MESMERISM, ODYLISM, TABLE-TURNING, ETC. 17 



of complete blindness a celebrated singer, Mademoiselle Paradis, who 

 had been for ten years unsuccessfully treated by the court physician. 

 His claim to a partial success, however, which was in the first instance 

 supported by his patient, seemed to have been afterward so completely 

 disproved by careful trials of her visual powers, that he found himself 

 obliged to quit Vienna abruptly, and thence proceeded to Paris, where 

 he soon produced a great sensation. The state of French society at 

 that time, as I have already remarked, was peculiarly favorable to his 

 pretensions. A feverish excitability prevailed, which caused the pub- 

 lic mind to be violently agitated by every question which it took up. 

 And Mesmer soon found it advantageous to challenge the learned 

 societies of the capital to enter the lists against him ; the storm of op- 

 position which he thus provoked having the effect of bringing over 

 to his side a large number of devoted disciples and ardent partisans. 

 He professed to distribute the magnetic fluid to his congregated pa- 

 tients from a haquet or magnetic tub which he had impregnated with 

 it, each individual holding a rod which proceeded from the haquet ; 

 but when the case was particularly interesting, or likely to be par- 

 ticularly pi-ofitable, he took it in hand for personal magnetization. 

 All the surroundings were such as to favor, in the hysterical subjects 

 who constituted the great bulk of his patients, the nervous paroxysm 

 termed the " crisis," which was at once recognized by medical men as 

 only a modified form of what is commonly known as an " hysteric fit;" 

 the influence of the imitative tendency being manifested as it is in 

 cases where such tits run through a school, nunnery, factory, or revi- 

 valist-meeting, in which a number of suitable subjects are collected 

 together. And it was chiefly on account of the moral disorders to 

 which Mesmer's proceedings seemed likely to give rise that the French 

 Government directed a scientific commission, including the most emi- 

 nent savants of the time such as Lavoisier, Bailly, and Benjamin 

 Franklin to inquire into them. After careful investigation they came 

 to the conclusion that there was no evidence whatever of any special 

 agency proceeding from the haquet ; for not only were they unable to 

 detect the passage of any influence from it that was appreciable, either 

 by electric, magnetic, or chemical tests, or by the evidence of any of 

 their senses ; but, on blindfolding those who seemed to be most sus- 

 ceptible to its supposed influence, all its ordinary effects were pro- 

 duced when they were without any connection with it, hut believed 

 that it existed. And so, when in a garden of which certain trees had 

 been magnetized, the patients, either Avhen blindfolded, or when igno- 

 rant which trees had been magnetized, would be thrown into a convul- 

 sive fit if they believed themselves to be near a magnetized tree, but 

 were really at a distance from it ; while, conversely, no effect would fol- 

 low their close proximity to one of these trees when they believed them- 

 selves to be at a distance from any of them. Further, the commissioners 

 reported that, although some cures might be wrought by the mesmeric 



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