So soon as this was admitted, as soon it was allowed to explain instances of non-success by the presence of neutralizing bodies, Mesmer no longer ran any risk of being embarrassed.  Nothing prevented his announcing, in full security, “that animal magnetism could immediately cure diseases of the nerves, and mediately other diseases; that it afforded to doctors the means of judging with certainty of the origin, the nature, and the progress of the most complicated maladies; that nature, in short, offered in magnetism a universal means of curing and preserving mankind.”

Before quitting Vienna, Mesmer had communicated his systematic notions to the principal learned societies of Europe.  The Academy of Sciences at Paris, and the Royal Society of London, did not think proper to answer.  The Academy of Berlin examined the work, and wrote to Mesmer that he was in error.

Some time after his arrival in Paris, Mesmer tried again to get into communication with the Academy of Sciences.  This society even acceded to a rendezvous.  But, instead of the empty words that were offered them, the academicians required experiments.  Mesmer stated—­I quote his words—­that it was child’s play; and the conference had no other result.

The Royal Society of Medicine, being called upon to judge of the pretended cures performed by the Austrian doctor, thought that their agents could not give a well-founded opinion “without having first duly examined the patients to ascertain their state.”  Mesmer rejected this natural and reasonable proposal.  He wished that the agents should be content with the word of honour and attestations of the patients.  In this respect, also, the severe letters of the worthy Vicq-d’Azyr put an end to communications which must have ended unsatisfactorily.

The faculty of medicine showed, we think, less wisdom.  It refused to examine any thing; it even proceeded in legal form against one of its regent doctors who had associated himself, they said, with the charlatanism of Mesmer.

These barren debates evidently proved that Mesmer himself was not thoroughly sure of his theory, nor of the efficacy of the means of cure that he employed.  Still the public showed itself blind.  The infatuation became extreme.  French society appeared at one moment divided into magnetizers and magnetized.  From one end of the kingdom to the other agents of Mesmer were seen, who, with receipt in hand, put the weak in intellect under contribution.

The magnetizers had had the address to intimate that the mesmeric crises manifested themselves only in persons endowed with a certain sensitiveness.  From that moment, in order not to be ranged among the insensible, both men and women, when near the rod, assumed the appearance of epileptics.

Was not Father Hervier really in one of those paroxysms of the disease when he wrote, “If Mesmer had lived contemporary with Descartes and Newton, he would have saved them much labour:  those great men suspected the existence of the universal fluid; Mesmer has discovered the laws of its action”?