who has not seen them can form no idea of them. The spectator is as much
astonished at the profound repose of one portion of the patients as at the
agitation of the rest--at the various accidents which are repeated, and at
the sympathies which are exhibited. Some of the patients may be seen
devoting their attention exclusively to one another, rushing towards each
other with open arms, smiling, soothing, and manifesting every symptom of
attachment and affection. All are under the power of the magnetiser; it
matters not in what state of drowsiness they may be, the sound of his
voice--a look, a motion of his hand--brings them out of it. Among the
patients in convulsions there are always observed a great many women, and
very few men."[72]
[72] _Rapport des Commissaires_, rédigé par M. Bailly. Paris, 1784.
These experiments lasted for about five months. They had hardly commenced,
before Mesmer, alarmed at the loss both of fame and profit, determined to
return to Paris. Some patients of rank and fortune, enthusiastic believers
in his doctrine, had followed him to Spa. One of them named Bergasse,
proposed to open a subscription for him, of one hundred shares, at one
hundred louis each, on condition that he would disclose his secret to the
subscribers, who were to be permitted to make whatever use they pleased of
it. Mesmer readily embraced the proposal; and such was the infatuation,
that the subscription was not only filled in a few days, but exceeded by
no less a sum than one hundred and forty thousand francs.
With this fortune he returned to Paris, and recommenced his experiments,
while the royal commission continued theirs. His admiring pupils, who had
paid him so handsomely for his instructions, spread his fame over the
country, and established in all the principal towns of France, "Societies
of Harmony," for trying experiments and curing all diseases by means of
magnetism. Some of these societies were a scandal to morality, being
joined by profligate men of depraved appetites, who took a disgusting
delight in witnessing young girls in convulsions. Many of the pretended
magnetisers were asserted at the time to be notorious libertines, who took
that opportunity of gratifying their passions.
At last the commissioners published their report, which was drawn up by
the illustrious and unfortunate Bailly. For clearness of reasoning and
strict impartiality it has never been surpassed. After detailing the
various experiments made, and their results, they came to the conclusion
that the only proof advanced in support of animal magnetism was the
effects it produced on the human body--that those effects could be
produced without passes or other magnetic manipulations--that all these
manipulations and passes and ceremonies never produce any effect at all if
employed without the patient's knowledge; and that therefore imagination
did, and animal magnetism did not, account for the phenomena.
This report was the ruin of Mesmer's reputation in France. He quitted
Paris shortly after, with the three hundred and forty thousand francs
which had been subscribed by his admirers, and retired to his own country,
where he died in 1815, at the advanced age of eighty-one. But the seeds he
had sown fructified of themselves, nourished and brought to maturity by
the kindly warmth of popular credulity. Imitators sprang up in France,
Germany, and England, more extravagant than their master, and claiming
powers for the new science which its founder had never dreamt of. Among
others, Cagliostro made good use of the delusion in extending his claims
to be considered a master of the occult sciences. But he made no
discoveries worthy to be compared to those of the Marquis de Puysegur and
the Chevalier Barbarin, honest men, who began by deceiving themselves
before they deceived others.
The Marquis de Puysegur, the owner of a considerable estate at Busancy,
was one of those who had entered into the subscription for Mesmer. After
that individual had quitted France, he retired to Busancy, with his
brother, to try animal magnetism upon his tenants, and cure the country
people of all manner of diseases. He was a man of great simplicity and
much benevolence, and not only magnetised but fed the sick that flocked
around him. In all the neighbourhood, and indeed within a circumference of
twenty miles, he was looked upon as endowed with a power almost divine.
His great discovery, as he called it, was made by chance. One day he had
magnetised his gardener; and observing him to fall into a deep sleep, it
occurred to him that he would address a question to him, as he would have
done to a natural somnambulist. He did so, and the man replied with much
clearness and precision. M. de Puysegur was agreeably surprised: he
continued his experiments, and found that, in this state of magnetic
somnambulism, _the soul of the sleeper was enlarged, and brought into more
intimate communion with all nature, and more especially with him, M. de
Puysegur_. He found that all further manipulations were unnecessary; that,
without speaking or making any sign, he could convey his will to the
patient; that he could, in fact, converse with him, soul to soul,
without the employment of any physical operation whatever!
