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.

    335/436 (page 319)
    following days. However, though the ulcerations were completely cicatrised, and no longer did there exist any narrowing of the gut, the fistula still existed. But when Madame Perier followed up to the month of June, the treatment prescribed, the fistula itself ultimately dried and disappeared ; and according to her prediction of the month of December, the cure of this terrible disease, which the Faculty had declared to be incurable, was complete and perfect. Animal magnetism may then be a common resource in surgery ; and if it be really necessary to be a medical man to: treat properly a surgical affection, the intervention of somnambulism, or at least of a somnambulist, will be indis- pensable in the treatment of every external lesion. I am persuaded first that we shall thus succeed in avoiding most of those painful operations, which most frequently offer to the patient in exchange for death, merely a mutilation or deformity almost as hideous as death itself. At length, when dire necessity shall have imposed on the surgeon, the obligation to practise these operations, shall we not have isolation left for us, whereby we may remove from the un- fortunate patients condemned to undergo them, the horror and suffering arising from them? Let us call to mind the excellent observation of Madame Plaintain. I assure you, that our archives, if they pleased, would be filled in less than a year with thousands of similar facts. The cries which you make patients send forth, good gentlemen, add no orna- ment to your crowns that I can see. Your mission is to relieve your fellow-creatures and not to torture them ; reflect then on it; if there should happen to be any means of sparing your victims the punishment you make them