pute. To parry their opposition, he appealed, in 1776, to the Academy of Sciences at Berlin. Here, however, his principles were rejected as destitute of foundation, and unworthy of the smallest attention." Undismayed by these important miscarriages, he made a progress through several towns of Germany, still practising magnetism, and publishing, from time to time, accounts of the cures he accomplished, which were as regularly followed by a denial on the part of his opponents. He returned to Vienna a second time, and made another at tempt to obtain a favourable reception for his doctrines, but with no better success than formerly; so that, wholly disconcerted by these uninterrupted defeats in his native country, he left Germany, and arrived at Paris in the beginning of the year 1778. Here his prospects soon began to brighten. Having retired to Creteil with a few patients (one of them a paralytic woman), he restored them to perfect health in a few months; and in consequence of this success, the numbers of those who applied to him for relief increased rapidly, and his cures were of the most astonishing nature. A numerous company was daily assembled at his house in Paris, where the magnetism was publicly administered; and M. Deslon, one of his pupils, is said to have cleared, during this tide of success, no less a sum than £100,000. In 1779 he published a Memoir on Animal Magnetism, and promised a complete system upon the subject, which should make as great a revolution in philosophy as it had already done in medicine. Struck, as it is said, with the clearness and accuracy of his reasonings, the magnificence of his pretensions, and the extraordinary and unquestionable cures he performed, some of the greatest physicians and most enlightened philosophers of France became his converts. He was patronised by people of the first rank; his system became an affair of bon ton; and animal magnetism was warmly espoused by the fashionable world.

Nevertheless, the new doctrine was not without its opponents. Some of the ablest pens in France were employed in refutation of it; and in particular, Thouret, Regent physician of the Faculty of Paris, and member of the Royal Society of Medicine, greatly distinguished himself by a work

which he published, entitled, Inquiries and Doubts respecting the Animal Magnetism.

Mesmer, in his Memoir already mentioned, described the agent which he professed to have discovered, and to which he gave the appellation of Animal Magnetism, in the following manner:-" It is a fluid universally diffused; the vehicle of a mutual influence between the celestial bodies, the earth, and the bodies of animated beings; it is so continued as to admit of no vacuum; its subtlety does not admit of illustration; it is capable of receiving, propagating, and communicating, all the impressions that are incident to motion; it is susceptible of flux and reflux. The animal body is subject to the effects of this agent; and these effects are immediately produced by the agent insinuating itself into the substance of the nerves. We particularly discover, in the human body, qualities analogous to those of the loadstone; we distinguish in it, poles different and opposite. The action and the virtue of the animal magnetism are capable of being communicated from one body to another, animated or inanimate; they exert themselves to considerable distances, and without the least assistance from any intermediate bodies; this action is increased and reflected by mirrors; it is communicated, propagated, and augmented by sound; and the virtue itself is capable of being accumulated, concentrated, and transferred. Though the fluid be universal, all animal bodies are not equally susceptible of it; there even are some, though very few, of so opposite a nature, as by their mere presence to supersede its effects upon any other contiguous bodies. The animal magnetism is capable of curing, immediately, diseases of the nerves, and mediately, other distempers. It improves the action of medi cines; it forwards and directs the salutary crisis, so as to subject them totally to the government of the judg ment; by means of it the physician becomes acquainted with the state of health of each individual, and decides with certainty upon the causes, the nature, and the progress, of the most complicated distempers; it prevents their increase, and effects their extirpation, without at any time exposing the patient, whatever be his sex, age, or constitution, to alarming couse

quences. In the influence of the magnetism, nature holds out to us a sovereign instrument for securing the health and lengthening the existence of mankind."

The apparatus necessary for the administration of the magnetism, and the method in which it was employed, were the following. In the centre of a large apartment was a circular box made of oak, and about a foot or a foot and an half deep, which was called the bucket. The lid of this box was pierced with a number of holes, in which were inserted branches of iron, elbowed and moveable. The patients were arranged in ranks about this bucket, and each had his branch of iron, which, by means of the elbow, might be applied immediately to the part affected. A cord passed round their bodies, connected the one with the other. Sometimes a second means of communication was introduced, by the insertion of the thumb of each patient between the fore finger and thumb of the patient next him. The thumb thus inserted was pressed by the person holding it. The impression received by the left hand of the patient was communicated through his right, and thus passed through the whole circle. A piano forte was placed in one corner of the apartment, and different airs were played, with various degrees of rapidity. Vocal music was sometimes added to the instrumental. The persons who superintended the process had each of them an iron rod in his hand, from ten to twelve inches in length. This rod was a conductor of the magnetism, and had the power of concentrating it at its point, and of rendering its emanations more considerable. Sound was also a conductor of magnetism; and in order to communicate the fluid to the piano forte, nothing more was necessary than to approach to it the iron rod.

