Matters having assumed this serious aspect, the French government, much to its credit, deputed four respectable and unprejudiced men, to whom were afterwards added four others of great learning and abilities, to inquire into, and appreciate the merits of the new discovery of animal magnetism. These philosophers, among whom we find the illustrious names of Franklin and Lavoisier, recognised, indeed, very surprising and unexpected phenomena in the physical state of magnetized individuals; but they gave it as their opinion, that the powers of imagination, and not animal magnetism, had produced these effects. Sensible of the superior influence, which the imagination can exert on the human body, when it is effectually wrought upon, they perceived, after a number of experiments and facts frequently repeated, that contact, or touch, imagination, imitation, and excited sensibility, were the real and sole causes of these phenomena, which had so much confounded the illiterate, the credulous, and the enthusiastic; that this boasted magnetic element had no real existence in nature, consequently that Messmer himself was either an arrant impostor, or a deluded fanatic.
Meantime, this magnetic mystery had made no small progress in Germany. A number of periodical and other publications vindicated its claims to public favour and attention; and some literary men, who had rendered themselves justly celebrated by their former writings, now stepped forward as bold and eager champions in support of this mystical doctrine. The ingenious Lavater undertook long journies for the propagation of magnetism and somnambulism:[144] and what, manipulations and other absurdities were not practised on hysterical young ladies in the city of Bremen? It is farther worthy of notice, that an eminent physician of that place, in a recent publication, does not scruple to rank magnetism among medical remedies! It must, nevertheless, be confessed, that the great body of the learned, throughout Germany, have endeavoured, by strong and impartial criticism, to oppose and refute animal magnetism, considered as a medical system. And how should it be otherwise, since it is highly ridiculous to imagine that violent agitations, spasms, convulsions, etc. which are obviously symptoms of a diseased state of body, and which must increase rather than diminish the disposition to nervous diseases, can be the means of improving the constitution and ultimately of prolonging human life? Every attentive person must have observed, that too frequent intercourse between nervous and hypochondriac patients is infectious; and if this be the case, public assemblies, for exhibiting magnetised individuals, can neither be safe nor proper. It is no small proof of the good sense of the people of this country, though they have at different times fallen into nearly similar delusions, that the professors of animal magnetism did not long maintain their ground; they were soon exposed to public ridicule on the stage, and shortly became annihilated in their own absurdities.
Other plans for the prolongation of life, little less absurd than animal magnetism, which have, like every other imposture, "fretted their hour," deserve to be noticed. The French and Germans have long stood pre-eminent in the empirical world, though the merit of ingenious and more plausible emanations of genius may fairly be attributed to the latter. Animal magnetism; physiognomy, a rational though fallacious science; phrenology, a doctrine abounding with many singular manifestions, and possessing claims not to be put down by mere force of prejudice, are all of German origin.
The Count St. Germain, a Frenchman, realized large sums, by vending an artificial tea, chiefly composed of yellow saunders, senna leaves, and fennel seed, which was puffed off under the specious appellation of Tea for prolonging life; which, at that time, was swallowed with such voracity all over the continent, that few could subsist without it. Its celebrity was of short duration, and none ever lived long enough to realize its effects.
The Chevalier d'Ailhoud, another brazen-faced adventurer, presented the world with a powder, which met with so large and rapid a sale, that he soon accumulated money enough to purchase a whole county. This famous powder, however, instead of adding to the means of securing a long and healthy life, is well known to produce constant indisposition, and at length to cause a most miserable death; being composed of certain drugs of a poisonous nature, though slow in their operation.
Count Cagliostro, styled the luminary of modern impostors and debauchees, prepared a very common stomach elixir, which was sold at a most exorbitant price under the name of "balm of life" It was pretended, with the most unparalleled effrontery, that, by the use of this medicine, the count had lived above 200 years, and that he was rendered invulnerable against every species of poison. These bold assertions could not fail to excite very general attention. During his residence at Strasburg, while descanting, in a large and respectable company, on the virtues of his antidote, his pride met with a very mortifying check. A physician who was present, and who had taken part in the conversation, quitting the room privately, went to an apothecary's shop, and ordering two pills of equal size to be made, agreeably to his directions, suddenly appeared again before the count, and thus addressed him:—"Here, my worthy count, are two pills; the one contains a mortal poison, the other is perfectly innocent; choose one of these and swallow it, and I engage to take that which you leave. This will be considered as a decisive proof of your medical skill, and enable the public to ascertain the efficacy of your extolled elixir." The count took the alarm, made a number of apologies, but could not be prevailed upon to touch the pills. The physician swallowed both immediately, and proved by his apothecary, that they might be taken with perfect safety, being only made of common bread. Notwithstanding the shame of this detection, Cagliostro still retained numerous advocates by circulating unfounded reports, and concealing his real character by a variety of tricks.
The inspired father Gassner, of Bavaria, ascribed all diseases, lameness, palsy, etc, to diabolical agency, contending from the history of Job, Saul, and others recorded in sacred writ, that Satan, as the grand enemy of mankind, has a power to embitter and shorten our lives by diseases. Vast numbers of credulous and weak-minded people flocked to this fanatic, with a view of obtaining relief which he never had the means to administer. Multitudes of patients, afflicted with nervous and hypochondriacal complaints, besieged him daily; being all stimulated by a wild imagination, eager to view and acknowledge the works of Satan! Men eminent for their literary attainments, even the natural philosophers of Bavaria, were hurried away by the stream, and completely blinded by sanctified imposture.
It is no less astonishing than true, that so late as 1794, a Count Thun, at Leipzig, pretended to perform miraculous cures on gouty, hypochondriacal, and hysterical patients, merely by the imposition of his sacred hands. He could not however raise a great number of disciples in a place that abounds with so many sceptics and unbelievers.
The commencement of the nineteenth century has been equally pregnant with imposture. The delusions of Joanna Southcoat are too fresh in the recollections of our readers to require notice here; yet, strange to say, this fanatical old woman had her adherents and disciples; many of them, in other respects, were keen and sensible men; nor has the delusion altogether evaporated, though the sect is by no means powerful or strong; the first impressions are still retained by her half frantic and ridiculous devotees, who are only to be met with among the very lowest and illiterate orders of society.
The farce of the convert of Newhall, near Chelmsford, is of still more recent date. Here we have a miracle performed by the holy Prince Hohenlohe, at a distance of at least three hundred miles from the presence of his patient. Hearing of the wonderful cures performed by this prince, one of the nuns in the above convent, who had been afflicted for a considerable length of time with a swelling and inflammation extending from the ball of the thumb along the fore arm, and up as high as the armpit, wrote to Prince Hohenlohe—having previously been attended by the most eminent practitioners in London without any apparent benefit—to relieve her from her sufferings. This he willingly undertook to do, but accompanied his consent with an injunction that she should offer up her prayers on a certain day (May 3, 1824,) held in reverence by the catholics, and at a certain hour, promising that he would be at his devotions at the same time. All this, the afflicted nun attended to; immediately after her prayers, she experienced a tingling sensation along the arm, and from that instant the cure rapidly advanced until the diseased limb became as sound as the other.