EXTRACTS FROM AN ESSAY BY DR. CHARLES DU PREL, IN SPHINX, TRANSLATED
FOR THE JOURNAL OF MAN.
"In the _Wiener Allgemeiner_ I spoke of the possibility of
moral education by means of magnetism, which has been carried
out." * * *
"Dr. Bernheim, a Professor of the Medical Faculty in Nancy who
is a champion of hypnotism has written a book on 'Suggestion and
its Application in Therapeutics,' in which a great many hypnotic
cures are recorded."
* * * * *
"Dr. ---- quotes Franklin against magnetism but Sprengel in his
Pharmacology says 'Franklin, sickly as he was, took no part
whatever in the investigation.' The Academy again investigated
(1825-31) somnambulism, discovered by Puysegur, Mesmer's
scholar. In their report of two year's investigation, eleven M.
D.'s unanimously pronounced in favor of all important phenomena
ascribed to somnambulism. A fairly complete synopsis of their
report will be found in my 'Philosophy of Mystics.'"
* * * * *
"Du Potet first studied medicine, but disgusted by the poor
results of Pharmacology he embraced magnetism. He performed a
series of mesmeric experiments in the Hotel Dieu of so potent a
nature that twenty M. D.'s of that celebrated hospital signed
the minutes of these proceedings. People ran after Du Potet,
pointing at him and crying 'The man who cures.'"
* * * * *
"The respect for medical therapeutics never has been at as low
an ebb as just now. The public cannot be blamed for this lack of
respect, for they have daily experiences of the ill results of
medicine. Even high medical authorities are of the opinion that
we have to-day a disintegration of medical principles worse than
ever. More uncertain than therapeutics is the manner of
diagnosing to-day! The public is well aware that each doctor has
something different to say or prescribe. I have a personal case
in point. During eighteen months I consulted seven different
doctors, and got seven different contrary diagnoses as well as
contradictory modes of treatment, and this, too, in the city of
Munich, which is hardly secondary to any other city for its
medical talent. Is there any cause to blame the public for
running to the magnetizers? I should do so myself if my magnetic
susceptibility was greater. In such magnetizers as even Mesmer,
Dr. B. can see nothing but charlatans, but I desire to make him
aware that a physician whose reputation he is cognizant of,
Prof. Nussbaum in Munich, said to his audience in College,
'Gentlemen, magnetism is the medicine of the future.' As I am
writing this I have been disturbed by a visitor desiring the
address of a reliable magnetizer, as the physician recommended a
magnetizer, as he was at his wits end."
"In our medicine the adjunct sciences alone are scientific, and
we must respect their high grade; but therapeutics we have none.
Hence Mesmer should be called a benefactor to mankind, for he
has pointed out the correct way. He, with Hippocrates, says that
not the physician but nature cures--that the real therapeutics
consists only in aiding the _vis medicatrix naturae_. In this
direction the professors at Nancy and Paris are laboring. They
have given the experimental proof that _if the idea of an
organic change of the body is instilled into the mind of the
hypnotized, then such change will take place_. In this we have
a foundation for a PSYCHIC THERAPEUTICS which we hope will soon
put an end to the anarchic condition of medicine of the present
day. But the greatest curse to science of old, and which makes
its appearance even to-day, is that _the old ideas are the
greatest enemies of the new_."
"Unfortunately it is the same in the thought realm as in
lifeless nature, _vis inertiae_--the law of indolence, according
to which nature remains in its condition to all eternity, until
she is forced into some new condition from a new cause. This
_vis inertiae_ is harder to conquer in the thought realm than in
lifeless nature, for Mesmer appeared a hundred years ago, and
yet to-day they call him "a perfect charlatan." Braid, thirty
years ago, started hypnotism, but only after Hansen made a
multitude of experiments for profit and pleasure in the largest
cities of Germany, did the physicians wake up to the idea of
investigating it. They teach nothing of mesmerism or hypnotism
at the universities. Yes, even one year ago a professor of
medicine confessed to me, should I pronounce the word
somnambulism I'd be ruined. This is the manner in which ideas
are kept from medical students."
"If medicine, in its results, could look with pride on its
therapeutics, it might be explained. But a therapeutics that
allows thousands of children to sink yearly into untimely graves
from all manner of diseases, that allows a large proportion of
grown persons to be decimated yearly by epidemics, that in its
psychiatry is perfectly impotent to stop the rapid increase of
insanity, that notoriously cannot cure a migraine, a cold, yea,
not even a corn,--such a system ought surely to have some
modesty, and be only too glad to accept improvements that tend
to ameliorate this condition."