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 inhalationanesthesia for surgery beforeWilliam T. G. Morton, who is generally credited with the discovery.
Robert Hanham Collyer was born inSt Helier,Jersey to Ann Du Jardin (1796-1879), and Robert Mitchell Collyer (1787-1859),[1] although details of his early life are hazy.[2][3][4]
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.[5][1][6][7] In-between lecturing he received the standard "quickie" degree fromBerkshire Medical College.[8][9] After receiving his degree, and having been mesmerized by Dr T. Cleaveland in October 1839,[10] Collyer became more and more interested in mesmerism,[11] and added mesmeric demonstrations to his lecture circuit.[6][12][13]
A Phreno-Magnetist "Exciting the Organ of Veneration" (c. 1887)[14]
Prior to Collyer's later retraction of the claimed "discovery" in 1842,[23][24] two others claimed to have independently confirmed the veracity of Collyer's discovery: architect Henry George Atkinson (1812-c.1890), a Fellow of theGeological Society at London, in November 1841; and chemist Charles Blandford Mansfield (1819-1849) at Cambridge in December 1841.[25][26]
One of Collyer's rivals,La Roy Sunderland, also claimed to have independently discovered the same phenomena in 1841.[27] However, like Collyer, he later relinquished his claims.[28]
Eventually Collyer mostly abandoned phrenology — especially, his own ideas of phreno-magnetism — and focused exclusively on mesmerism by mid-1843.[6][20][32]
Other mesmerists such as K. Dickerson,[33] andPhineas Parkhurst Quimby, who got their start after seeing a lecture by Collyer, were also inspired by him.[34][35] Many thought of him as "the Champion of Mesmerism in America",[36] a view which he encouraged.[34] Public opinion of Collyer varied so widely and was so antithetical that one historian[37] believed there weretwo Robert H. Collyers — "the one a respected visiting scientist from England, the other an impostor following his trail and trading on his reputation"[38] — lecturing on mesmerism, though this is unlikely.[38]
In February 1843, the phrenologistOrson 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".[40] Collyer countered with alibel suit;[41][42] 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".[43][44]
Collyer was known for his showmanship and self-promotion.[1][8][34] For instance, one of his tours of the southern United States involved a cast of nearly naked artists in painted body stockings.[45][46][47][48]
Collyer knewEdgar Allan Poe,[38] 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.[51][52][53] Collyer had more likely revived his own patient, a drunken sailor, by means of a cold bath and prolonged massage.[54][55]
Collyer was also a prolific inventor, with alist of patents which ranged from a method for crushingquartz, ways to manufacture paper products, and a new covering for electrictelegraph cables.[1][56] He also said he invented an improvedbreech loadingcannon,[57] but no patent information is available.[58]
Collyer's bookEarly History of the Anaesthetic Discovery (1877) where he again credited himself with the discovery of anesthesia
Collyer claimed to have inventedether foranesthesia beforeWilliam T. G. Morton, who is generally credited with the discovery, but Collyer never produced evidence of his claims.[59] 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.[60]
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.[61] However, it is likely that the author of at least the 1868 article giving Collyer credit was Collyer himself writing under a pen name.[62]
Eventually Collyer turned to more conventional medicine, andTaylor 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".[56]
He practiced medicine for some time in Jersey, joined theCalifornia Gold Rush, and was in charge of a cholera hospital in Mexico before returning to England to focus on his more profitable inventions.[56]
Collyer occasionally wrote for publications such asThe Spiritualist Magazine, and publicly defended themediumHenry Slade who had been convicted of fraud.[63][64]
He acquired a jawbone known as the "Foxhall Jaw" in 1863,[65][66] and promoted it as "the oldest relic of the human animal now in existence"; but archeologists disputed the claim.[67]
^As Lindsay B. Yeates observes, "The principal consequence of ... [Collyer's] apparent blending of the disparate practices ... ofmesmerism andphrenology ... was that, to supporters of both sides, the theoretical correctness of each ‘science’ was now confirmed by the other; [and,] further, inphreno-mesmerism, many saw a long overdue return to the metaphysical domain from whichGall's materialist and mechanistic system oforganology seemed to have diverted all and sundry."[19]
^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)
^In a footnote, Irving T. Richards (1934, p.355) states that, "Louis C. H. de Bonneville, [was an] instructor in French atHarvard, 1841-1842. He was befriended by both[Henry Wadsworth] Longfellow and[John] Neal, and was said to have resigned his position [at Harvard] to become "first Professor of Magnetism and then Professor of Mormonism, which he says is the only true religion". SeePortland Advertiser, May 26, 1842.".
^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)
^For the complete (September 25, 1838) text of the newspaper report of the event in theLouisville Reporter, and for the complete text of Collyer’s (September 27, 1838) letter exonerating Marryat, see Bader (1936) pp.123-126.
Atkinson, H.G. (1843), "On Mesmero-Phrenology, and the Function of the Cerebellum: Being a Paper Read at the Second Meeting of the Phrenological Association, July the 4th, 1843; Dr. Elliotson in the Chair",The Medical Times, Vol.8,No.202, (5 August 1843), pp.294-296;No.203, (12 August 1843), pp.308-311.
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"Robert H. Collyer MD putting Mons. de Bonneville in the Mesmeric of Magnetic State, Boston, 17th. May 1842", asilhouette portrait of Collyer and Louis C.H. de Bonneville, byAuguste Edouart in the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.[39]