oji (he actual State of Magnetism in German}/. .",.09 



to abandon it. Going thence to Berlin, where magnetism is 

 practised with more success and more zeal than any where else, 

 he describes what he believes he there observed ; — he displays, or 

 rather he interprets, the opinion of the most eminent physicians 

 of that metropolis ; — he then gives his own particular opinions ; 

 and resting on general considerations, he endeavours to deny 

 most of the effects of magnetism, by attributing to the force of 

 imagination those effects the existence of which he is obliged to 

 acknowledge. 



The incorrect statement of facts related in that letter, and tlie 

 false consecpicnces drawn from them, impel me to answer the 

 author. It is not mv intention to enter on anv controversy on 

 the reality of the effects of magnetism, — on the methods em- 

 ployed in the practice of it, — nor on the applications which have 

 liitherto been made of it for the cure of different diseases. These 

 different sul)jects have already been treated in so many writings, 

 that it appears unnecesiary for me to discuss them anew. But 

 [ believe I owe it to this science and to truth, to rectify those 

 relations, the incorrectness of which obscures the light of a doc- 

 tiine which ought to be made perfectly clear; and to repel a sa- 

 tire the more misi)!aced, when attempti)ig to throw ridicule U])ou 

 subjects which from tlieir nature ought to be treated in the most 

 serious and even solemn manner. 



Educated at Berlin, where I devoted five years to the studv of 

 medicine, I did not neglect any thing from which 1 could derive 

 instruction in that science: and I believe 1 have it in mv power 

 to explain to philosophers and the learned, those facts, most of 

 which are misrepresented in the letter of Mr. Friedlander. 



The institution of Mr. Wolfart, Professor in the University of 

 Berlin, is the principal object of the descriptions and satire of 

 Mr. F. It has been established bctv.een ten and eleven years ; 

 and it has extended itself and obtained more success every year. 

 The discovery of the property of the agent denominated mag- 

 netic fluid, of parsing to unorganized bodies, impregnating them 

 during a certain time, and of passing thence into the huinau body, 

 suggested the apjiaratus knowai by the name of baquets. These 

 arc isolated vases filled with water, magnetized by a proceeding 

 .similar to that by which we magnetize human beings; and which 

 thus become in some sort reservoirs of the magnetic fluid. Iron 

 or steel conductors emerging from the water, direct the fluid to 

 the patients placed round the baquct. 



The necessity of multiplying the means of distributing mag- 

 netic aid, made it advisable to have recourse to those apparatus; 

 for one magnetizor could not have strength or time suflficient to 

 magnetize a great mimjjer of patients. — Experience has brought. 

 to perfection their use ; and the hixury which prevails even in 

 V.a' the 



