Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing, George Barton Cutten [crime books to read TXT] 📗

the influence of M. de Vauzesmes, the meeting was very hostile to him, and he was condemned and threatened with having his name removed from the list of licensed physicians if he did not reform.

Mesmer now wrote to Marie Antoinette suggesting that the government furnish him with houses, land, and a princely fortune to enable him to carry on his experiments untroubled. The government finally offered him a pension of 20,000 francs, and the cross of the order of St. Michael, if he had made any discovery in medicine, and would communicate it to the physicians whom the king should name. Mesmer refused the conditions and left Paris.

Deslon was then called upon to renounce animal magnetism, but instead, invited investigation. In 1784 the government appointed a commission to inquire into magnetism, consisting of members from the Faculty of Medicine and the Academy of Sciences. Franklin, Lavoisier, and Bailly were members, the last named being chosen reporter. Another commission, composed of members of the Royal Society of Medicine, was charged to make a distinct report on the same subject. After experimenting for five months the first commission presented two reports, one public and the other secret, neither of which was favorable. The Royal Society of Medicine presented its report a few days later, and agreed with the first commission with the exception of one member, Laurent de Jussieu, who dissented and published a separate report of a more favorable nature. The gist of the commissions' reports was that imagination, not magnetism, accounted for the results.

Soon after the commissions started their investigations, Mesmer returned to Paris at the invitation of his friends, who proposed to open a subscription for him for 10,000 louis. Immediately it was over-subscribed by over 140,000 francs. He came with the understanding that he was to give lectures and to reveal the secret of animal magnetism. The lectures and secrets were not satisfactory. After the commission reported he left Paris and returned to his own country where he was little heard of during the remainder of his life which ended in 1815.

Whatever may be said of Mesmer, there seems to be no doubt about the honesty of his most famous pupil, the Marquis de Puységur, and to him we are indebted for a forward step. When Mesmer left Paris, the marquis retired to his estate near Soissons, and employed his leisure in magnetizing peasants. He magnetized his gardener, a young man named Victor, and after experimenting upon him claimed that during the state Victor exhibited marvellous telepathic and clairvoyant phenomena. Unable to attend all the patients who applied to him, he followed Mesmer's plan of magnetizing a tree. An elm on the village green was chosen, and round this patients gathered on stone benches as around Mesmer's baquet.

Following Mesmer's theories very closely, the contribution he made was in the recognition of the likeness between the magnetized state and that of somnambulism, so that he designated this state "artificial somnambulism." He also modified the conditions of inducing this state, and simple contact or spoken orders were substituted for the use of the baquet. The effect was therefore milder, and instead of hysteria and violent crises accompanied by sobs, cries, and contractions, there was peaceful slumber. He recognized the rapport between operator and subject, and amnesia on awaking, and other phenomena now well known, but he still held to the Mesmeric theory of the existence of a universal fluid which saturated all bodies, especially the human body. It was electric in nature, and man could display and diffuse this electric fluid at will.

While the Marquis de Puységur was using the elm tree near Soissons, the Chevalier de Barbarin was successfully magnetizing people without paraphernalia. He sat by the bedside of the sick and prayed that they might be magnetized; his efforts were successful. He maintained that the effect of animal magnetism was produced by the mere effort of one human soul acting upon another; and when the connection had once been established the magnetizer could communicate his influence to the subject regardless of the distance which separated them. Numerous persons adopted this view, calling themselves Barbarinists after their leader. In Sweden and Germany they were called spiritualists, to distinguish them from the followers of de Puységur, who were called experimentalists.

About the same time a doctor of Lyons, Pététin, experimented with magnetism. After his death a paper written by him was published describing catalepsy and sense transference. Numerous magnetic societies were founded in the principal cities of France. In Strasburg, the Society of Harmony, consisting of more than one hundred and fifty members, published for years the result of their work. The disturbance incident to the Revolution and the wars of the Empire which followed repressed the investigations of magnetism in France for several years.

In England the advent of magnetism seems to have taken place about 1788. In that year one Dr. Mainandus, who had been a pupil first of Mesmer and later of Deslon, arrived in Bristol and gave public lectures on the subject. People of rank and fortune soon came from different cities to be magnetized or to place themselves under his tuition. He afterward established himself in London where he was equally successful in attracting and curing people. 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. Large crowds gathered to hear him at the rate of five guineas for each pupil.

Loutherbourg, the painter, and his wife entered upon a similar work. "Such was the infatuation of the people to be witnesses of their strange manipulations," says Mackay, "that at times upwards of three thousand persons crowded round their house at Hammersmith, unable to gain admission. The tickets sold at prices ranging from one to three guineas." Loutherbourg later became a divine healer. From 1789 to 1798 magnetism attracted little or no attention in England. At the latter date a Connecticut Yankee, Benjamin Douglas Perkins, invented "metallic tractors." The Society of Friends built a hospital called the "Perkinean Institute" where all comers might be magnetized free of cost.

