The Sun.
London, England, 1841-07-14 00:00:00

ANIMAL MAGNETISM IN FRANCE-

AND ENGLAND.

In England, animal magnetism has almost ceased to be
a subject even of popular interest, and has been long dis-
missed from the list of suljects of scientific inquiry; fur v: e
suppose that its now sole professor will hardly put for-
ward a claim for a love of science in his occasional pub-
lic exhibitions of his own powers and his patients' weak-
ness. But in France it still flourishes in all its folly ;
and we wish we could say that folly is the least fault
with which it can be branded • for of late, more than
ever in its career hitherto, impudent falsehood, bold chi-
canery, and even blasphemy, have been chief features in
its doctrines and practice.
A few notices of the contents of the Parisian journals,
during the last months, will show what folly, men, se-
rious, and, if the expression may be, professing them-
selves reasonable and honest, can be brought to believe
or to assert, even in the nineteenth century ; and, if they
serve no other purpose, will at least suffice to confirm the
incredulity which every student of medicine should
maintain, by proving what the height of enthusiasm
can mistake, or the depths of charlatanerie can pretend,
to be truth. To prove in one sentence how little mag-
netizers are capable of fulfilling, before competent
judges, the pretensions which ,they make to the whole
public, or even of repeating those marvels which (when
they are not well overlooked) are easy enough—to prove
this, let it suffice to say, that the sum of three thousand
francs, offered by M. Burdin, to any one who would
bring a somnambulist who could read with her eyes
fairly bandaged over, or could tell what was written on
a paper locked up in a box, has never been won, though
often tried for in the presence of impartial judges : nay,
not one has ever been found who could see to read
through a single layer of blank paper.
Now we do not mean to say that a somnambulist
being unable to see without her eyes is a proof that
animal magnetism is untrue ; but the fact we have men-
tioned is a proof that these French magnetizers are (not
to waste words) either fools or impostors ; for this sight
through bandages and deal-boards is what they put for-
ward as being often acquired under magnetic influence,
and as having been frequently demonstrated to exist.
Nay, they seem to prefer it as a test of the truth of
their system. M. Gerdy (who might certainly have occu-
pied himself more to his own dignity and to thepublic ad-
vantage) has been induced to investigate this power of eye-
less sight in the choicest somnambulist of M. Pigeaire,
his own daughter. And what was the result of his in-
quiries ? Why, that Mademoiselle Pigeaire could never
succeed in reading, till, by her struggles, she had
managed to displace the bandage that had been put, with
much form and much pretence of caution, over her eyes,
and to make a gap above or below its borders sufficient
to peep through and use her ordinary sight as other
people do. Nor was there any better success with M.
Frappart and his somnambulists : all the trials entirely
failed : all proved quite plainly that the blindfolded
could not see till they had made„ a, chink below, or above,
or on the inner side of the eye. A series of experiments,
by M. Gerdy, on himself and on his friends, proved how
small, how almost imperceptible, a space is sufficient for
some persons to see obscurely through or beneath
a bandage.; and yet in spite of all this,
the magnetizers still believed, or pretended to believe,
that th power of extraordinary vision was possessed
by their patients. What can be said to such men ?
Plainly nothing ; nor can much be 'done, till, having
determined whether they deceive or are themselves de-
ceived, they can be consigned to the care of their friends,
or of the public officers of justice. One thing, however,
may be done already : every one may refuse not only
to comply with, but even to listen to, the statements
such men make ; their evidence is altogether inadmis-
sible ; they plainly either cannot, or will not, tell the
truth.

But their feats are far from being confined to simply
seeing without eyes. We find a M. Teste professing
with unequalled boldne3s that a somnambulist of his can
tell by the mere touch, and, it seems, by one touch only,
'all the pathological circumstances of any patient presented
to her ; and M. Ricard, director of the Journal du Mag-

netisnae, not to be outdone, swears that he can either take
to himself or dismiss in an instant the pains and diseases
of any other person. Travelling once in Belgium with a
brother-magnetizer, who was at the time afflicted with
gastritis that he had received from a lady whom he had
cured, M. Ricard, for a grand experiment, relieved him

of his' pain, and took it himself. But, not anxious to

keep his new guest long, he again made it go into his
companion's stomach ; and then, having made the gas-
tritis pass several times from one to the other, they
finished, by common accord with giving it a definitive
conge.

