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pute. To parry their opposition, he appealed, in 1776, to the Academy of Sciences at Berlin. Here, however, his principles were rejected "as destitute of foundation, and unworthy of the smallest attention." Undismayed by these important miscarriages, he made a progress through several towns of Germany, still practising magnetism, and publishing, from time to time, accounts of the cures he accomplished, which were as regularly followed by a denial on the part of his opponents. He returned to Vienna a second time, and made another attempt to obtain a favourable reception for his doctrines, but with no better success than formerly; so that, wholly disconcerted by these uninterrupted defeats in his native country, he left Germany, and arrived at Paris in the beginning of the year 1778. Here his prospects soon began to brighten. Having retired to Creteil with a few patients (one of them a paralytic woman), he restored them to perfect health in a few months; and in consequence of this success, the numbers of those who applied to him for relief increased rapidly, and his cures were of the most astonishing nature. A numerous company was daily assembled at his house in Paris, where the magnetism was publicly administered; and M. Deslon, one of his pupils, is said to have cleared, during this tide of success, no less a sum than £100,000. In 1779 he published a Memoir on Animal Magnetism, and promised a complete system upon the subject, which should make as great a revolution in philosophy as it had already done in medicine. Struck, as it is said, with the clearness and accuracy of his reasonings, the magnificence of his pretensions, and the extraordinary and unquestionable cures he performed, some of the greatest physicians and most enlightened philosophers of France became his converts. He was patronised by people of the first rank; his system became an affair of bon ton; and animal magnetism was warmly espoused by the fashionable world.

Nevertheless, the new doctrine was not without its opponents. Some of the ablest pens in France were employed in refutation of it; and in particular, Thouret, Regont physician of the Faculty of Paris, and member of the Royal Society of Medicine, greatly distinguished himself by a work which he published, entitled, Inquiries and Doubts respecting the Animal Magnetism.

Mesmer, in his Memoir already mentioned, described the agent which he professed to have discovered, and to which he gave the appellation of Animal Magnetism, in the following manner:—"It is a fluid universally diffused; the vehicle of a mutual influence between the celestial bodies, the earth, and the bodies of animated beings; it is so continued as to admit of no vacuum; its subtlety does not admit of illustration; it is capable of receiving, propagating, and communicating, all the impressions that are incident to motion; it is susceptible of flux and reflux. The animal body is subject to the effects of this agent; and these effects are immediately produced by the agent insinuating itself into the substance of the nerves. We particularly discover, in the human body, qualities analogous to those of the loadstone; we distinguish in it, poles different and opposite. The action and the virtue of the animal magnetism are capable of being communicated from one body to another, animated or inanimate; they exert themselves to considerable distances, and without the least assistance from any intermediate bodies; this action is increased and reflected by mirrors; it is communicated, propagated, and augmented, by sound; and the virtue itself is capable of being accumulated, concentrated, and transferred. Though the fluid be universal, all animal bodies are not equally susceptible of it; there even are some, though very few, of so opposite a nature, as by their mere presence to supersede its effects upon any other contiguous bodies. The animal magnetism is capable of curing, immediately, diseases of the nerves, and mediately, other distempers. It improves the action of medicines; it forwards and directs the salutary crises, so as to subject them totally to the government of the judgment; by means of it the physician becomes acquainted with the state of health of each individual, and decides with certainty upon the causes, the nature, and the progress, of the most complicated distempers; it prerents their increase, and effects their extirpation, without at any time exposing the patient, whatever be his sex, age, or constitution, to alarming conse-