The faculty of medicine showed, we think, less wisdom. It refused to examine any thing; it even proceeded in legal form against one of its regent doctors who had associated himself, they said, with the charlatanism of Mesmer.
These barren debates evidently proved that Mesmer himself was not thoroughly sure of his theory, nor of the efficacy of the means of cure that he employed. Still the public showed itself blind. The infatuation became extreme. French society appeared at one moment divided into magnetizers and magnetized. From one end of the kingdom to the other agents of Mesmer were seen, who, with receipt in hand, put the weak in intellect under contribution.
The magnetizers had had the address to intimate that the mesmeric crises manifested themselves only in persons endowed with a certain sensitiveness. From that moment, in order not to be ranged among the insensible, both men and women, when near the rod, assumed the appearance of epileptics.
Was not Father Hervier really in one of those paroxysms of the disease when he wrote, "If Mesmer had lived contemporary with Descartes and Newton, he would have saved them much labour: those great men suspected the existence of the universal fluid; Mesmer has discovered the laws of its action"?
Count de Gébelin showed himself stranger still. The new doctrine would naturally seduce him by its connection with some of the mysterious practices of ancient times; but the author of The Primitive World did not content himself with writing in favour of Mesmerism with the enthusiasm of an apostle. Frightful pain, violent griefs, rendered life insupportable to him; Gébelin saw death approaching with satisfaction, so from that moment he begged earnestly that he might not be carried to Mesmer's, where assuredly "he could not die." We must just mention, however, that his request was not attended to; he was carried to Mesmer's, and died while he was being magnetized.
Painting, sculpture, and engraving were constantly repeating the features of this Thaumaturgus. Poets wrote verses to be inscribed on the pedestals of the busts, or below the portraits. Those by Palisot deserve to be quoted, as one of the most curious examples of poetic licences:—
"Behold that man—the glory of his age!
Whose art can all Pandora's ills assuage.
In skill and tact no rival pow'r is known—
E'en Greece, in him, would Esculapius own."[7]