Mesmerism.

Date:: [1840]

Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Mesmerism. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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the devil is seldom called in, except by the most uneducated, unless to ac count for some phenomena possessing more than an usual degree of interest. About half a century after Van Helmont, there was born, in the county of Waterford, Ireland, Valentine Greatrakes, who, after having completed his education in this country, whither he had fled on account of the Irish rebellion, returned to Ireland and served as lieutenant in the Earl of Orrery’s cavalry regiment, and, a few years subsequently, was made a justice of the peace and clerk of the peace for the county of Cork. This Mr Greatrakes seems to have possessed great Mesmeric power, but in giving an account of the cures effected by him he attributes all the praise to God, not to the devil. He mentions, in a letter to the Hon. Robert Boyle, many cases which were cured by him in the presence of the Mayor of Worcester, Colonel Birch, Major Wilde, Sir John Hinton, Colonel Talbot, and many others ; some of his poor patients he considers to have been possessed by devils. All who applied to him, however, he does not profess to have relieved, and amongst the number of those who placed themselves under his care without obtaining the desired benefit, was Flamsted, the celebrated mathe matician, who nevertheless gives his testimony to other cures wrought by him. The Lord Bishop of Derry, in letters addressed to Joseph Glanvilie, a writer of that period, bears strong testimony not only to the surprising cures effected by Greatrakes, but also to the simplicity and worth of his character ; indeed there is no lack of evidence as to his pretensions having been borne out by facts ; and there have been quoted by other writers on this subject many names of respectable and intelligent persons who wit nessed and attested those facts. Moreover, a pamphlet was published by Dr Henry Stubbe, of Stratford-upon-Avon, upon the subject, and in this, after speaking of his observations upon the cases, he gives his conviction, that “ there was no manner of fraud in the performances.” Many years after the time of Greatrakes, there appeared in Germany an individual who caused, by his wonderful performances, far more excite ment on the continent than the former had in Ireland. This was a Catholic priest, by name John Joseph Gassner, who had been induced to turn his attention to the subject from having been himself cured of a serious illness by what was then termed exorcism. After having performed a great number of interesting cures amongst his own parishioners, he was invited to visit the Archbishop of Ratisbon at Elwangen in Wirtemberg ; and here the immense numbers which he cured, and the astonishing effects produced by him on the systems of the sufferers, did not fail to attract general attention. All this, as a matter of course, gave rise to controversy, and this rather of a theological than philosophical nature, his opponents ascribing to the interference of the devil the cures wrought by him on per sons whom he considered to be possessed by devils : even the very eminent physician De Haen used this argument against him, and we are only sur- prised that we find no mention made of Gassner’s having quoted Holy Writ to prove the fallacy of their reasonings. In the German archives of Animal Magnetism, vol. viii, will be found a full and interesting account of Gassner’s proceedings, written by Professor Eschemnayer. We now come to the time of Mesmer himself. This celebrated man was born at Weil upon the Rhine, A.D. 1734. After having studied under Van Swieten and De Haen, he settled in practice at Vienna, and, from circumstances which he observed whilst prosecuting inquiries into the power of the mineral magnet, he was Jed to try the effect of the human.