oi. ee as tan nile = _ = —t: i 
REPORT ON ANIMAL MAGNETISM. 145 
tumours, inveterate obstructions, gutta serenas, and strong 
paralyses.” Servan admitted, in short, that magnetism 
had effected most wonderful cures. But there lay all the 
question. The cures being admitted, the rest followed as 
a matter of course. 
However incredible these cures might be, they must be 
admitted, they said, when numerous witnesses certified 
their truth. Was it owing to chance that attestations 
were wanting for the miracles at the Cemetery of St. 
Médard? Did not the counsellor to the parliament, 
Montgeron, state, in three large quarto volumes, the 
names of a great multitude of individuals who protested 
on their honour as illuminati, that the tomb of the Dea- 
con, Paris, had restored sight to the blind, hearing to the 
deaf, strength to the paralytic; that in a twinkling it 
cured ailing people of gouty rheumatism, of dropsy, of 
epilepsy, of phthisis, of abscesses, of ulcers, &c.? Did 
these attestations, although many emanated from persons 
of distinction, from the Chevalier Folard, for example, 
prevent the convulsionists from becoming the laughing- 
stock of Europe? Did they not see the Duchess of 
Maine herself laugh at idee prowess in the following 
witty couplet ?— 
“ A scavenger at the palace-gate 
Who, his left heel being lame, 
Obtained as a most special grace, 
That his right should ail the same.’’ * 
Was not government, urged to the utmost, at last 
obliged to interfere, when the multitude, carrying folly to 
the extremest bounds, was going to try to resuscitate the 
* “Un décrotteur 4 la royale, 
Du talon gauche estropié, 
Obtint pour grace spéciale 
D’étre boiteux de l’autre pié.”’ 
7 
