

20. RHC’s Sciences
• Phrenomagnetism—which detected brain
“organs” missed by orthodox phrenology:
Sarcasm, Love of Pets, Desire for Seeing
Ancient Places and so forth
• Psychography—transferring mental images
by bouncing them off a bowl of molasses

21. RHC’s early studies
• Spurzheim in Paris, pre-1833
• Elliotson at London University, 1833-1835
• RHC claimed he was rendered unconcious
by ether inhalation while at London
University

22. Johann Gaspar Spurzheim
• 1776-1832
• German physician
• One of chief
proponents of
phrenology
• Died in Boston
• Studied under F.J.
Gall, founder of
phrenology [ca. 1800]

23. John Elliotson
• 1791-1868
• British physician,
proponent of
mesmerism
• Surgical Operations in
the Mesmeric State
without Pain [1843]
• In 1849 founded a
mesmeric hospital

24. RHC in America I
• Arrived in Philadelphia 21 March 1836 with
parents and siblings aboard the Kensington
• Between 1838 and 1843, lectured on mesmerism
and phrenology in eastern U.S. and Canada
• Cities included NY, Boston, Philadelphia,
Baltimore, Washington and New Orleans
• Renowned for 3-month, 75-lecture series in
Boston in 1841

25. RHC in America II
• “…mesmerizers are found by scores,
mesmerisees by the hundreds, and converts
by tens of thousands.” [“Public Exhibitions” by RHC,
Mesmeric Magazine 1(1): 14-15, 1842]
• “I rate Collyer as one of the four most
important of the American mesmerists
(even though he was an émigré).” –David
Schmit [Personal communication 4/2009]

26. American Museum, NYC

27. P.T. Barnum
• He took over
operation of the
American Museum in
December 1841
• Nitrous oxide
demonstrations took
place for a brief period
in 1842 [?]

28. RHC, Poe and Hawthorne
• RHC met Poe in spring 1843
• RHC praised “The Facts in the Case of M.
Valdemar,” Poe’s famous hoax account of
suspended animation via mesmerism
• Hawthorne mentions RHC in “The Hall of
Fantasy,” Pioneer 1:55, 1845

29. Hawthorne and Poe

30. RHC’s Letter to Poe I
• “Dear Sir—your account of M. Valdemar’s
case has…created a very great sensation. It
requires from me no apology, in stating,
that I have not the least doubt of the
possibility of such a phenomenon; for I did
actually restore to active animation a person
who died from excessive drinking of ardent
spirits.”

31. RHC’s Letter to Poe II
• “My dear sir, I have battled the storm of
public derision too long on the subject of
Mesmerism, to be now found in the rear
ranks—though I have not publicly lectured
for more than two years, I have steadily
made it a subject of deep investigation.”
--Boston, 16 December 1845

32. RHC 1843-1848
• Returned to England in 1843
• Married Susannah Macdonald in April,
1845
• Returned to NY, July, 1845
• Worked in cholera hospital, Mexico, 1845
• Back to England, back to NY, 1846-48

33. RHC 1848
• Appears in New Orleans with his troupe of
“Model Artistes”; Walt Whitman in
audience
• Troupe appeared in Mobile in April, 1848,
just after a series of appearance by G.Q.
Colton
• RHC’s troupe reproduced on stage
paintings and sculptures by famous artists

34. RHC’s Inventions I
• New method of crushing quartz [1851]
• New amalgamating apparatus [1852]
• Improved breech-loading cannon [1854]
• Quartz pulverizer patented [1854]
• Gold-Amalgamator patented [1854]
• New coating for hulls of iron ships [1859]

35. RHC’s Inventions II
• New paper material [1860]
• New machine for cleaning wheat [1862]
• Chemical ink pencil [1862]
• Covering for electric telegraph cables
[1862]
• New chemical tubing [1863]
• New machinery for treating flax [1870]

36. RHC’s Anesthesia Claims I
• 1839 Dec.: Reduction of hip-joint;
anesthetic state induced by inhalation of
alcoholic fumes
• 1841 Dec.: Removal of globe of eye in 22-
month old child; anesthetic state induced by
mesmerism

37. RHC’s Anesthesia Claims II
• 1843 April: Tooth extraction with
anesthetic state induced by inhalation of
narcotic and stimulating vapors
• 1843 May: Publication of “Psychography”
in which RHC states on 7 different pages
that unconsciousness can be induced by
inhalation of narcotic or stimulating vapors

38. Sykes Opinion, 1982
• “The obscure subjects about which he wrote
were, and still are, well worth
investigating…He resembled Charles T.
Jackson in his anxiety to claim credit for a
discovery made by others. Jackson died
insane—I wonder if the same thing
happened to Collyer?” [p. 52]

39. Lancet’s Claim, 1870
• “It is difficult to estimate what effect Dr. Collyer’s
lectures and writings had upon the direct progress
of discovery;, but…they excited great general
attention…” [p.842]
• “…it is one of the strangest of coincidences…that
the development of the anaesthetic process by
inhalation took place immediately after Collyer’s
public exhibitions, and in the very centres where
his lectures had been delivered.” [p.842]

40. Mr. Geoffrey Culshaw
• With a Collyer family
pedigree book
• His daughter, Helen
Mitchell, has worked
on the detailed
chronology of RHC’s
life

41. Photo Sources I
• *Poe
• http://www.bc.edu/schools/cas/english/poe-events.html
• *Hawthorne
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nathaniel_Hawth
orne_old.jpg
• *American Museum
• http://history1800s.about.com/od/americanoriginals/ig/Ima
ges-of-Phineas-T--Barnum/American-Museum-
Building.htm

42. Photo Sources II
• *Barnum
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:L_barnum_m253.jpg
• *Spurzheim
• http://www.usyd.edu.au/museums/images/content/exhibiti
ons/ePhren_Gall.jpg
• *Elliotson
• http://www.general-anaesthesia.com/images/john-
elliotson.html

43. Map Sources
• *Channel Islands Map
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Channel_is
lands_location.png
• *St. Helier today
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Saint_Heli
er_from_Noirmont_Jersey.jpg