The mystic will : a method of developing and strengthening the faculties of the mind, through the awakened will, by a simple, scientific process possible to any person of ordinary intelligene / by Charles G. Leland.

  • Leland, Charles Godfrey, 1824-1903.
Date:
[1907]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The mystic will : a method of developing and strengthening the faculties of the mind, through the awakened will, by a simple, scientific process possible to any person of ordinary intelligene / by Charles G. Leland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    cure diseases. According to the precept of proper char- ity he began at home—that is to say on himself. After being an invalid for five or six years, and consulting, all in vain, many doctors, and taking their remedies all for naught, the idea seized him that such an obstinate malady as his must have some supernatural evil origin, or in other words, that he was possessed by a demon. “Therefore he conjured this devil of a disorder, in the name of Jesus Christ to leave him—so it left, and the good Gassner has put it on record that for sixteen years after he enjoyed perfect health and never had occa- sion for any remedy, spiritual or otherwise. “This success made him reflect whether all maladies could not be cured by exorcism . . . The experi- ment which he tried on the invalids of his parish were so successful that his renown soon opened through all Suabia, and the regions roundabout. Then he began to travel, being called for everywhere.” Gassner was so successful that at Ratisbon he had, it is said, 6,000 patients of all ranks encamped in tents. He cured by simply touching with his hands. But that in which he appears original was that he not only made his patients sleep or become insensible by ordering them to do so but caused them to raise their arms and legs, tremble, feel any kind of pain, as is now done by the hypnotist. “ ‘In a young lady of good family’ he caused laughter and weeping, stiffness of the limbs, absence of sight and hearing, and ancesthesia so as to make the pulse beat at his will.” M. Figuier and others do not seem to have been aware that a century before Gassner, a Pietro Piperno of Naples published a book in which there was a special exorcism or conjurations, as he calls them, for every known disorder, and that this possibly gave the hint for a system of cure to the Suabian. I have a copy of this work, which is extremely rare, it having been put on the Roman prohibited list, and otherwise suppressed. But Gassner himself was suppressed ere long, because the Emperor, Joseph II, cloistered—that is to say, im- prisoned him for life in the Monastery of Pondorf, near