About 1786 animal magnetism appeared in two different places in Germany—on the upper Rhine and in Bremen. At this time Lavater paid a visit to Bremen and exhibited the magnetizing process to several doctors. Bremen was for a long time a focus of the new doctrine, and thereby was brought into bad repute. About the same time the doctrine spread from Strasburg over the Rhine provinces. Among those active in experiments were Böckmann of Carlsruhe, Gmelin of Heilbronn, and Pezold of Dresden. Soon it spread all over Germany. In 1789 Selle of Berlin brought forward a series of experiments made at the Charité (Hospital), in which he confirmed some of the alleged phenomena but excluded the supernormal.

Notwithstanding the early dislike, animal magnetism flourished in Germany during the first twenty years of the nineteenth century. In 1812 the Prussian government sent Wolfart to Mesmer at Frauenfeld, to acquaint himself with the subject. He returned to Berlin an ardent adherent of Mesmer and introduced magnetism into the hospital treatment. From this magnetism flourished so much in Berlin that, as Wurm relates, the Berlin physicians placed a monument on the grave of Mesmer at Mörsburg, and theological candidates received instruction in physiology, pathology, and the treatment of sickness by vital magnetism. The well-known physician Koreff was interested in magnetism and often made use of it for healing purposes. Magnetism was introduced everywhere, especially in Russia and Denmark. In Switzerland and Italy it was at first received with less sympathy, and in 1815 the exercise of magnetism was forbidden in the whole of Austria.

In 1813 the naturalist Deleuze published a book entitled Histoire critique du magnétisme animal. Like his predecessors, he was chiefly interested in the therapeutic value of magnetism, and insisted that faith was necessary for effective treatment. On account of this condition any demonstration was impossible. He still held to the idea of a pervading fluid and maintained that the depth of the magnetic sleep depended upon the amount of the magnetic charge. Shortly after the appearance of Deleuze's book, interest in animal magnetism increased, and several journals dealing exclusively with the subject were started.

With the death of Mesmer in 1815 ended the first period in the history of the phenomena known as animal magnetism. Up to this time the generally accepted theory was that of a vital fluid which permeated every thing and person and through which one person influenced another. The second period extended from 1815-1841 when Braid discovered and formulated the method of operation. The third period reached from 1841-1887 during which there was careful and scientific study of the whole subject, and hypnotism came into repute as a healing measure. I am inclined to posit a fourth period, 1887 to the present time, for Myers' hypothesis of a subliminal self, or the theory of the subconsciousness, has made a great difference in the theory of hypnotism.

The second period began when Abbe Faria in 1814-15 came from India to Paris and gave public exhibitions, publishing the results of some of his experiments. He seated his subjects in an arm-chair, with eyes closed, and then cried out in a loud commanding voice, "Sleep." He used no manipulations and had no baquet, but he boasted of having produced five thousand somnambulists by this method. He opined that the state was caused by no unknown force, but rested in the subject himself. He agreed with the present generally accepted theory that all is subjective.

Following Faria, Bertrand and Noizet paved the way for the doctrine of suggestion notwithstanding their inclination toward animal magnetism. Experiments were performed at the Hôtel-Dieu in 1820 but later were prohibited. Through the influence of Foissac in 1826 the Academy of Medicine appointed a committee to examine the subject, and in 1831 a report acknowledging the genuineness of the phenomena was made, and therapeutic effects were frankly admitted. In 1837 the Academy appointed another commission to examine still further, for the members as a whole were not convinced. The report of this commission was largely negative.

After this the younger Burdin, a member of the Academy, proposed to award from his own purse a prize of 3,000 francs to any person who could read a given writing without the aid of his eyes, and in the dark. The existence of animal magnetism must stand or fall on this test. That was the difficulty during this period: the whole dispute was waged about, and experiments consisted in tests of, clairvoyance, transposition of the sense of sight, and other mystical phenomena, instead of dealing with the state as such. This, of course, made the struggle much easier for the opponents of mesmerism, but was largely the fault of the magnetizers. The Burdin prize was not awarded, and in 1840 Double proposed that the Academy should henceforth pay no further attention to animal magnetism, but treat the subject as definitely closed. This was certainly unfair and unscientific, but was the attitude assumed.

At the beginning of this period another series of tests was being performed in Germany, but after 1820 the belief in magnetism declined more and more. It flourished longest in Bremen and in Hamburg where Siemers was its advocate. From 1830-1840 Hensler and Ennemoser were the chief exponents in Bavaria. As the scientific investigators withdrew from the study, the charlatans and frauds entered the field, and the marvellous and occult were emphasized, so that in 1840 little general attention was paid to the subject.

Notwithstanding the efforts of the London physicians Elliotson and Ashburner, magnetism could obtain little footing in England during this period. Numerous investigations were made, however, and several publications were sent forth. Townshend, Scoresby, and Lee are names prominent in the study of the subject in England at this time. In the next period, though, an