Simultaneously with this marvellous discovery he made another, which
reflects equal credit upon his understanding. Like Valentine Greatraks, he
found it hard work to magnetise all that came--that he had not even time
to take the repose and relaxation which were necessary for his health. In
this emergency he hit upon a clever expedient. He had heard Mesmer say
that he could magnetise bits of wood: why should he not be able to
magnetise a whole tree? It was no sooner thought than done. There was a
large elm on the village green at Busancy, under which the peasant girls
used to dance on festive occasions, and the old men to sit, drinking their
_vin du pays_, on the fine summer evenings. M. de Puysegur proceeded to
this tree and magnetised it, by first touching it with his hands, and then
retiring a few steps from it; all the while directing streams of the
magnetic fluid from the branches toward the trunk, and from the trunk
toward the root. This done, he caused circular seats to be erected round
it, and cords suspended from it in all directions. When the patients had
seated themselves, they twisted the cords round the diseased parts of
their bodies, and held one another firmly by their thumbs to form a direct
channel of communication for the passage of the fluid.
M. de Puysegur had now two "hobbies"--the man with the enlarged soul and
the magnetic elm. The infatuation of himself and his patients cannot be
better expressed than in his own words. Writing to his brother, on the
17th of May 1784, he says, "If you do not come, my dear friend, you will
not see my extraordinary man, for his health is now almost quite restored.
I continue to make use of the happy power for which I am indebted to M.
Mesmer. Every day I bless his name; for I am very useful, and produce many
salutary effects on all the sick poor in the neighbourhood. They flock
around my tree; there were more than one hundred and thirty of them this
morning. It is the best _baquet_ possible; _not a leaf of it but
communicates health!_ all feel, more or less, the good effects of it. You
will be delighted to see the charming picture of humanity which this
presents. I have only one regret--it is, that I cannot touch all who come.
But my magnetised man--my intelligence--sets me at ease. He teaches me
what conduct I should adopt. According to him, it is not at all necessary
that I should touch every one; a look, a gesture, even a wish, is
sufficient. And it is one of the most ignorant peasants of the country
that teaches me this! When he is in a crisis, I know of nothing more
profound, more prudent, more clearsighted (_clairvoyant_) than he is."
In another letter, describing his first experiment with the magnetic tree,
he says, "Yesterday evening I brought my first patient to it. As soon as I
had put the cord round him he gazed at the tree; and, with an air of
astonishment which I cannot describe, exclaimed, 'What is it that I see
there?' His head then sunk down, and he fell into a perfect fit of
somnambulism. At the end of an hour, I took him home to his house again,
when I restored him to his senses. Several men and women came to tell him
what he had been doing. He maintained it was not true; that, weak as he
was, and scarcely able to walk, it would have been scarcely possible for
him to have gone down stairs and walked to the tree. To-day I have
repeated the experiment on him, and with the same success. I own to you
that my head turns round with pleasure to think of the good I do. Madame
de Puysegur, the friends she has with her, my servants, and, in fact, all
who are near me, feel an amazement, mingled with admiration, which cannot
be described; but they do not experience the half of my sensations.
Without my tree, which gives me rest, and which will give me still more, I
should be in a state of agitation, inconsistent, I believe, with my
health. I exist too much, if I may be allowed to use the expression."
