MESMERISM. 687 



generally absent and paid so little attention that he ought not to 

 have signed the report, and seems to have taken the absurdity of 

 the thing for granted. The celebrated Jussieu refused to sign it, 

 and made a special report of his own. 2 I have seen so much of 

 what is wrong, in bodies and in individuals, that the opinions of 

 the former and of the latter, whatever may be the rank, title, 

 office, power, riches, or scientific character of the parties, 

 never are regarded by me beyond their own simple worth. 



But I have never witnessed more than what, it is certain, takes 

 place in health and disease. T have seen persons sent to sleep, 

 I have felt and heard others declare they had tingling, and heard 

 some declare they had various other sensations and pains, I have 

 seen twitchings, convulsions, and spastic contractions of muscles, 

 loss of power of muscle, and the most profound coma; and I have 

 seen these evidently and instantly removed by the process. I have 

 seen one sense restored in the coma by the process, so that 

 the person was insensible in taste, smell, sight, and yet heard and 

 answered questions well. I have seen paroxysms of sleep-waking 

 and ecstatic delirium, which had been originally induced by its 

 disturbance of a system already epileptic, put an end to evi- 

 dently, and in general quickly, by mesmerism. But I have not 

 witnessed persons seeing through walls or pasteboard, nor tasting 

 or smelling with the epigastrium or fingers ; nor speaking or under- 

 standing languages they had never learnt ; nor telling the circum- 

 stances past, present, and to come of persons they had never heard 

 of before. Yet I have persevered with patience and docility. 

 Often have I seen Baron Dupotet speak at the epigastrium and 

 finger ends of the ecstatic and comatose patients : often heard 

 him address them in a language with which they were unac- 

 quainted : often ask when they would have another fit; but nothing, 

 which, till I witness such things, I must consider supernatural, 

 has yet occurred. He has frequently said that these phenomena 

 would soon occur, that the patients would probably soon be- 

 come clairvoyans : but no. No marvel has yet presented itself in 

 my experience : nor has any good been yet effected in the dis- 

 eases of my patients ; but the perfect coma induced in some of 



z Rapport de Pun des Commissaires, A. L. Jussieu, charges par le Eoi de VEx- 

 amenduMagnetisme Animal. Paris, 1784. 



Z Z 



