Daily there assembled a great number of people, invalids from all parts of the kingdom, to be healed, and to see the wonderful miracles performed by a man! Here congregated the dropsical, those afflicted by unsightly sores, tumors, and swellings, the lame, the halt, and the blind. “Some he could not affect, but the most of them he cured.” The only visible means he took was to stroke, or at times violently rub, the part affected. Lord Conway wrote in his praise, but added, “After all, I am far from thinking his cures miraculous. I believe it is by a sanative virtue and a natural efficiency, which extend not to all diseases.” The Viscountess Conway was afflicted by an inveterate headache, which he could not remove. This lady was a positive character. The failure was attributed to the peculiar disease, when it should have been assigned to the peculiarity of the person. Sir Evremond, then at court, wrote a sarcastic novel on the subject of “The Irish Prophet.” The Royal Society held a meeting on the subject, and, unable to refute the facts of his cures, accounted for them as being “produced by a sanative contagion in Mr. Greatrakes’ body, which had an antipathy to some peculiar diseases, and not to others.” They demanded (particularly Dr. Loyd, in a “severe pamphlet”) how he cured, and why he cured some, and could not others. Greatrakes replied that he was not able to tell. And “let them,” he said, “tell me what substance that is which removes and goes out with such expedition, and it will be more easy to resolve their questions.”
To the scandalous reports respecting his operations upon female patients, without referring directly to such report, he says, attributing the diseases to evil spirits, “which kind of pains cannot endure my hand, nay, not with gloves, but fly immediately, though six or eight coats or cloaks be between the person and my hand, as at the Lady Ranelagh’s,” etc.
The clergy had previously taken alarm, and cited Valentine before the Bishop’s Court to account for his proceedings, and when he took a scriptural view of his cures, he was forbidden to practise more; which was as preposterous as the decree of Louis XIV., which commanded that no more miracles should be performed at the tomb of the Abbé Paris.
Neither the clergy nor the faculty could prevent him, and daily the crowd of representatives of heterogeneous diseases made pilgrimages to the Squire of Affam. The scene was said to be ludicrously painful. They came in crowds from everywhere; on foot and in carriages; the young and the aged; some hobbling upon crutches, others literally crawling along; the blind carrying the cripple upon his back, while the latter directed the way, and the deaf and dumb followed in their wake.
NO LACK OF PATIENTS.
While the lord mayor and the chief justice, with great physicians, were among his vehement supporters of the sterner sex, the majority of his real admirers were the ladies. The lovely Countess of Devonshire entertained him in her palace, and other high ladies lionized him nightly in their parlors, where he “performed his pleasant operations, with wonderful results, on the prettiest and most hysterical ladies present.” “But his triumph was of short duration. His professions were made the butts of ridicule, to which his presence of mind and volubility were unable to effectually respond. His tone of conversation was represented by his enemies as compounded of the blasphemy of the religious enthusiast and the obscene profligate. His boast that he never received a fee for remedial services was met by a square contradiction, and a statement that he received five hundred dollars at once.” Finally, the tide of opposition and slander became too strong for him, and he returned to his native land, and to oblivion.
We are indebted to several authorities for the foregoing sketch of Greatrakes, particularly Chambers’ Miscellany, Lord Conway, E. Rich, and Jeaffreson.
Mesmerism.
Frederick Anthony Mesmer, to whose name the above ism is affixed, was born in Werseburg, in 1734. He neither discovered, developed, nor understood anything of the art which has immortalized him. He was a designing, audacious man. If Gassner, Prince Hohenloe, and Greatrakes were falsely accused of dealing with the devil, Mesmer was truly leagued with a Father Hell. Father Hell was professor of astronomy at Vienna, where Mesmer obtained a medical diploma, and where he was connected at first with Maximilian Hell in magnetic instruments. Having a falling out with the latter, Mesmer resorted to the arts of his great predecessor, Greatrakes, but professed to cure, without the help of God or man, all curable diseases. He produced marvellous effects (but only temporary, however) in both Vienna and Paris, to which latter place he repaired to practise animal magnetism.