Road Apples
Jan. 11, 2010


Gaze deeply into the mirror and cluck

By Tim Sanders

The new year is off to an impressive start, lunacy-wise. If you are worried that our modern society has relegated loons (the lunatic kind, not the waterfowl kind) to a back burner, then take heart. Science marches forward, ever forward, with its requisite number of loons at the head of the parade.

For example, there’s the science of hypnotism, which originated with Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer in the late 18th Century and is still with us. Dr. Mesmer believed in the scientific principle of “animal magnetism,” which held that illnesses, both mental and physical, were strongly affected by the position of the planets. Dr. Mesmer was convinced that the human body had various fluids coursing through it, and that those fluids had tides which ebbed and flowed, much like the ocean tides, only without the brine and kelp and sea monkeys. His early work involved feeding sick patients large amounts of iron, and then attaching magnets to them to see if they got better. Mesmer eventually learned to “mesmerize” patients by staring into their eyes a lot and squeezing their thumbs, and this appeared to have a salutary effect on the ones who liked having their thumbs squeezed and enjoyed being stared at. The others often threw their bedpans at the good doctor, and were discharged as cured.

All of this mesmerism morphed into the power of suggestion, somehow, with the help of a Scottish surgeon named James Braid who coined the term “hypnotism” in 1841. Hypnotism is still with us, and the way it works is that if you sincerely believe that you can be hypnotized, and if you don’t mind being told to screech like an owl and drop your pants in front of a room full of complete strangers for the sake of science, you can probably be hypnotized. If you are looney enough, you might even be able to hypnotize yourself into swallowing something really long and sharp, like a sword.

In a January 6, 2010 article in the Greenwich (Connecticut) Diva, Claudette Rothman wrote:


A circus performer in London accidentally locked himself in a trance for hours after he hypnotized himself while practicing his routine as a sword swallower in front of a mirror.

 Joanna Kichmeier came home to find her husband Hannibal Helmurto, whose real name is Helmut Kichmeier, transfixed in front of a mirror.

 Unable to wake him, she called his hypnotherapist, Dr. Ray Roberts, who was able to talk the 38-year–old man out of his trance.

It is believed that Helmurto was transfixed for five hours before his 22-year-old wife found him.

 Dr. Roberts had recently taught Helmurto how to put himself into a somnambulistic trance, which enables him to swallow multiple swords in his famous circus act ...
... Helmurto, who had been with the circus for four years, later told reporters he underestimated the techniques and how powerful hypnosis [is] ...
... When he first debut[ed] his act in London, Helmurto, who is originally from Germany, created quite a stir.

 He was rushed to a London hospital after he pierced the inside of his respiratory tract when he tried to force a 4-foot long saber down his throat.


If there was any question as to whether or not Hannibal Helmurto was a loon, the photo I found on a UK Telegraph website answered it to my satisfaction. It showed a scrawny, simple-minded looking fellow with tattoos covering his upper torso, neck and chin, a Mohawk haircut, wires which appear to be inserted into each cheek and extending outward for several feet, a pair of earrings the size of dinner plates, aviator-type goggles with screens over the lenses and what looks like a bottle cap attached beneath his lower lip. I’m certainly not surprised that this fellow hypnotized himself into a coma; he looks as though he could be hypnotized by a chicken, or possibly a gum wrapper.
And speaking of gum wrappers, another instance of an enterprising young man who ran afoul of science was recorded on the January 7 edition of the online Newser page (their motto, seriously, is “Read Less Know More”). Here’s the article, more or less:

Exploding Gum Kills Student

A Ukranian chemistry student accidentally blew off his jaw when he laced his chewing gum with an explosive substance, according to local authorities. He died of his injuries. The student, 25, had the habit of dipping his gum in citric acid before chewing and investigators believe he dipped it in an explosive substance by mistake, the Telegraph reports.

There’s no moral to either story, except that, even in this brave new world of 2010, man’s need to explain the mysteries of science endures. If you doubt it, remember that as I write this there is snow on the ground in Alabama, the citrus crop is freezing in Florida, and there have been over 1200 new cold and snow records set in the U.S. in just the past week. And yet most climatologists, who as a group are every bit as smart as Dr. Mesmer, Hannibal Helmurto and that Ukranian gum chewer, still maintain that global warming is at the root of all our problems. And who could argue with them; they’re scientists, and they know all about animal magnetism and planets and tides an kelp and all that stuff.
And I certainly don’t doubt the science of global warming. Hey, it happens every spring, and this year I can’t wait.

Next week we’ll discuss how French researchers have learned to hypnotize chickens using nothing but chalk, staple guns, and large electromagnets. They believe that this procedure has the potential of reducing poultry carbon emissions by nearly 90 percent. The climatologists are all very excited.