304 BARON EEICHENBACH'S 



force), that magnets produced certain effects on the human 

 organism. 



What are the effects? or, rather, what effects did the 

 baron claim on behalf of magnets 1 Certain very extraordi- 

 nary ones ; amongst others the following. He testified that 

 Mdlle. Nowotny, one of his experimental young ladies, lying 

 in bed, he no sooner applied the magnet to her hand than the 

 latter was attracted ; and so powerfully, that, by passing the 

 magnet towards the young lady's toes, she not only sat up, 

 but would have turned head over heels, had he not desisted ! If 

 this curious faculty of a magnet be proved by farther experi- 

 ment, then society will owe apologies not only to Dr. Petetin 

 of Lyons, who affirmed that the human hand was affected 

 by the magnet, but also to Mesmer, who maintained the same 

 proposition. Here again, unfortunately, the experimenter who 

 might wish to repeat the baron's experiments, and by the issue 

 of their testimony satisfy himself, encounters a difficulty in 

 finding the necessary bevy of sensitive young ladies. 



Keichenbach was soon led (as I have already stated) to 

 infer the presence of the peculiar agency he believed he had 

 revealed, in many other things than magnets. But we shall 

 do well to exhaust the magnetic part of the subject before 

 going to others. It would seem that the baron's mind was 

 one singularly amenable to the turning of suggestions to ac- 

 count, by way of strengthening his hypotheses ; accordingly, 

 the singular custom a friend of his had, of taking his first 

 sleep at night lying north and south, then on waking turning 

 heels where head had been, and thus enjoying his second nap 

 in the reverse polar direction, set the baron speculating as 

 to whether the earth's magnetism, or rather the something 

 associated with the earth's magnetism, might not furnish 

 the explanation of his friend's sleeping vagary. Wherefore, 

 prompted by this thought, he caused his friend to reverse 

 the polar direction of his bed in such manner that on lying 

 down his friend's head should point due magnetic north. The 



