MARTINEAU, Harriet (1802-1876). Miscellaneous writer.
Autograph Letter Signed to Mrs Hickson, 2½ pages 8vo, Ambleside, 31 December 1856. Discussing an inscription in a book, and dwelling at length on the state of her health.
'... I am too weak now to read. Even a newspaper is too much for me at times; & Voyages & Travels & the like are all I am up to. ... The heart-disease has gone too far for that. By absolute stillness I am kept alive; but I am in no respect better, except in as far as absitence from all disturbance keeps off seizures which we did not at first know how to avert ...'Harriet Martineau had become seriously ill in Venice, and her illness was pronounced incurable. The Dictionary of National Biography has the following to explain her living another twenty years from the date of this letter:

She had been advised by some friends, including Bulwer and the Basil Montagus, to try mesmerism. Spencer Timothy Hall happened to be lecturing upon mesmerism at Newcastle in 1844, and was called in to attend her. She was afterwards regularly mesmerised. She rapidly recovered, and gave an account of her case in Letters on Mesmerism, first published in the Athenaeum. Unbelievers were irritated, her eldest sister (who died soon afterwards) and her mother were alienated for the time, and charges of imposture and credulity freely made upon persons concerned. Miss Martineau naturally became a firm believer, and occasionally mesmerised patients herself.

[No: 20028]