* 



UNIVER; 



REPORT ON ANIMAL MAGNETISM. 







he gives full scope to his satirical vein. He holds it even 

 as an honour that they do not regard him as impartial. 

 " The doctors have killed me ; what it has pleased them 

 to leave me of life is not worth, in truth, my seeking a 



milder term For these twenty years I have 



always been worse through the remedies administered to 



me than through my maladies Even were 



animal magnetism a chimera, it should be tolerated ; it 

 would still be useful to mankind, by saving many indi- 

 viduals among them from the incontestable dangers of 



vulgar medicine I wish that medicine, so long 



accustomed to deceive itself, should still deceive itself 

 now, and that the famous report be nothing but a great 



error " Amidst these singular declarations, 



there are hundreds of epigrams still more remarkable by 

 their ingenious and lively turn than by their novelty. If 

 it were true, Gentlemen, that the medical corps had ever 

 tried, knowingly, to impose on the vulgar, to hide the 

 uncertainty of their knowledge, the- weakness of their 

 theories, the vagueness of their conceptions, under an 

 obscure and pedantic jargon, the immortal and laughable 

 sarcasms of Moliere would not have been more than an 

 act of strict justice. In all cases every thing has its day ; 

 now, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the most 

 delicate, the most thorny points of doctrine were discussed 

 with an entire good faith, with perfect lucidity, and in a 

 style that placed many members of the faculty in the 

 rank of our best speakers. Servan, however, goes be- 

 yond the limits of a scientific discussion, when, without 

 any sort of excuse, he accuses his adversaries of being 

 anti-mesmerists through esprit de corps, and, what is 

 worse, through cupidity. 



Servan is more in his element when he points out that 



