Copy 2

A practical manual of animal magnetism; containing an exposition of the methods employed in producing the magnetic phenomena; with its application to the treatment and cure of diseases ... / by Alphonse Teste ; translated from the second edition by D. Spillan.

  • Teste, Alph. (Alphonse), 1814-
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical manual of animal magnetism; containing an exposition of the methods employed in producing the magnetic phenomena; with its application to the treatment and cure of diseases ... / by Alphonse Teste ; translated from the second edition by D. Spillan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tinguished members of the Faculty, but in disrepute with . his confrères since his conversion to magnetism. There are few physicians, and no magnetisers, who have not read Bailly’s report. It is the regular trial of the Mesmerian doctrine; and, most certainly, the conclusions which terminate it were well calculated to settle definitively the question of magnetism, if the judgments of men could subvert truth. But truth is eternal as God himself; we may malign or honour it, proclaim or proscribe it; this, however, produces no change in its existence. The report of Bailly, spread with profusion, and pro- bably with ostentation, throughout all the schools and all ranks of society, produced scarcely any other effect than that of souring minds already convinced, and of exciting among the partisans of the condemned doctrine recrimina- tions more or less bitter against their judges. It is in the nature of the human mind to cherish independence and to feel exasperated by opposition; let power adopt and pre- scribe a creed, it will create a schism; let it proscribe this creed, it will create apostles for it ; let it persecute it, it will gain martyrs to it. It would have gone as far as this in the case of magnetism, if power had wished it; power, however, would have had too much to do. Magnetism, in fact, now reckoned too many partisans on its side, and among them men of too much weight; it had found a defender even in the very bosom of the Royal Academy, into which it had made its entrée under the auspices of one of the greatest geniuses of the day. ‘The report of Ant. L. de Jussieu, drawn up with the minute exactness ofan honest and strict observer, was the counterpart of Bailly’s report. It is only weak minds that dread contradiction in a cause