Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/600

594 each other, while others laughed and became repulsive. This lasted for hours and was followed by states of dreaminess and languor. A picture given by Binet and Feret, two eminent French scientists, will present an idea of these meetings.

Mesmer, wearing a coat of lilac silk, walked up and down amid this agitated throng accompanied by Deslon and his associates whom he chose for their youth and comeliness. Mesmer carried a long iron wand, with which he touched the bodies of the patients and especially the diseased parts. Often laying aside the wand, he magnetized the patients with his eyes, fixing his gaze on theirs, or applying his hand to the hypochondriac region and to the abdomen. This application was often applied for hours, and at other times the master made use of passes. He began by placing himself 'en rapport' with his subject. Seated opposite to him, foot against foot, knee against knee, Mesmer laid his fingers on the hypochondriac region and moved them to and fro, lightly touching the ribs. Magnetism with strong electric currents was substituted for these manipulations when more energetic results were to be produced. The master, raising his fingers in a pyramidal form, passed his hands all over the patient's body, beginning with the head, and going downward over the shoulders to the feet. He then returned to the head, both back and front, to the belly and the back and renewed the process again and again until the magnetised person was saturated with the healing fluid and transported with pain or pleasure, both sensations being equally salutary. Young women were so much gratified by the crisis that they wished to be thrown into it anew. They followed Mesmer through the halls and confessed that it was impossible not to be warmly attached to the person of the magnetizer.

Mesmer was not an impostor by any means. He had deceived himself and had thus deceived others. But the Academy of Sciences in Paris believed that he was a mystic and a fanatic, and made it so hot for him that he was finally forced to leave France, where, however, he returned later. He died in 1815, and for a time animal magnetism fell into disrepute and Mesmer was denounced as an impostor.

Before Mesmer's death, he moved from Paris to a secluded spot among the hills. We see him at the last—bitterly complaining of the treatment he had received, thoroughly convinced as to the truth of his pet theories, performing various cures for the peasants about him, and living the simple life of a hermit.

Throughout Mesmer's career, the streets were not paved with gold. Many people died under his treatment, giving the belief that the treatment itself was the cause of death. He was treated with ridicule wherever he went. Papers, plays, etc., brought him even more prominently before the public in a more ridiculous light than his own hypothetical and mystical performances. A comedy, 'Docteur Modernes' brought his procedures on the stage. It severely criticized his 'fanatical' enthusiasm for a quondam science and portrayed the supposed abuses of his treatment. In England notices like the following appeared in the leading journals:

The Wonderful Magnetical Elixir. Take of the chemical oil of Fear, Dread and Terror, each 4 oz.; of the Rectified Spirits of Imagination, 2 lbs. Put all