516 THE MOUNTAIN. 



dream-world, such plainly-marked satanic stratagems, that 

 the common sense of the race cannot tolerate even a 

 hearing with court and jury, but dismisses them at once 

 to the shades. When the two startling and peculiar 

 names, " Kinesipathy" and "Hypnotism," arise before us 

 and ask our consideration as modes of curing disease, 

 what shall we say ? There is magic in a name, certainly, 

 and magic has been a powerful force in the world in days 

 gone by, why not now ? Ling, the author of the " Swedish 

 Medical Gymnastics," was a poet who failed to take cold after 

 exposing himself, half naked, on a frosty day, for the pur- 

 pose of committing suicide ; and, rapping himself with a ruler 

 on a rheumatic part, discovered that it relieved the pain, and 

 thus was revealed to him a new system of medical sug- 

 gestions which he called Kinesipathy, a name, beyond a 

 doubt, which means the curative virtues of rubbing, snub- 

 bing, nudging, and kneading, scratching and pounding, 

 (which, of course, includes the art of pugilism, which has 

 always been known to be .good for weak eyes,) the philoso- 

 phy of shampooing and poking, dancing and wriggling, 

 jerking, squirming, and fumbling. Two thousand sublime 

 movements, of all orders imaginable, cure the whole cata- 

 logue of chronic diseases, constituting a system of organic 

 sanitary exercises or drillings. It has been practiced in 

 Sweden for more than thirty years. The time it seems for 

 Yankeedom to take it up, revamp, and trot it out, has now 

 arrived.* We propose the health of the Swedish poet Ling ? 

 with all the honors. 



Hypnotism was discovered by James Braid, of Manchester. 

 The oracular bard of the sciences calls it " one of a number of 

 arts to which we shall give the generic name of Phrenopathy, 

 for it produces its effects principally as actions of mind upon 

 mind." " The heart's wounds are immedicable, and canst thou 

 minister to a mind diseased." Hypnotism pours physical sal- 

 vation into the animal man through his soul. This is done by 



* There are practitioners of this system at several places in the 

 United States. 



