At a very early date the effects of magnetic influences, and the ordinary phenomena of nervous excitement, were the source of much confusion and perplexity to medical speculators, who, with an unsound logic that is perhaps more frequent than any other form of bad reasoning, accounted for what they could not understand by pointing to what they were only imperfectly acquainted with. The power of the loadstone was a mystery; the nervous phenomena produced by a strong will over a weak one were a mystery:—clearly the mysterious phenomena were to be attributed to the mysterious power. In its outset animal magnetism committed no other error than this. Its wilder extravagances were all subsequent to this assumption, that two sets of phenomena, which it has never yet been proved are nearly allied, were connected, the one with the other, in the relation of cause and effect, or as being the offspring of one immediate and common cause.

To support this theory, Mesmerism called into its service the old astrological views regarding planetary influence. But it held also that the subtle fluid, so transmitted to the animal life of our planet, was capable of being passed on in greater or less volumes of quantity and intensity. Nervous energy was only that subtle fluid which was continually passing and repassing in impalpable currents between the earth and the celestial bodies; and when, by reason of the nervous energy within him, any one exercised control over another, he was deemed only to have infused him with some of his own stock of spiritual aura. Here was a new statement of the old dream which had charmed the poets and philosophers of buried centuries; and as it was a view which did not admit of positive disproof, it was believed by its excited advocates to be proved.

One of the first British writers on animal magnetism was William Maxwell, a Scotch physician, who enunciated his opinions with a boldness and perspicacity which do him much credit. The first four of his twelve conclusions are a very good specimen of his work:—

"Conclusio 1.—Anima non solum in corpore proprio visibili, sed etiam extra corpus est, nec corpore organico circumscribitur.

"Conclusio 2.—Anima extra corpus proprium, communiter sic dictum, operatur.

"Conclusio 3.—Ab omni corpore radii corporales fluunt, in quibus anima sua prÆsentia, operatur; hisque energiam et potentiam operandi largitur. Sunt vero radii hi non solum corporales, sed et diversarum partium.

"Conclusio 4.—Radii hi, qui ex animalium corporibus emittuntur, spiritu vitali gaudent, per quem animÆ mutationes dispensantur."The sixty-fifth of the aphorisms with which Maxwell concludes his book is an amusing one, as giving the orthodox animal-magnetic view of that condition of the affections which we term love, and also as illustrating the connection between astrology and charms.

"Aphorism 65.—Imaginatione vero producitur amor, quando imaginatio exaltata unius imaginationi alterius dominatur, eamque fingit sigillatque; atque hoc propter miram imaginationis volubilitatem vicissim fieri potest. Hinc incantationes effectum nanciscuntur, licet aliqualem forsan in se virtutem possideant, sine imaginatione tamen hÆc virtus propter universalitatem distribui nequit."

Long before animal magnetism was a stock subject of conversation at dinner-parties, there was a vague knowledge of its pretensions floating about society; and a curiosity to know how far its principles were reconcilable with facts, animated men of science and lovers of the marvellous. Had not this been the state of public feeling, the sensations created by Sir Kenelm Digby's sympathetic cures, Greatrake's administrations, Leverett's manual exercises, and Loutherbourg's manipulations, would not have been so great and universal.

But the person who turned the credulity of the public on this point to the best account was Frederick Anthony Mesmer. This man did not originate a single idea. He only traded on the old day-dreams and vagaries of departed ages; and yet he managed to fix his name upon a science (?), in the origination or development of which he had no part whatever; and, by daring charlatanry, he made it a means of grasping enormous wealth. Where this man was born is uncertain. Vienna, Werseburg in Swabia, and Switzerland, contend for the honour of having given him to the world. At Vienna he took his M.D. degree, having given an inaugural dissertation on "The Influence of the Planets upon the Human Body." His course of self-delusion began with using magnets as a means of cure, when applied externally; and he had resolutely advanced on the road of positive knavery, when, after his quarrel with his old instructor, Maximilian Hel, he threw aside the use of steel magnets, and produced, by the employment of his fingers and eyes, greater marvels than had ever followed the application of the loadstone or Perkins's tractors. As his prosperity and reputation increased, so did his audacity—which was always laughable, when it did not disgust by its impiety.

