The sympathetic power of corporeal apposition was illustrated when Elisha, to revive the widow’s child, stretched himself three times upon him and prayed to the Lord. When Elisha restored the child of the Shunamite to life he lay upon it, put his mouth upon his mouth, his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands, and he stretched himself upon the child, and the child opened its eyes. Miracles were generally wrought by manual application or elevation. Naaman expected that Elisha would have stricken his hand over the place to cure his leprosy; and we find in the Scriptures that our Saviour healed the sick upon whom he laid his hands. Amongst the Greeks we again see the same ceremonies performed on all wonderful recoveries. Plutarch tells us that Pyrrhus cured persons with diseased spleens by passing his hand over the seat of the malady. Ælianus informs us that the Psylli performed their cures by stretching themselves upon the patients, and making them swallow water with which they had rinsed their mouths; and he also mentions that those who approached these mysterious agents were seized with a sudden stupor, and deprived of their intellects until they had left them. Apollonius brought a young girl to life by touching her, and leaning over her as though he were whispering some magic words in her ear; and Origenes affirms that there were sages who dispensed health with their mere breath. Vespasian restored sight to the blind by rubbing their eyes and cheeks with his saliva, and cured a paralytic by merely touching him: the same emperor kept himself in perfect health by frequently rubbing his throat and his body. From a passage of Plautus, it appears that this manual application was resorted to in his days to procure sleep. Mercury is made to say, “Quid si ego illum tractem, tangam ut dormiat;” to which Sosia replies, “Servaveris, nam continuas has tres noctes pervigilavi.”
Pliny maintains that there exist persons whose bodies are endowed with medicinal properties; but he admits, at the same time, that imagination may produce these salutary emanations. Celsus informs us that Asclepiades by friction could calm a phrensy; and further states, that when these frictions were carried to too great an extent, they brought on a lethargic state. Cælius Aurelianus recommends manual frictions for the cure of pleurisy, lethargy, and various other maladies, describing the manner in which they are to be conducted: for instance, in epilepsy, the head and forehead are to be chafed, then the hand is to be carried gently over the neck and bosom; at other times, the extremities of the hands and feet are to be grasped, that “we may cure by the very act of holding the limb.”
That remedies were indicated in a state of somnambulism is affirmed by Tertullian, who thus speaks of one of the followers of Prisca and Maximilla, two women who foretold future events when they fell into an ecstatic swoon: “She conversed with angels, discovered the most hidden mysteries, prophesied, read the secrets of the heart, and pointed out remedies when she was consulted by the sick.” He thus describes ecstasy in his treatise De Anima: “It is not sleep, for during sleep all reposes; whereas in ecstasy the body reposes, while the soul is actively employed. It is therefore a mixed state of sleep and ecstasy which constitutes the prophetic faculty, and it is then that we have revealed unto us, not only all that appertaineth to honour, to riches, but the means of curing our diseases.” St. Stephen relates the case of a youth who was in such a lethargic state, that he was insensible to all painful agents, and could not be awakened; but when he recovered his senses, he declared that two persons, the one aged, the other young, had appeared to him and recommended sea-bathing. He complied with the instruction, and was cured. But the miracles of paganism were soon discredited, when the relics and tombs of saints were resorted to instead of the temples of the false gods; and priests assumed the power once held by their Chaldean and Egyptian predecessors, and the Druids of Gaul. The beatified were not only physicians during their life, but medicinal after death. St. Gregory of Tours tells us that St. Cosmus and St. Damian were not only able physicians during their blessed existence, but assisted all those who consulted them in their tombs, not unfrequently appearing to them in visions, and prescribing the proper remedies. A saint’s breathing upon a veil, and then placing it on the head of a demoniac, infallibly cast out the evil one; and St. Bernard never failed in his exorcisms, by making the possessed swallow some water in which he had dipped his hands. St. Martin stopped the most fearful hemorrhage by merely touching the patient with his garment. The shrines of St. Litardus, St. Anthony, and various other saints, lulled to sleep, and inspired with miraculous visions those who sought their aid.
