Abstract of 'Researches on magnetism and on certain allied subjects', including a supposed new imponderable / By Baron von Reichenbach. Translated and abridged from the German by William Gregory.

  • Reichenbach, Karl, Freiherr von, 1788-1869.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Abstract of 'Researches on magnetism and on certain allied subjects', including a supposed new imponderable / By Baron von Reichenbach. Translated and abridged from the German by William Gregory. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    * * supposed that they proved metallic tractors to be quite in» ert, because the same effects (attributed by them to imagi¬ nation) were obtained with tractors of wood and other sub¬ stances, painted so as to resemble the metallic ones. We perceive that, in both cases, the hand may have been the chief agent, and that at all events both metal and wood, as well as many other bodies, are capable of acting on the sys¬ tem in the same way, that is, in sensitive persons. The error of Perkins, who recommended metallic tractors, as well as of his followers, seems to have been this, that, on theoreti¬ cal grounds, they supposed the influence observed to exist in metals, or rather in iron alone. His opponents, in combating this notion, have supplied ample evidence that the influence exists in other bodies. Viewed in this sense, these experi¬ ments serve to illustrate the author’s, and are at the same time illustrated by them; and they are beyond suspicion, both from the respectability of Dr Havgarth and his friends, and the very different object they had in view. Space only permits a reference to the very interesting and beautiful explanation furnished by the author’s discoveries, of at least one, and that a very frequent, kind of ghost- stories ; which is thus reduced to a simple and natural result of a chemical process. The same remark applies to the author’s satisfactory explanation of the magnetic baquet. Although these researches undoubtedly tend to establish on a foundation of fact some of the most apparently incre¬ dible statements of Mesmer and his followers, yet it is to be carefully borne in mind that they have been made, without any exception, on persons not in the mesmeric state. This circumstance indeed gives to the experiments, and to the conclusions deduced from them, in reference to Mesmerism, a greatly increased value. It is easy to object to these researches, that they have been made with persons in a morbid state, and are therefore unworthy of confidence. This is a very convenient method of getting rid of facts, far more so than that of disproving them by researches as laborious and conscientious as those