I do not wish to join the contemptible group of Mesmer's professional slanderers. He is dead, and can no longer defend himself from those who disparage him without taking into consideration the circumstances or the time in which he lived. Against the universal opinion that he was avaricious, I remark that in Vienna, as well as later in Morsburg1 and Paris, he always helped the poor without reward. I believe that he erred in his teaching, but think it is just to attack this only, and not his personal character. Let us consider, however - for I deem it right to uphold the honour of one who is dead - more closely in what his alleged great crime consisted. He believed in the beginning that he could heal by means of a magnet, and later that he could do so by a personal indwelling force that he could transfer to the baquet. This was evidently his firm conviction, and he never made a secret of it. Others believed that a patient's mere imagination played a part, or that Mesmer produced his effects by some concealed means. Then, by degrees, arose the legend that Mesmer possessed some secret by means of which he was able to produce effects on people, but that he would not reveal it.

In reality the question was not at all of a secret purposely kept back by him, since he imagined that he exercised some individual force. Finally, if he used this supposititious force for the purpose of earning money, he did nothing worse than do modern physicians and proprietors of institutions who likewise do not follow their calling from pure love of their neighbour, but seek to earn their own living, as they are quite justified in doing. Mesmer did not behave worse than those who nowadays discover a new drug, and regard the manufacture of it as a means of enriching themselves. Let us be just and cease to slander Mesmer, who did only what is done by the people just mentioned, against whose procedure no one raises a word of protest, even when the drugs they extol possess no therapeutic properties whatever. Further, Colquhoun, who is thoroughly conversant with the events of the period, opines that Mesmer never made nearly as much money as he is said to have done (Sinnett). That those who defame Mesmer know the least about his teaching and the particulars of his life, is very clearly shown by a whole series of modern books on hypnotism.

1 Also spelt Meersburg.

A follower of Mesmer, Chastenet de Puysegur, discovered in 1784, a stale which was named artificial somnambulism. Apart from some falsely interpreted phenomena (thought-transference, clairvoyance, etc.) the chief characteristic of this state was a sleep, in which the ideas and actions of the magnetized person could be directed by the magnetizer. Whether Mesmer knew of this condition or not is uncertain, but it seems to me probable that he did. About the same time Petetin, a doctor of Lyons, occupied himself with magnetism; besides catalepsy, Petetin describes phenomena of sense-transference (hearing with the stomach). The French Revolution and the wars repressed the investigation of magnetism in France until about the year 1813.

In Germany, animal magnetism was recognized at the same time in two different places - on the Upper Rhine and in Bremen. In the year 1786 Lavater paid a visit to Bremen, and exhibited the magnetizing processes to several doctors, particularly to Wienholt, through whom Albers, Bicker, and later on Heineken, were likewise made acquainted with magnetism (Sierke, Wienholt). Bremen was for a long time a focus of the new doctrine; the town was often even brought into bad repute in the rest of Germany on account of the general dislike to animal magnetism. About the same time the new doctrine spread from Strassburg over the Rhine provinces; Bockmann, of Carlsruhe, and Gmelin, of Heil-bronn, occupied themselves with it; later on they were joined by Pezold, of Dresden. Getting encouragement from Bremen, people began to make experiments in other parts of Germany. Selle, of Berlin, brought forward, in 1789, a series of experiments made at the Charite, by which he confirmed a part of the, alleged phenomena, but excluded all that was supernatural (clairvoyance). In Berlin magnetism was taken up by the Court. According to Vehse, magnetizers flocked to the palace where Frederick-William II. lay ill; and one of them in particular, a Parisian named de Beaunnoir, tried to induce Countess Lichtenau to obtain his admission to the sick-chamber. He advised the imposition of a magnetic hand to ensure the king's recovery, and asserted that his own, or the Parisian de Puyegsur's, or Count Bruhl's would suffice.

Notwithstanding the early dislike to it, magnetism finally gained ground in Germany. It flourished very much during the first twenty years of the nineteenth century, and many journals were devoted to its advocacy. In Austria only it made no progress; indeed the exercise of animal magnetism was forbidden in the whole of Austria in 1815. In the rest of Germany, however, many doctors began to occupy themselves with the question, and at first in a thoroughly scientific manner. I do not enter more fully into the details of the teaching of different individuals, as they have no close connection with hypnotism. In the main two different tendencies can be distinguished - one critical and scientific, and the other mystical. While the first had the preponderance in the beginning, later on the last came to the fore and proved fatal to magnetism. Besides the scientific investigators already mentioned I may name Treviranus, Kieser, Passavant, Kluge; also Pfaff, who attacked clairvoyance in particular; and further, Stieglitz, Fr. Hufeland, and C. W. Hufeland. The last, who was at first an opponent, acknowledged certain facts later on, but excluded all that was supernatural, and thus drew upon himself the hatred of the mystics.

Even in 1834 C. W. Hufeland expressed himself as recognizing the existence of animal magnetism and its value in healing. Among the mystics I may mention Schelling, Ziermann, Eschenmayer, Justinus Kerner, the well-known poet and editor of the Seeress of Prevorst.