Switzerland; and it is said, that in the hospitals at Berne and Zurich, he effected several remarkable cures. On his return to Vienna he established in his own house an hospital, into which he received indigent patients, and secretly subjected them to his magnetic experiments.

Hitherto he had always made use of magnetic bars, but happening one day to observe, that with people of weak nerves, he could occasion many singular phenomena, which seemed to have no sort of resemblance to the common effect of the tractors, he was led to suppose that his magnetic bars did not operate by attraction only, but served at the same time as conductors to a fluid emanating from himself. This supposition became to his own mind a certainty, when he had convinced himself that he could produce the same singular phenomena without a magnet, and by only applying his bare hands. He also found, he says, that he could impart his influence to inanimate things by frequently rubbing them with his hand, and that they produced similar effects to himself on nervous people, who came in contact with them. After having discovered, as he maintained, the existence of the fluid which he called animal magnetism, he became every day more mystical, wrapped up his observations in awful obscurity of language, resigned the use of his metallic tractors, and affected to possess in his own person that wonderful virtue which he was able to communicate, not by his personal contact only, but even from a distance by the volitions of his mind, and by which he now affected to cure the most complicated diseases. Whether he was an impostor or a fanatic, was the only question now between those who had ridiculed his pretensions or deemed him a man of genius. In 1777 he quitted Vienna, and we hear nothing of him till 1778, when he appears to have been at Paris, and in connection with Dr. d'Eslon, a member of the medical faculty in that city, and the most devoted of his disciples-the most strenuous advocate of animal magnetism. Encouraged by this individual, he published in the following year a treatise, it which he states the substance of his system in theorems. The work on its appearance, was treated by the learned as chimerical, but when Dr. d'Eslon published his tract on the same subject, his brethren of the faculty, in order to protect the honour of the profession, which they thought implicated by the promulgation of such doctrines, deprived him of his vote in the faculty for a whole year, and threatened eventually to erase his name entirely, if he did not publicly recant his errors. This was not either the wisest or most philosophical course of proceeding. It would have been more to the purpose, if they had calmly and patiently examined the cures that Mesmer and d'Eslon pretended they had made; for, by becoming their persecutors, they exalted their fame with the public, and it is inconceivable with what avidity the two quacks were in consequence sought after, merely because they had thus, without examination

or evidence, been so injudiciously proscribed. Mesmer was looked upon by the Parisians with awe and admiration. He was considered as a man replete with Egyptian wisdom, and a chosen benefactor of the human race; his dwelling was beset with patients pressing to receive the miraculous virtue of his touch; and persons of all ages and degrees were found to be enrolled in the list of those who had faith in his doctrines. His patients are described to have been placed in a circle round a covered tub; a profound and mysterious silence reigned in the chamber, which was obscured to the dimness of twilight, and at the same time ornamented with a great number of mirrors; while soft and solemn music cherished the voluptuous drowsiness which all these artifices were so skilfully contrived to produce.

That Mesmer was originally an enthusiast, cannot, we think, be doubted, but that, like many others of that temperament, he afterwards became an impostor, is no less certain. We shall not follow him through all his adventures, nor swell our article with the enumeration of his tricks; but Dr. d'Eslon having formed an independent establishment for himself, they became rivals, and quarrelled, and Mesmer, for a time, left Paris. He was, however, soon invited to return to read lectures on his discovery. Among those who joined in this request, we find the names of Bergasse, the two Counts Chastenet, and Maximus de Puysegur, the Marquis de Puysegur, M. de Barres Kornman, and Father Gerard, all persons of some note and eminence in the world. He accepted their invitation, and formed a society under the appellation of the Harmony, in which he initiated the members in his magnetic secret, upon being paid a hundred louis d'or. By this means he quickly amassed a large fortune, but the members of the harmony would needs show their skill, and the rage for magnetizing infected all ranks to such a ridiculous degree, that the most extraordinary things began to be imputed to the initiated. At Charenton they attempted to magnetize horses, and it is said actually threw them into convulsions. In 1784 there were associations of magnetizers, not only in Paris, but Versailles, Lyons, Bourdeaux, Marseilles, Grenoble, Metz, Nancy, Strasbourg, and several other places, of all of which Mesmer was the supreme chief. In the French dominions in Europe, the number of these harmonic, societies was estimated to be not less than thirty, and in the French West India islands it was also very considerable. The parent society of the former was in Paris, and of the latter at Cape Francois. At Malta and Turin there were also similar associations. Among these societies there were three principal schools, which deserve particular notice.

The Mesmerian school at Paris made use chiefly of the strong contaction of the hands or metal and glass conductors. In this method, forehead was usually placed to forehead, and foot to foot. At this school they also employed the magnetized tubs, and trees,

and baths, recommended the drinking of magnetized water and the wearing of magnetized glass plates on the stomach. The convulsions which were produced by their influence, whether morally or physically, were considered as salutary, and were denominated the crisis. It was the sole object of all the experiments to bring them on, and chambers were prepared for the patients, the walls and floors being covered with matresses, so that in the violence of the convulsions they might not hurt themselves.

The second school was at Lyons, under the direction of the Chevalier Barbarin, who admitted no other agents of animal magnetism than WILL and FAITH; and the students were known by the name of the Spiritualists.

The third school was formed at Strasbourg, under the direction of the Marquis de Puysegur. Here the patient was touched very gently, fixing the mind at the same time, and the crisis produced is said to have been extremely pleasant.

But while the trade was thus thriving and proselytes were daily made, on the 12th of March 1784 a royal ordinance was issued, addressed to the medical faculty of Paris, commanding them to appoint commissioners to inquire into the subject. These, justly indignant at the barefaced nature of the quackery, ascribed all the phenomena produced by the magnetizers to the power of imagination, to imitation, and an excited sensual instinct. Jussieu alone refused to sign the report, alleging that the effects were not producible by the causes assigned for them.

