144 BAILLY. 



the present best established medical theories occasioned 

 at their birth prolonged debates ; when he reminds us 

 that several medicines have been alternately proscribed 

 and recommended with vehemence : the author might 

 even have more deeply undermined this side of his sub- 

 ject. Instead of some unmeaning jokes, why did he not 

 show us, for example, in a neighbouring country, two 

 celebrated physicians, Mead and Woodward, deciding, 

 sword in hand, the quarrel that had arisen between them 

 as to the purgative treatment of a patient ? We should 

 then have heard Woodward, pierced through and through, 

 rolling on the ground, and drenched in blood, say to his 

 adversary with an exhausted voice : " The blow was 

 harsh, but yet I prefer it to your medicine ! " 



It is not truth alone that has the privilege of rendering 

 men passionate. Such was the legitimate result of these 

 retrospective views. I now ask myself whether, by 

 labouring to put the truth of this aphorism in full light, 

 the passionate advocate of Mesmerism showed proof of 

 ability ! 



Gentlemen, let us put all these personal attacks aside, 

 all these recriminations against science and its agents, 

 who unfortunately had not succeeded in restoring the 

 health of the morose magistrate. What remains then of 

 his pamphlet ? Two chapters, only two chapters, in 

 which Bailly's report is treated seriously. The medical 

 commissioners and the members of the Academy had not 

 seen, in the real effects of Mesmerism anything more than 

 was occasioned by imagination. The celebrated magis- 

 trate exclaims on this subject, "Any one hearing this 

 proposition spoken of would suppose, before reading the 

 report, that the commissioners had treated and cured, or 

 considerably relieved by the force of imagination, large 



