Robert Hanham Collyer Explained

Robert Hanham Collyer
Birth Date:1814
Birth Place:St Helier, Jersey
Death Place:New Orleans, US
Occupation:Physician, phrenologist, mesmerist, lecturer, author, inventor
Years Active:19th-century

Robert Hanham Collyer (1814 –) was a British physician, phrenologist, mesmerist, lecturer, author, and inventor mostly active on the east coast of America and Canada during the 19th-century.

Collyer was known for his showmanship and became a popular traveling lecturer. In 1839, he discovered, conceived, and promoted the practice of "phreno-magnetism", but relinquished his claims as mistaken by mid-1843.

He was also involved in a number of scandals and rivalries, including a claim that he originated inhalation anesthesia for surgery before William T. G. Morton, who is generally credited with the discovery.

Early life

Robert Hanham Collyer was born in St Helier, Jersey to Ann Du Jardin (1796-1879), and Robert Mitchell Collyer (1787-1859), although details of his early life are hazy.

Phrenology

He studied phrenology under Johann Gaspar Spurzheim in Paris; and, then, attended classes at London University, where he studied medicine with John Elliotson the founder and first President of the London Phrenological Society, and an early advocate of mesmerism in England (and, later, joint editor of The Zoist: A Journal of Cerebral Physiology & Mesmerism, and Their Applications to Human Welfare) for at least two years, but did not go on to graduate.

In March 1836, aged 22, he and his parents and siblings migrated to America, where he traveled along the east coast of the United States and Canada giving lectures on phrenology. In-between lecturing he received the standard "quickie" degree from Berkshire Medical College. After receiving his degree, and having been mesmerized by Dr T. Cleaveland in October 1839,[1] Collyer became more and more interested in mesmerism, and added mesmeric demonstrations to his lecture circuit.

Phreno-magnetism

He also began serving as editor of Mesmeric Magazine;[2] and, in 1839, he discovered, and began to develop what he called "phreno-magnetism";[3] a practice which aimed to activate specific "phrenological organs" through mesmeric influence, or animal magnetism.

Other claimants

Prior to Collyer's later retraction of the claimed "discovery" in 1842,[4] two others claimed to have independently confirmed the veracity of Collyer's discovery: architect Henry George Atkinson (1812-c.1890), a Fellow of the Geological Society at London, in November 1841; and chemist Charles Blandford Mansfield (1819-1849) at Cambridge in December 1841.[5]

One of Collyer's rivals, La Roy Sunderland, also claimed to have independently discovered the same phenomena in 1841. However, like Collyer, he later relinquished his claims.

Clashes with rivals

He also frequently clashed with rival phrenological-mesmerists La Roy Sunderland and Joseph Rodes Buchanan.

Mesmerism

Eventually Collyer mostly abandoned phrenology especially, his own ideas of phreno-magnetism and focused exclusively on mesmerism by mid-1843.

Other mesmerists such as K. Dickerson, and Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, who got his start after seeing a lecture by Collyer, were inspired by him. Many thought of him as "the Champion of Mesmerism in America", a view which he encouraged. Public opinion of Collyer varied so widely and was so antithetical that one historian[6] believed there were two Robert H. Collyers "the one a respected visiting scientist from England, the other an impostor following his trail and trading on his reputation" lecturing on mesmerism, though this is unlikely.

Notoriety

In February 1843, the phrenologist Orson Squire Fowler, noting that Collyer, the "notorious and in every way immoral Phrenologist, and magnetizer" had just returned to the US "from Canada, where his gross and flagrant crimes [had driven] him last summer", warned phrenologists and magnetizers "to give him no countenance, because he is utterly destitute of moral principle". Collyer countered with a libel suit; which prompted Fowler to appeal for the assistance of the phrenologist "lovers of morality and virtue" in providing supportive evidence of Collyer's "immorality and vice".[7]

Collyer was known for his showmanship and self-promotion. For instance, one of his tours of the southern United States involved a cast of nearly naked artists in painted body stockings.

He was also known for a very public scandal in which his wife was found in bed with another man, in Louisville, Kentucky, on September 25, 1838: the eminent English novelist Captain Marryat, author of The Children of the New Forest, and Mr Midshipman Easy.[8]

Collyer married another woman without divorcing his first wife, making him guilty of bigamy.