It should also be observed that Mesmer was not examined, and he protested against all the inferences which might be drawn from the communications of his disciple and rival d'Eslon, who himself, after the report was published, also protested against its validity. A keen controversy ensued, and an article, entiled Imagination, in the Encyclopedie Methodique de Medicine for 1787, was supposed to have closed the debate; but the fact is that it was only the deeper interest of the political questions which about this time began to agitate Paris, that occasioned it to be lost sight of in France.

About the time that the royal ordinance was issued at Paris, Lavater carried an account of the practice, as improved by Puysegur, to Bremen, and communicated it to the physicians Bicker, Olbers, and Weinholt, by whom it is alleged that it was still more purified from the quackery and juggling of Mesmer. In England, Holland and Italy, animal magnetism does not appear to have made any considerable progress; in Sweden it fared no better than in France; in Russia it was only known among the literary; and in Scotland, we believe it was never practised at all except by some itinerant mountebank exhibitor of Perkin's metallic tractors. As for Mesmer himself, he was alive in 1815, and residing at Franenfield, in the Canton of Torgau. He was then old and infirm, being in his seventy-sixth year, and had retired both from

business and the world. That this extraordinary man, for such he must be considered, whether he be called a quack or a man of genius, is the great inventor of the magnetic practice, cannot be questioned; but that he is entitled to the merit of a discoverer, admitting that there is any foundation in nature for the opinion entertained by him and his disciples, we are strongly disposed to deny; and when it is considered that he was much addicted to obsolete and curious literature, before he entertained any opinion on the subject, we think that the probability is, he derived his first notions from some of those obscure and ancient works in which many singular truths are lost amidst a mass of mysticism and fancy. The old doctrine, for example, of curing wounds by sympathy, is in its principle, we conceive, essentially the same as that of animal magnetism.

We shall now proceed to give some account of the magnetical phenomena, on which the whole evidence of the existence of the principles of the doctrine rests.

It appears that two subjects are requisite for the process o magnetizing. The one active and the other passive; the magnetizer and the magnetized. It is also affirmed that the phenomena are seen only on the latter, but that the former also undergoes an alteration in this process. The magnetizer must possess a superiority of energy and vital power with respect to the patient. But if the reverse be the case, either no perceptible effect will take place, or the phenomena will be seen in the magnetizer and not in the patient. When the magnetizer operates on a susceptible subject, he experiences a warmth and gentle flowing out from the flat of his hand and finger ends; but if he wears silk gloves, or covers his hands with any other electric substance, he experiences none of this genial outstreaming, and his operations are of no effect; and if he wear linen or leather gloves, the result is different. After an effectual application, the magnetizer feels a general weakness in the organs of digestion, attended with debility, which is said to be in proportion to the degree of susceptibility in the patient. When the magnetizer is isolated with the patient, by electric bodies, the waste of power is said to be not only less, but the effect of the operation greater,-the inference from which is, that the weakness or debility is not owing to fatigue or weariness, but is occasioned by the loss of communicated matter. The effects of the operation on the patient are the reverse. He is invigorated, the sense of life brightens throughout the whole region of his sensations, and he seems to have received an augmentation of vital energy. But we must not trust ourselves in attempting to adopt the mystical language in which the magnetizers have described their science, nor indeed should we either do them or our readers justice, were we not to quote the sublime mysticism of what we have no doubt are considered truth by the faithful.

Professor Kluge divides the different stages into which the patient may be excited, into six different degrees!

"The higher he advances in these degrees," says the learned Professor," he leaves the sensual world, and approaches the intellectual. These degrees cannot always be produced by art in all patients; nor is an ascent to the ultimate requisite for the recovery of health, for many patients, during the whole course of the cure, until their perfect recovery, remain in the lower degrees only others become susceptible more and more by every new operation, and gradually rise to the highest state; others, again, though but few, pass over to the higher degrees at once, and in this they continue during the whole of the cure. As they get better, however, all lose their susceptibility!

"In the first degree, the usual channels of access by which the soul is connected with the external world remain unimpaired. Sense remains open, and retains man within the usual sphere of things. This is called the waking degree. The second degree is denominated the half sleep, or the imperfect crisis; the eye is closed, but the other senses are not entirely shut. The third degree is the megnetic sleep, in which the patient is in the condition of a person stunned; but it is remarkable, that while he thus stands on the verge, as it were, of the world of sense, in darkness and mystery, he still retains the recollections of real life. The fourth degree is called the perfect crisis, and is distinguished from the third by the presence of consciousness; it is commonly called Somnambulism. The fifth degree is known by the name Clairvoyance, or self-inspection more properly, and in it the patient obtains a luminous knowledge of the inward state of his body and mind, calculates the diagnostics which will arise as a natural consequence, and determines the most effectual remedies for their removal.

"In the sixth degree, the patient steps out of himself into a higher connection with universal nature. The faculty of selfinspection is extended over things near and far off in space and time, and this state is denominated the degree of general vision, also the ecstacy or disorganization. The patient is abstracted from all things mean and terestrial, and exalted to more grand and noble sensations. He undergoes, as it were a transmutation of being, a spirit speaks through him. His connection with the magnetizer is so intimate, that he knows all his thoughts, and obeys his will, and yet the sensations of this state are said to border on beatitude."

Beyond these, degrees there are other stages, but they have not been so accurately described.

Whether our readers are able to form any distinct ideas from this account of animal magnetism, by the most learned and intelligent of all the writers on the subject, we shall not pause to