The person who played upon the instrument furnished also a portion of the fluid; and the magnetism was transmitted by the sounds to the surrounding patients. The cord which was passed round the bodies of the patients was destined, as well as the union of their fingers, to augment the effects by communication. The interior part of the bucket was so constructed as to concentre the magnetism; and was a grand reservoir, from which the fluid was diffused through the branches

of iron that were inserted in its lid. The patients then, arranged in considerable number, and in successive ranks, round the bucket, derived the magnetic virtue at once from all these conveyances:-from the branches of iron, which transmitted to them that of the bucket;-from the cord which was passed round their bodies, and the union of their fingers, which communicated to them that of their neighbours; and from the sound of the piano forte or a musical voice, which communicated through the air. The patients were besides magnetised directly, by means of a finger or a bar of iron, guided before the face, above or behind the head, and over the surface of the parts affected, the distinction of the poles still observed. They were also acted upon by a look, and by having their attention excited. But especially they were magnetised by the application of the hands, and by the pressure of the fingers upon the hypochonders and the regions of the lower belly;-an application frequently continued for a long time, sometimes for several hours.

In this situation the patients offered a spectacle extremely varied, in pro- : portion to their different habits of body. Some of them were calm, tranquil, and unconscious to any sensa tion; others coughed, spat, were affected with a slight degree of pain, a partial or an universal burning and perspiration; a third class were agitated and tormented with convulsions. These convulsions were rendered extraordinary by their frequency, their violence, and their duration. As soon as one person was convulsed, others presently were affected by that symp

tom.

Accesses of this kind sometimes lasted upwards of three hours; they were accompanied with expectorations of a thick and viscous water, brought away by the violence of the efforts. Sometimes these expectorations were accompanied with small quantities of blood; and there was among others a lad who frequently brought up blood in considerable abundance. These convulsions were characterised by precipitate and involuntary motions of all the limbs, or of the whole body; by a contraction of the throat; by sudden affections of the hypochonders and the epigastrium; by a distraction and wildness in the eyes; by shrieks, tears, hiccuppings, and immoderate laughter.

They were either preceded or followed by a state of languor and reverie, by a species of dejection and even drowsiness. The least unforeseen noise occasioned starting; and it was observed, that the changing the key and the time, in the airs played upon the piano forte, had an effect upon the patients; so that a quicker motion agitated them more, and renewed the vivacity of their convulsions. Nothing could be more astonishing than the sight of these spasms. One that had not seen them could have no idea of them; and in beholding the whole scene, the profound repose of one class of patients was not less striking than the violence with which another class was agitated.

The first part of the work to which I have alluded, by Thouret, had for its object to shew, that the theory of Mesmer, instead of being a novelty in science, was an ancient system, which had been abandoned by the learned a century before. He demonstrated, in the most satisfactory manner, by precise references to the writings of Paracelsus, Van Helmont, Godenius, Bargravius, Libavius, Wirdig, Maxwel, Sir Kenelm Digby, Santanelli, Tentzel, Kircher, and Borel, that all the propositions published and avowed by Mesmer were positively laid down by one or other of these authors. In the second part, Thouret proves, by observations and reasoning, remarkable for their acuteness and good sense, that all the effects ascribed by Mesmer to the operation of a new species of magnetism were to be attributed solely to the influence of the imagination on the body; that they admitted of the same explanation as the cures of the two famous empirics, Greatrakes and Gassner; and that to pretend to the discovery of a curative means, which should extend to every species of disease, or, in other words, to a universal medicine, was an illusion unworthy of an enlightened age.

This work of Thouret's received, from a Committee of the Royal Society of Medicine appointed to examine it, that praise to which it was so justly entitled, from the talent and the erudition it displayed; and it cannot be doubted, that its influence would alone have been sufficient to have arrested the progress of the doctrine it exposed, even if animal magnetism had not been, from its very nature, destined

ultimately to share the fate of every popular delusion. Fortunately however for science, Mesmer's operations were deemed worthy of the attention of government; and on the 12th of March 1784, a committee, consisting partly of physicians, and partly of members of the royal academy of sciences, was appointed by the king to examine thoroughly the principles of the new magnetical system. At the head of this committee was the celebrated Dr Franklin; and the individuals united with him in the inquiry were, Majault, Le Roy, Sallin, Bailly, D'Arcet, De Bory, Guillotin, and Lavoisier. These philosophers immediately entered on the discharge of the duty which had been intrusted to them, with all the judgment and assiduity which it was natural to expect from men so eminently qualified for the task. Mesmer refused to have any communication with this committee; but M. Deslon, the most considerable of his pupils, consented to disclose to them the whole principles and practice of his master, and to assist them in all their investigations. Accordingly, the commissioners, after having made themselves acquainted with the theory of animal magnetism, as it was professed by Mesmer, witnessed each of them repeatedly, its effects in public, when administered by Deslon; they submitted, in private, to be magnetised themselves; and they magnetised others in a variety of circumstances. The final results of their inquiry were communicated to the king, on the 11th of August, in a Report which was drawn up by Dr Franklin, and which will be read with admiration, as long as the history of the human mind affords interest to the moral philosopher or the physiologist. The animal magnetic fluid was pronounced to have no existence; and compression, imagination, and imitation, were shewn to be the true causes of the effects attributed to it. "The curious and interesting inquiries of M. Thouret," say the commissioners," have convinced the public, that the theory, the operations, and the effects of the animal magnetism proposed in the last age, were nearly the same with those revived in the present. The magnetism, then, is no more than an old falsehood. The theory, indeed, is now presented (as was necessary in a more enlightened age) with a greater degree