On one occasion, Dr. Egg Von Ellekon asked him why he ordered his patients to bathe in river, and not in spring water? "Because," was the answer, "river water is exposed to the sun's rays." "True," was the reply, "the water is sometimes warmed by the sun, but not so much so that you have not sometimes to warm it still more. Why then should not spring water be preferable?" Not at all posed, Mesmer answered, with charming candour, "Dear doctor, the cause why all the water which is exposed to the rays of the sun is superior to all other water is because it is magnetized. I myself magnetized the sun some twenty years ago."

But a better story of him is told by Madame Campan. That lady's husband was attacked with pulmonary inflammation. Mesmer was sent for, and found himself called upon to stem a violent malady, not to gull the frivolous Parisians, who were then raving about the marvels of the new system. He felt his patient's pulse, made certain inquiries, and then, turning to Madame Campan, gravely assured her that the only way to restore her husband to health was to lay in his bed, by his side one of three things—a young woman of brown complexion, a black hen, or an old bottle. "Sir," replied Madame Campan, "if the choice be a matter of indifference, pray try the empty bottle." The bottle was tried, but Mons. Campan grew worse. Madame Campan left the room, alarmed and anxious, and, during her absence, Mesmer bled and blistered his patient. This latter treatment was more efficacious. But imagine Madame Campan's astonishment, when on her husband's recovery, Mesmer asked for and obtained from him a written certificate that he had been cured by Mesmerism!

It is instructive to reflect that the Paris which made for a short day Mesmer its idol, was not far distant from the Paris of the Reign of Terror. In one year the man received 400,000 francs in fees; and positively the French government, at the instigation of Maurepas, offered him an annual stipend of 20,000 francs, together with an additional 10,000 to support an establishment for patients and pupils, if he would stay in France. One unpleasant condition was attached to this offer: he was required to allow three nominees of the Crown to watch his proceedings. So inordinately high did Mesmer rate his claims, that he stood out for better terms, and like the dog of the fable, by endeavoring to get too much, lost what he might have secured. Ere long the Parisians recovered something of common sense. The enthusiasm of the hour subsided: and the Royal Commission, composed of some of the best men of science to be found in the entire world, were enabled to explain to the public how they had been fooled by a trickster, and betrayed into practices scarcely less offensive to modesty than to reason. In addition to the public report, another private one was issued by the commissioners, urging the authorities, in the name of morality, to put a stop to the mesmeric mania.

Mesmer died in obscurity on the 5th of March, in the year 1815.

Animal magnetism, under the name of mesmerism, has been made familiar of late years to the ears of English people, if not to their understandings, by the zealous and indiscreet advocacy which its absurdities have met with in London and our other great cities. It is true that the disciples have outrun their master—that Mesmer has been out-mesmerized; but the same criticisms which have been here made on the system of the arch-charlatan may be applied to the vagaries of his successors, whether they be dupes or rogues. To electro-biologists, spirit-rappers, and table-turners the same arguments must be used as we employ to mesmerists. They must be instructed that phenomena are not to be referred to magnetic influence, simply because it is difficult to account for them; that it is especially foolish to set them down to such a cause, when they are manifestly the product of another power; and that all the wonders which form the stock of their conversation, and fill the pages of the Zoist, are to be attributed, not to a lately discovered agency, but to nervous susceptibility, imagination, and bodily temperament, aroused by certain well-known stimulants.

They will doubtless be disinclined to embrace this explanation of their marvels, and will argue that it is much more likely that a table is made by ten or twelve gentlemen and ladies to turn rapidly round, without the application of muscular force, than that these ladies and gentlemen should delude themselves into an erroneous belief that such a phenomenon has been produced. To disabuse them of such an opinion, they must be instructed in the wondrous and strangely delicate mechanism of the human intellect and affections. And after such enlightenment they must be hopelessly dull or perverse if they do not see that the metaphysical explanation of "their cases" is not only the true one, but that it opens up to view far more astonishing features in the constitution of man than any that are dreamt of in the vain philosophy of mesmerism. It is humiliating to think that these remarks should be an appropriate comment on the silliness of the so-called educated classes of the nineteenth century. That they are out of place, none can advance, when one of the most popular pulpit orators of London has not hesitated to commit to print, in a work of religious pretensions, the almost blasphemous suggestion that table-turning is a phenomenon consequent upon the first out-poured drops of "the seventh vial" having reached the earth.