However, as the progress of intellect dispelled the dark clouds that shrouded the middle ages in superstitious and credulous prejudices, philosophy endeavoured to investigate the nature of this mysterious agency, which priests had for so many centuries usurped as their special gift and property. Sceptic as to supernatural powers in the common occurrences of life, philosophers attributed these phenomena to some peculiar principle with which organized bodies were endowed, and hence arose the dawn of the doctrine of animal magnetism. So early as 1462, Pomponatius of Mantua maintained, in his work on incantation, that all the pretended arts of sorcery and witchcraft were the mere results of natural operations; he further gave it as his opinion, that it was not improbable but that external means, called into action by the soul, might relieve our sufferings; that there, moreover, did exist individuals endowed with salutary properties, and it might therefore easily be conceived that marvellous effects should be produced by the imagination, and by confidence, more especially when they are reciprocal between the patient and the person who assists his recovery; physicians and men of sense being well convinced that if the bones of any animal were substituted for those of a saint, the result would be the same. It need not be added that our author was violently persecuted for this heretical doctrine. Two years after, Agrippa, in Cologne, asserted that the soul, inflamed by a fervent imagination, could dispense health and disease, not only in the individual himself, but in other bodies. In 1493, Paracelsus expressed himself in the following language: “All doubt destroys work, and leaves it imperfect in the wise designs of nature. It is from faith that imagination draws its strength. It is by faith that it becomes complete and realized. He who believeth in nature, will obtain from nature to the extent of his faith. Let the object of this faith be real or imaginary, you nevertheless reap similar results; and hence the cause of superstition.”
Cardanus, Bacon, and Van Helmont pursued this study; and the latter physician, having cured several cases by magnetism, was considered a sorcerer, and was seized by the Inquisition. Magnetism, he observed, “is a universal agent, and only novel in its appellation, and paradoxical to those who ridicule every thing they do not comprehend, or attribute to Satan what they cannot understand. The name of magnetism is given to that occult influence which bodies possess on each other at various distances, either by attraction or by impulsion. The means or the vehicle of this influence is an ethereal spirit, pure, vital, (magnale magnum,) which penetrates all matter, and agitates the mass of the universe. This spirit is the moderator of the world, and establishes a correspondence between its several parts and the powers with which it is endowed. We can attach to a body the virtues that we possess, communicate to it certain properties, and use it as the intermediate means to operate salutary effects. I have hitherto withheld the revelation of this great mystery. There exists in man a certain energy, which can act beyond his own person according to his will or his imagination, and impart virtues and exercise a durable influence even in distant objects. Will is the first of powers.” Van Helmont fully admitted the wonderful faculties that somnambulism seemed to develop, and informs us that it was chiefly during his sleep that he was inspired with his doctrines. One might have imagined that these philosophic researches would have put an effectual stop to the progress of superstition, or rather of persecution; yet their promulgation could not save Urbain Grandier, and many supposed sorcerers, from a barbarous death.
It was in the beginning of the eighteenth century that various experiments were made with the loadstone in researches regarding electricity. In 1754, Lenoble had constructed magnets that could be used with facility in the treatment of various diseases. In 1774, Father Hell, a Jesuit and professor of astronomy at Vienna, having cured himself of a severe rheumatism by magnetism, related the result of his experiments to Mesmer. This physician was immediately struck with observations that illustrated his own theories respecting planetary influence. He forthwith proceeded to procure magnets of every form and description for the gratuitous treatment of all those that consulted him; and, while he widely diffused his doctrines, he sent his magnets in every direction to aid the experimental pursuits of others, and thus expressed himself on the subject in a memoir published in 1779: “I had maintained that the heavenly spheres possessed a direct power on all the constituent principles of animated bodies, particularly on the nervous system, by the agency of an all-penetrating fluid. I determined this action by the INTENSION and the REMISSION of the properties of matter and organized bodies, such as gravity, cohesion, elasticity, irritability, and electricity. I supported this doctrine by various examples of periodical revolutions; and I named that property of the animal matter, which renders it susceptible to the action of celestial and earthly bodies, ANIMAL MAGNETISM. A further consideration of the subject led me to the conviction that there does exist in nature an universal principle, which, independently of ourselves, performs all that we vaguely attribute to nature or to art.”
Mesmer, as might have been foreseen, became the object of persecution and of ridicule, and withdrew to Switzerland and Suabia. It was there that he met with a certain Gassner of Braz, who, having fancied that an exorcism had relieved him from a long and painful malady, took it into his head to exorcise others. He considered the greater part of the disorders, to which flesh is heir as the work of the devil, and he counteracted his baneful influence in the name of our Saviour. He divided these diabolical visitations into possessions, obsessions, and circumsessions; the latter being trifling invasions. For the purpose of ascertaining whether his patients laboured under natural or infernal ailments, he conjured Satan to declare the truth. If, after three solemn interpellations, and signs of the cross, the devil did not answer, the disorder was considered as coming within the province of medicine; but if, on the contrary, the patient fell into convulsions, Gassner drew forth his stole and crucifix, and, in the name of the Redeemer, commenced rubbing and pinching, sometimes in the most indecorous manner, when females were submitted to his manipulations. When his attempts failed, he accused the patient of want of faith or of the commission of some deadly sin, which baffled his endeavours. His fame became so universal, that the Bishop of Ratisbon sent for him, and he exercised his art under his auspices. At one period, the town was so crowded with his patients, that ten thousand of them were obliged to encamp without the walls. It appears that this adventurer had the power of acting upon the pulse, and could increase or retard it, render it regular or intermittent, and was even reported to paralyze limbs and produce tears or laughter at will. It is scarcely credible, yet the celebrated De Haen, one of the most distinguished and learned practitioners in Germany, not only believed in the power of this Gassner, but actually attributed it to a paction with the devil.
