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.

    27/436 (page 11)
    MAGNETISM AMONG THE EGYPTIANS. JE netisers their obligation to publish an account of their works, such a duty would have been imperative on their part. Ardent and disinterested innovators, they desired nothing so much as the propagation of their creed. Ac- cordingly we see memoirs, polemical works, and dogmatic books, developing new facts, rapidly succeeding each other. Thouret’s works entitled, Recherches et Doutes sur le Magnétisme Animal, published in 1784 for the sole object of stripping Mesmer of a celebrity which was beginning to give annoyance, produced a diametrically opposite effect. The vast erudition displayed by the author excited emula- tion, and opened a new road. History was consulted, old chronicles were searched, and all the facts which, in the annals of antiquity or of the middle ages, presented any analogy with the magnetic facts, were explained by a refer- ence to the new doctrine. Hence the origin of those numberless erudite bibliographical researches which, thanks to the efforts of MM. Deleuze, Abrial, &c., united to the writings of the Germans, enable us at the present day to trace magnetism among nations now extinct or altogether changed, as also among all modern nations. We shall now present to our readers a summary of these historical researches of a new kind.* § II. Magnetism among the Egyptians. Charlatans, according to Celsus, performed extraordinary cures by the mere apposition of the hands, and cured patients by blowing. * Nowadays magnetism is practised every where: in the deserts of Louisiana as in France, at Pekin as at Paris. Even in Auvergne and in Limousin there are somnambulists who never awake.