In another letter, he descants still more poetically upon his gardener
with the enlarged soul. He says, "It is from this simple man, this tall
and stout rustic, twenty-three years of age, enfeebled by disease, or
rather by sorrow, and therefore the more predisposed to be affected by any
great natural agent,--it is from this man, I repeat, that I derive
instruction and knowledge. When in the magnetic state, he is no longer a
peasant who can hardly utter a single sentence; he is a being, to describe
whom I cannot find a name. I need not speak; _I have only to think before
him, when he instantly understands and answers me_. Should any body come
into the room, he sees him, if I desire it (but not else), and addresses
him, and says what I wish to say; not indeed exactly as I dictate to him,
but as truth requires. When he wants to add more than I deem it prudent
strangers should hear, I stop the flow of his ideas, and of his
conversation in the middle of a word, and give it quite a different turn!"
Among other persons attracted to Busancy by the report of these
extraordinary occurrences was M. Cloquet, the Receiver of Finance. His
appetite for the marvellous being somewhat insatiable, he readily believed
all that was told him by M. de Puysegur. He also has left a record of what
he saw, and what he credited, which throws a still clearer light upon the
progress of the delusion.[73] He says that the patients he saw in the
magnetic state had an appearance of deep sleep, during which all
the physical faculties were suspended, to the advantage of the
intellectual faculties. The eyes of the patients were closed, the sense of
hearing was abolished; and they awoke only at the voice of their
magnetiser. "If any one touched a patient during a crisis, or even the
chair on which he was seated," says M. Cloquet, "it would cause him much
pain and suffering, and throw him into convulsions. During the crisis,
they possess an extraordinary and supernatural power, by which, on
touching a patient presented to them, they can feel what part of his body
is diseased, even by merely passing their hand over the clothes." Another
singularity was, that these sleepers who could thus discover diseases, see
into the interior of other men's stomachs, and point out remedies,
remembered absolutely nothing after the magnetiser thought proper to
disenchant them. The time that elapsed between their entering the crisis
and their coming out of it was obliterated. Not only had the magnetiser
the power of making himself heard by the somnambulists, but he could make
them follow him by merely pointing his finger at them from a distance,
though they had their eyes the whole time completely closed.
[73] _Introduction to the Study of Animal Magnetism_, by Baron
Dupotet, p. 73.
Such was animal magnetism under the auspices of the Marquis de Puysegur.
While he was exhibiting these phenomena around his elm-tree, a magnetiser
of another class appeared in Lyons, in the person of the Chevalier de
Barbarin. This gentleman thought the effort of the will, without any of
the paraphernalia of wands or _baquets_, was sufficient to throw patients
into the magnetic sleep. He tried it and succeeded. By sitting at the
bedside of his patients, and praying that they might be magnetised, they
went off into a state very similar to that of the persons who fell under
the notice of M. de Puysegur. In the course of time a very considerable
number of magnetisers, acknowledging Barbarin for their model, and called
after him Barbarinists, appeared in different parts, and were believed to
have effected some remarkable cures. In Sweden and Germany this sect of
fanatics increased rapidly, and were called _spiritualists_, to
distinguish them from the followers of M. de Puysegur, who were called
_experimentalists_. They maintained that all the effects of animal
magnetism, which Mesmer believed to be producible by a magnetic fluid
dispersed through nature, were produced by the mere effort of one human
soul acting upon another; that when a connexion had once been established
between a magnetiser and his patient, the former could communicate his
influence to the latter from any distance, even hundreds of miles, by the
will. One of them thus described the blessed state of a magnetic patient:
"In such a man animal instinct ascends to the highest degree admissible in
this world. The _clairvoyant_ is then a pure animal, without any
admixture of matter. His observations are those of a spirit. He is similar
to God: his eye penetrates all the secrets of nature. When his attention
is fixed on any of the objects of this world--on his disease, his death,
his well-beloved, his friends, his relations, his enemies--in spirit he
sees them acting; he penetrates into the causes and the consequences of
their actions; he becomes a physician, a prophet, a divine!"[74]
[74] See _Foreign Review and Continental Miscellany_, vol. v.
p. 113.
Let us now see what progress these mysteries made in England. In the year
1788 Dr. Mainauduc, who had been a pupil, first of Mesmer, and afterwards
of D'Eslon, arrived in Bristol, and gave public lectures upon magnetism.