Mesmer was not so credulous, and explained the miraculous cures of Gassner by the doctrines of the animal magnetism which he advocated. From Suabia he returned to Vienna, whence he was expelled as a quack; and in 1778 arrived at Paris, a capital that had patronised Cagliostro and St. Germain, and was ever ready to be deceived by ingenious empiricism. In 1779 he published a paper on the subject, in which he maintained twenty-seven propositions to establish his supposed influence between the celestial bodies, the earth, and animated matter, produced by a fluid universal, subtile, susceptible of receiving, transmitting, and communicating its impressions, on mechanical principles, until then unknown, and producing alternate effects of flux and reflux. This powerful agent, he said, acted chiefly on the nervous system. The human body, moreover, according to his notions, possessed properties analogous to the loadstone, and presenting an opposed polarity, subject to various modifications, which either strengthened or weakened it. The action of animal magnetism, according to him, was not confined to animal matter, but could be equally communicated to inanimate bodies at various distances. Mirrors could reflect and increase its power like the rays of light, and sound could propagate and increase it. This magnetic property, he further stated, could be accumulated, concentrated, and transported at pleasure, although there did exist animated bodies possessed of properties so opposite as to render this powerful agent inefficient. He found that the loadstone was susceptible of animal magnetism, and of its opposite virtues, without any apparent influence on its power over iron and the needle; whence he concluded that there existed a wide difference between animal and mineral magnetism.
Mesmer soon found a warm advocate of his doctrines in a Dr. D’Eslon, and animal magnetism became in fashionable vogue. Not only were men and animals subjected to their experiments, but this wondrous influence was communicated to trees and plants, and the celebrated elm-tree of Beaugency was magnetized by the Marquis de Puységur and his brother; while the enthusiastic D’Eslon absolutely went knocking from door to door to procure patients. Breteuil, who was then one of the ministers, offered Mesmer a yearly pension of thirty thousand francs, with a sum of three hundred thousand francs in cash, with the decoration of St. Michael, if he would consent to reveal the mysteries of his science to the medical faculty. This tempting offer our magnetizer indignantly rejected, and a secret society was instituted under the name of the Lodge and Order of Harmony. The charms and the power of youth and music were not neglected as auxiliaries to propagate the fashionable doctrine. Young men of elegant manners and athletic form were initiated in the practice of magnetizing, and the salons of Paris consecrated to this worship (for such it might have been termed) were crowded with the most fascinating women that the gay metropolis of France could produce. Most of these females, impassioned by nervous excitability, as loose in their morals as to outward appearance they were fervent in their devotions, abandoned themselves without reserve to the delightful sensations that magnetism and its surrounding machinery were said to afford. In their ecstasies, their hysteric attacks, their spasms, Mesmer, the high-priest, fancifully dressed, but in the height of fashion, with his useful acolytes, endeavoured to soothe and calm the agitation of their enchanting patients by all the means that Mesmerism could devise.
It soon became pretty evident that these phenomena were solely to be attributed to the influence of imagination; and Doppet, one of the most ardent disciples of the new creed, frankly avowed that “those who were initiated in the secrets of Mesmer entertained more doubts on the subject than those who were in thorough ignorance of them.” Notwithstanding this evidence brought forward against Mesmer’s fascinating practice, he was warmly eulogised even by high churchmen; and Hervier, a doctor of Sorbonne, did not hesitate to assert that the Golden Age was on the return; that man would be endowed with fresh vigour, live for the space of five generations, and only succumb to the exhaustion of age; that all the animal kingdom would enjoy a similar blessing; while magnetized trees would yield more abundant and delicious fruits. This belief of the good ecclesiastic arose, according to his own assertion, from his having been cured of some cruel disorder by magnetism, while all his intimate acquaintances insisted that he had never ceased to enjoy perfect health.