Of all possessors of personal magnetic power, M. Ri-
.card is certainly the most nobly endowed. The story
just told is far from being the chief marvel that his
Traite du 2tragnetisrae Aniniale contains. He can make
himself sweat at any given part of his body at and with
pleasure ; and make others do the same ; he can alter
the rapidity of any man's pulse in any desired Mode and
degree : he can make any one at will paralytic or cata•
leptic: he can give magnetic properties to bars of iron
by the influence of his epigastrium, and can exercise
his powers, and even cure diseases, at miles' distance from
him : he can remove affections of the severest kind in half
an hour or a little more, though they have lasted for
years. But he does not always exercise his powers for
good ; sometimes he employs them to inflict terrific pu-
nishments, and especially he does this to those of his som-
nambulists who would mischievously injure him or the
patients put under their influence. On these he at once,
and without pity, inflicts the sufferings they intended
for others. Nor are his magnetic influences powerful on
man alone ; they extend over all nature, animate
and inanimate ; a shrivelling, languishing, and
etiolated shrub grew green under the power of
his passes ; and on every side threw out strong and
luxuriant branches. On the other hand, a beautiful tree,
magnetized by his opposed will, shrivelled, lost its leaves,
and soon after perished. Nay, he can influence the at-
mosphere and command meteors ; and he has several
times, at Montpellier, amused, himself by dissipating
clouds and stopping rain.
These things are actually gravely and boldly asserted
as truths by M. Rivard, who seems a great authority
among this extraordinary class of dupes or knaves. To
believe dman to be deceived into the idea that he pos-
sesses such powers (if he be not obviously a madman) is
to be nearly as credulous as he ; and it would not be
difficult, as the next step, to imagine one's self possessed
of them. He is, no doubt, a gross impostor, and might
fairly and wisely be left to the usual end of such cha-
racters, were it not for the mischief that his proceedings
would do, Their influence on the health of the public,
and on their intellectual condition, if they are brought to
believe in them as realities, is bad enough ; but it
is not the worst that they can exercise. It
is impossible not to perceive that the miracles
recorded in Holy Writ are the objects of imita-
tion in all these proceedings. Constituting as they do a
chief evidence of the Christian faith, which regards them
as possible to God alone, it becomes a matter of no small
interest whether men are to be allowed to profess that
they possess powers sufficient for their performance ;
and thus to reduce the wonder of a miracle to nothing
more than the crafty exercise of an influence which any
man may acquire. And that this is not a strained
foresight of what may result from these things, is too
evident from what magnetizers themselves advance as the
history of their art. M. Gauthier, said to be the most
used, the most scientific of the modern professors, states
his conviction that magnetism has been practised from
all times, and in all places, either for religious or for
medical purposes. He follows traces of it among the
Egyptians, Jews, Persians, Greeks, Gauls, and Romans.
To him, as to all magnetizers, the sacerdotal physicians
of Egypt and of early Greece, the thaumaturgi of all
times, the Apostles, and the Christ himself, were only
magnetizers ; the Prophets and the Sibyls were all mag-
netizers.

One can scarcely without a shudder read such a blend-
ing of the holy and the profane—such an assertion that
the divine power of the inspired, and the craft of heathen
priests, had all one common origin in what any man may
even now acquire. And yet, if the public are made by
fraud to believe that magnetizers can do the things that
they pretend, we do not see but that in the very next
place they must be led to regard one of the chief evi-
dences of Christianity to be nothing more • than a cun-
ningly devised fable. That such things should be
looked on calmly in France—that the writer from whom
we quote the above passages should make no remark of
disgust at them—is not astonishing. But we shall be glad
if,laving thus shown to what animal magnetism may
easily be perverted, we can produce the feeling in Eng-
land that it is not to be regarded as a harmless folly—as
a thing with which a man may fairly amuse himself and
gain notoriety. Its evil moral influence on the patients
subjected to it we long ago pointed • out ; and it is now
brought freely into the service of the foulest irreligion.
With the exception of walking on the waves, and raising
the dead, there is not a miracle which it is not deemed
competent to perform.
Regarding, however, all these pretences to supernatu-
ral power as impudent falsehoods, we cannot find that
animal magnetism has made any real progress towards
meriting, even in its statements of a lower and more
credible character, the name and position of a science.
Of all that has been done in France, we can find nothing
resembling, or which is not,altogether opposed, to proba-
bility. With no ,more incredulity than every man
should exercise when new and strange things
are proposed to him, we can find no fresh
or better grounds than heretofore for the belief
that magnetism operates in any way except through an
extraordinary influence upon the mind, exercising itself
with the more power, and to .the production of more
strange effects, in direct proportion to the morbid state
into which the system has been brought by genuine
disease, or by the repeated excitement of the magnetizing
process. Such, we believe, is the case with the two girls
who we regret to say are still exhibited in London ; nor
can we kern that the gentleman who operates on them
has arrived at any results that are fit for the records of
science—at any thing, in short, more than wonders,
which, however, we are bound to add, bear no compa-
rison with those that are said to occur in France.

But whether this be the case or not, it is surely much
to be regretted that these things should be made, by one
" , might hold a good place in science, subjects of public
dim- than of private and calm study. We
"-wing such a course, Dr. Elliotson
--hr. magnetism. It will be
of his profes-
-^ R.ll

exhibition 1...
believe that, in f0g....
only mistakes the way to mu-,
greatly to his own credit, as well as to
sion, if he will take this hint that we offer him ..-
good feeling, and again enter the ranks of true science,
which his talents and acquirements are so well calculated
to adorn.—Medical Gazette.

,
A LITERARY PRISONER.—A few aays since
the chaplain of Lewes gaol found one of the female pri-
soners indulging her literary taste in reading Scott's de;
lightful novel of " The Heart ofMidlothian"--a very
appropriate work for a young female, who, from the
nature of her case, was a second " Effie Deans." The
book was of course taken away, and an inquiry instituted
as to how she became possessed of it.