His success was quite extraordinary. People of rank and fortune hastened
from London to Bristol to be magnetised, or to place themselves under his
tuition. Dr. George Winter, in his _History of Animal Magnetism_, gives
the following list of them: "They amounted to one hundred and
twenty-seven, among whom there were one duke, one duchess, one
marchioness, two countesses, one earl, one baron, three baronesses, one
bishop, five right honourable gentlemen and ladies, two baronets, seven
members of parliament, one clergyman, two physicians, seven surgeons,
besides ninety-two gentlemen and ladies of respectability." He afterwards
established himself in London, where he performed with equal success.
He began by publishing proposals to the ladies for the formation of a
Hygeian Society. In this paper he vaunted highly the curative effects of
animal magnetism, and took great credit to himself for being the first
person to introduce it into England, and thus concluded: "As this method
of cure is not confined to sex or college education, and the fair sex
being in general the most sympathising part of the creation, and most
immediately concerned in the health and care of its offspring, I think
myself bound in gratitude to you, ladies, for the partiality you have
shewn me in midwifery, to contribute, as far as lies in my power, to
render you additionally useful and valuable to the community. With this
view I propose forming my Hygeian Society, to be incorporated with that of
Paris. As soon as twenty ladies have given in their names, the day shall
be appointed for the first meeting at my house, when they are to pay
fifteen guineas, which will include the whole expense."
Hannah More, in a letter addressed to Horace Walpole in September 1788,
speaks of the "demoniacal mummeries" of Dr. Mainauduc, and says he was in
a fair way of gaining a hundred thousand pounds by them, as Mesmer had
done by his exhibitions in Paris.
So much curiosity was excited by the subject, that, about the same time, a
man named Holloway gave a course of lectures on animal magnetism
in London, at the rate of five guineas for each pupil, and realised a
considerable fortune. Loutherbourg the painter and his wife followed the
same profitable trade; and such was the infatuation of the people to be
witnesses of their strange manipulations, that at times upwards of three
thousand persons crowded around their house at Hammersmith, unable to gain
admission. The tickets sold at prices varying from one to three guineas.
Loutherbourg performed his cures by the touch, after the manner of
Valentine Greatraks, and finally pretended to a divine mission. An account
of his miracles, as they were called, was published in 1789, entitled _A
List of New Cures performed by Mr. and Mrs. de Loutherbourg, of
Hammersmith Terrace, without Medicine; by a Lover of the Lamb of God.
Dedicated to his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury_.
This "Lover of the Lamb of God" was a half-crazy old woman, named Mary
Pratt, who conceived for Mr. and Mrs. de Loutherbourg a veneration which
almost prompted her to worship them. She chose for the motto of her
pamphlet a verse in the thirteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles:
"Behold, ye despisers, and wonder and perish! for I will work a work in
your days which ye shall not believe, though a man declare it unto you."
Attempting to give a religious character to the cures of the painter, she
thought a _woman_ was the proper person to make them known, since the
apostle had declared that a _man_ should not be able to conquer the
incredulity of the people. She stated, that from Christmas 1788 to July
1789, De Loutherbourg and his wife had cured two thousand people, "having
been made _proper recipients to receive divine manuductions_; which
heavenly and divine influx, coming from the radix _God_, his Divine
Majesty had most graciously bestowed upon them to diffuse healing to all,
be they deaf, dumb, blind, lame, or halt."
In her dedication to the Archbishop of Canterbury she implored him to
compose a new form of prayer, to be used in all churches and chapels, that
nothing might impede this inestimable gift from having its due course. She
further entreated all the magistrates and men of authority in the land to
wait on Mr. and Mrs. de Loutherbourg, to consult with them on the
immediate erection of a large hospital, with a pool of Bethesda attached
to it. All the magnetisers were scandalised at the preposterous jabber of
this old woman, and De Loutherbourg appears to have left London to avoid
her,--continuing, however, in conjunction with his wife, the fantastic
tricks which had turned the brain of this poor fanatic, and deluded many
others who pretended to more sense than she had.
