a German physician, and in 1766 published a book entitled "De Planetarium Influxa," giving an account of his discoveries in animal magnetism. This, to use his own words, is "a fluid universally diffused, the medium of mutual influence between the heavenly bodies. There are observed, particularly in the human body, properties similar to those of a magnet. . . . The action and virtues of animal magnetism may be communicated from one body to another. Animal magnetism is capable of healing diseases of the nerves immediately and others mediately. It perfects the action of medicines. In animal magnetism nature presents a universal method of healing and preserving mankind."

I

Mesmer was at this time thirty-three years old and had studied medicine under the best men at Vienna. His belief in astrology was not then inconsistent with a man of parts. He treated the sick by stroking them with magnets, evidently supposing that in this way he transferred some of the "magnetism" of the heavenly body to the human body.

By this means the patient became cataleptic or hysterical, or fainted, probably depending on his idiosyncrasy. Whichever state was manifested, curative results followed. In 1776 he met in Switzerland a priest named Gassner, who effected cures by manipulations (laying on of hands) without the use of magnets. So like a true scientist, Mesmer discarded the magnets.

' Encyclopedia Britannica. J. G. M.

Two years later he opened an establishment in Paris for treating patients, and achieved such great success as to arouse the envy of the medical fraternity. They regarded him as a charlatan, and his method of conducting his séances would seem to us to-day to justify the charge.

Appreciating the effects of mysterious surrounding on the imagination of his patient, he had his consulting-rooms dimly lighted and hung with mirrors; strains of soft music occasionally broke the profound silence; odors were wafted through the room; and the patients sat around a kind of vat in which various chemical ingredients were concocted or simmered over a fire. Holding each other's hands or joined by cords, the patients sat in expectancy, and then Mesmer, clothed as a magician, glided amongst them, affecting this one by a touch, another by a look, and making passes with his hands toward a third. The effects were various, but all were held to be salutary."

I

Notwithstanding all this "machinery," we may, I think, believe in his honesty of purpose, for, at his own request, the Academy of Sciences appointed a committee to investigate his claims. Benjamin Franklin was a member of this committee, which reported that the cures were genuine, but that the effects were due to the imagination of the patient, and that the subject was not worthy of further scientific investigation.

1 Encyclopedia Britannica. J. G. M.

We are amused to-day at the dictum of these men that a system of therapeutics which they admitted made genuine cures was not worthy of further scientific investigation.

Let us take heed that we fall not into a similar blunder concerning some of "irregular" mental cures of our own times. The physician has no right to neglect any ism or pathy that he admits is

curative.

Whether from this adverse report or from increasing extravagance of mysticism, mesmerism, as it was then called, fell into disrepute, and Mesmer went to Switzerland, where he died 1815. One of his disciples who remained in Paris attempted to divest it of the marvelous, but met with little practical success, and it was not until ten years after Mesmer's death that it came again into prominence, and another investigation followed by the Academy of Sciences.

After six years' labor, the committee reported confirming the therapeutic value, but a majority of the Academicians wanted an adverse report, and another committee was appointed properly "instructed." Two subjects were examined and no results obtained.

This negative result satisfied the majority of the scientific men that the positive results of the earlier committee were untrue, and it became more unpopular than ever to be known as interested in this subject. The very name mesmerism was an offence to medicine.

But the influence of Mesmer was far-reaching. In 1837 in England appeared a doughty champion in the person of Dr. John Eliotson, professor of practise of medicine, University College, London. His demonstrations in the hospital wards became very popular with the students, but the dean advised him to desist. This he refused to do, and a year later the council of the university passed a resolution forbidding the "practise of mesmerism or animal magnetism." This naturally caused his resignation. But Eliotson's influence was made greater than ever by the publication of a journal "for the collection and diffusion of information connected with cerebral physiology and mesmerism." This appeared as a quarterly for twelve years. The contributions were from Eliotson and others, and reports of their work were thus put on record.

Anesthesia was the one phase now emphasized, and thus surgery, even capital operations, was rendered painless. This was before the discovery of chloroform and ether, and when we remember the description of surgical operations without anesthetics, it would seem as if the demonstrated possibilities of mesmerism would have been hailed with delight by the profession. Bitter editorials appeared in the Lancet, claiming that the subjects who said they felt no pain were impostors or persons naturally insensible to pain. Eliotson was a man of advanced ideas in many other directions, especially in the use of the stethoscope and posology.

Dr. James Esdaile, an English surgeon in the Indian service, having read Eliotson's journal, in 1845 mesmerized a patient before operating for hydrocele, and as the operation was entirely painless he adopted it as a routine measure, doing over one hundred painless operations during the year.

A committee of investigation, appointed by the governor, made such a favorable report that Esdaile was put in charge of a small hospital in Calcutta for further experiment and demonstration. Here his work was equally successful, but the medical profession of India denounced him as "an honest fool deluded by his patients," and the medical journals refused to publish any account of his wonderful

record.

About this same time, 1843, in England, James Braid, of Manchester, published "Neurypnology," in which he announced the subjective nature of the phenomena, introducing the term hypnotism. Probably nothing but the new name gained him a hearing. The scientific method was coming into vogue, and Braid applied it here. He discovered that the state could be induced by fixed gaze, and contended that animal magnetism had nothing to do with it.

He believed it the result of physical causes. His belief in phrenology led him to think that pressure on certain portions of the skull would produce special phenomena. His advocacy of the physical cause reinstated the subject as "worthy of further scientific investigation."