Edgar Allan Poe

Collyer knew Edgar Allan Poe, and was one of those who believed Poe's short story "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" to be factual. On December 16, 1845, Collyer wrote to Poe saying he had accomplished similar feats as the fictional mesmerist in the story. Collyer had more likely revived his own patient, a drunken sailor, by means of a cold bath and prolonged massage.

Inventor

Collyer was also an prolific inventor, with a list of patents which ranged from a method for crushing quartz, ways to manufacture paper products, and a new covering for electric telegraph cables. He also said he invented an improved breech loading cannon,[9] but no patent information is available.[10]

Ether

Collyer claimed to have invented ether for anesthesia before William T. G. Morton, who is generally credited with the discovery, but Collyer never produced evidence of his claims. Collyer was not the only claimant to the invention, which was very much in demand to the point that Congress considered a $100,000 reward for a method of painless surgery.

Despite most in the medical profession dismissing his involvement, The Lancet gave credit to Collyer for the invention in 1868 and 1870, even though they too had dismissed the idea in 1847. However, it is likely that the author of at least the 1868 article giving Collyer credit was Collyer himself writing under a pen name.

Later years

Eventually Collyer turned to more conventional medicine, and Taylor Stoehr writes that "the anesthesia controversy of 1847 was the last major pseudo-scientific effort of his career" as far as medicine was concerned, although he "never turned his back on the pseudo-science of the psyche".

He practiced medicine for some time in Jersey, joined the California Gold Rush, and was in charge of a cholera hospital in Mexico before returning to England to focus on his more profitable inventions.

Collyer occasionally wrote for publications such as The Spiritualist Magazine, and publicly defended the medium Henry Slade who had been convicted of fraud.[11]

The Foxhall Jaw

He acquired a jawbone known as the "Foxhall Jaw" in 1863,[12] and promoted it as "the oldest relic of the human animal now in existence"; but archeologists disputed the claim.

Death

Collyer seems to have died sometime around 1891 in New Orleans, although like his early life, the end of his life is hazy.

Selected writings

Selected patents

Sources

Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. Collyer, Exalted States (1873), p.48.
  2. See, for instance, Mesmeric Magazine, Vol.1, No.1, (July 1842).
  3. The term is a portmanteau of phrenology and animal magnetism.
  4. Footnote at Collyer, 1843, p.9.
  5. See: Atkinson (1843, passim: especially the editorial footnote at page 294:
    "The discovery of mesmero-phrenology was made by Dr. Collier in America, by Mr. Atkinson in London, in Nov. 1841, and by Mr. Mansfield at Cambridge, in Dec. 1841, and not by his friend, Mr. Gardener, in Hampshire, who merely observed, that the organ of tune was pained when he played some notes of music out of harmony — an effect which has nothing to do with mesmero-phrenology, and a matter of common experience in our ordinary condition. Dr. Collier has since denied the existence of what he professed to have discovered." (emphasis added to original)
  6. Namely, US historian, John Dunn Davies (1918–1994), at Davies (1955), pp.132-133.
  7. Noting that, in such legal actions, provided their testimony was truthful, witnesses could not be prosecuted for their statements, Fowler (once again, attacking Collyer) appealed to those friends of phrenology, and the readers of his journal, interested "in exposing the guilty to eternal ignominy and disgrace, and in preventing the public from being imposed upon any farther" for their assistance and support:
    "And now, friends, and readers of the Journal, we want your aid. Those of you who know of Collyer’s having committed immoralities or crimes, great or small, or who know any who do know of his having done dirty deeds, of his having committed seduction, or adultery, or having even gone off without paying his debts, or of his having violated either morality or law, will have the goodness to put their affidavit, or that of their friends, in a legal form, and forward it to me at 181 Nassau Street ..."(Fowler, 1843b, p.331)
  8. For the complete (September 25, 1838) text of the newspaper report of the event in the Louisville Reporter, and for the complete text of Collyer’s (September 27, 1838) letter exonerating Marryat, see Bader (1936) pp.123-126.
  9. Collyer, Mysteries of the Vital Element, 1871, p. 28.
  10. See list of patents, below.
  11. Collyer, 1876
  12. Collyer, 1867; Osborn, 1922a, 1922b.

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