From this period until 1798 magnetism excited little or no attention in
England. An attempt to revive the belief in it was made in that
year, but it was in the shape of mineral rather than of animal magnetism.
One Benjamin Douglas Perkins, an American, practising as a surgeon in
Leicester Square, invented and took out a patent for the celebrated
"Metallic Tractors." He pretended that these tractors, which were two
small pieces of metal strongly magnetised, something resembling the steel
plates which were first brought into notice by Father Hell, would cure
gout, rheumatism, palsy, and, in fact, almost every disease the human
frame was subject to, if applied externally to the afflicted part, and
moved about gently, touching the surface only. The most wonderful stories
soon obtained general circulation, and the press groaned with pamphlets,
all vaunting the curative effects of the tractors, which were sold at five
guineas the pair. Perkins gained money rapidly. Gouty subjects forgot
their pains in the presence of this new remedy; the rheumatism fled at its
approach; and toothache, which is often cured by the mere sight of a
dentist, vanished before Perkins and his marvellous steel-plates. The
benevolent Society of Friends, of whose body he was a member, warmly
patronised the invention. Desirous that the poor, who could not afford to
pay Mr. Perkins five guineas, or even five shillings for his tractors,
should also share in the benefits of that sublime discovery, they
subscribed a large sum, and built an hospital, called the "Perkinean
Institution," in which all comers might be magnetised free of cost. In the
course of a few months they were in very general use, and their lucky
inventor in possession of five thousand pounds.
Dr. Haygarth, an eminent physician at Bath, recollecting the influence of
imagination in the cure of disease, hit upon an expedient to try the real
value of the tractors. Perkins's cures were too well established to be
doubted; and Dr. Haygarth, without gain-saying them, quietly, but in the
face of numerous witnesses, exposed the delusion under which people
laboured with respect to the curative medium. He suggested to Dr. Falconer
that they should make wooden tractors, paint them to resemble the steel
ones, and see if the very same effects would not be produced. Five
patients were chosen from the hospital in Bath, upon whom to operate. Four
of them suffered severely from chronic rheumatism in the ankle, knee,
wrist, and hip; and the fifth had been afflicted for several months with
the gout. On the day appointed for the experiments Dr. Haygarth and his
friends assembled at the hospital, and with much solemnity brought forth
the fictitious tractors. Four out of the five patients said their pains
were immediately relieved; and three of them said they were not only
relieved but very much benefited. One felt his knee warmer, and said he
could walk across the room. He tried and succeeded, although on the
previous day he had not been able to stir. The gouty man felt his
pains diminish rapidly, and was quite easy for nine hours, until he went
to bed, when the twitching began again. On the following day the real
tractors were applied to all the patients, when they described their
symptoms in nearly the same terms.
To make still more sure, the experiment was tried in the Bristol
infirmary, a few weeks afterwards, on a man who had a rheumatic affection
in the shoulder, so severe as to incapacitate him from lifting his hand
from his knee. The fictitious tractors were brought and applied to the
afflicted part, one of the physicians, to add solemnity to the scene,
drawing a stop-watch from his pocket to calculate the time exactly, while
another, with a pen in his hand, sat down to write the change of symptoms
from minute to minute as they occurred. In less than four minutes the man
felt so much relieved, that he lifted his hand several inches without any
pain in the shoulder!
An account of these matters was published by Dr. Haygarth, in a small
volume entitled, _Of the Imagination, as a Cause and Cure of Disorders,
exemplified by fictitious Tractors_. The exposure was a _coup de grace_ to
the system of Mr. Perkins. His friends and patrons, still unwilling to
confess that they had been deceived, tried the tractors upon sheep, cows,
and horses, alleging that the animals received benefit from the metallic
plates, but none at all from the wooden ones. But they found nobody to
believe them; the Perkinean institution fell into neglect; and Perkins
made his exit from England, carrying with him about ten thousand pounds,
to soothe his declining years in the good city of Pennsylvania.