BUCHANAN’S
JOURNAL OF MAN.

Magnetic Education and Therapeutics.

EXTRACTS FROM AN ESSAY BY DR. CHARLES DU PREL, IN SPHINX, TRANSLATED FOR THE JOURNAL OF MAN.

“In the Wiener Allgemeiner I spoke of the possibility of moral education by means of magnetism, which has been carried out.” * * *

“Dr. Bernheim, a Professor of the Medical Faculty in Nancy who is a champion of hypnotism has written a book on ‘Suggestion and its Application in Therapeutics,’ in which a great many hypnotic cures are recorded.”

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“Dr. —— quotes Franklin against magnetism but Sprengel in his Pharmacology says ‘Franklin, sickly as he was, took no part whatever in the investigation.’ The Academy again investigated (1825-31) somnambulism, discovered by Puysegur, Mesmer’s scholar. In their report of two year’s investigation, eleven M. D.’s unanimously pronounced in favor of all important phenomena ascribed to somnambulism. A fairly complete synopsis of their report will be found in my ‘Philosophy of Mystics.’”

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“Du Potet first studied medicine, but disgusted by the poor results of Pharmacology he embraced magnetism. He performed a series of mesmeric experiments in the Hotel Dieu of so potent a nature that twenty M. D.’s of that celebrated hospital signed the minutes of these proceedings. People ran after Du Potet, pointing at him and crying ‘The man who cures.’”

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“The respect for medical therapeutics never has been at as low an ebb as just now. The public cannot be blamed for this lack of respect, for they have daily experiences of the ill results of medicine. Even high medical authorities are of the opinion that we have to-day a disintegration of medical principles worse than ever. More uncertain than therapeutics is the manner of diagnosing to-day! The public is well aware that each doctor has something different to say or prescribe. I have a personal case in point. During eighteen months I consulted seven different doctors, and got seven different contrary diagnoses as well as contradictory modes of treatment, and this, too, in the city of Munich, which is hardly secondary to any other city for its medical talent. Is there any cause to blame the public for running to the magnetizers? I should do so myself if my magnetic susceptibility was greater. In such magnetizers as even Mesmer, Dr. B. can see nothing but charlatans, but I desire to make him aware that a physician whose reputation he is cognizant of, Prof. Nussbaum in Munich, said to his audience in College, ‘Gentlemen, magnetism is the medicine of the future.’ As I am writing this I have been disturbed by a visitor desiring the address of a reliable magnetizer, as the physician recommended a magnetizer, as he was at his wits end.”

“In our medicine the adjunct sciences alone are scientific, and we must respect their high grade; but therapeutics we have none. Hence Mesmer should be called a benefactor to mankind, for he has pointed out the correct way. He, with Hippocrates, says that not the physician but nature cures—that the real therapeutics consists only in aiding the vis medicatrix naturæ. In this direction the professors at Nancy and Paris are laboring. They have given the experimental proof that if the idea of an organic change of the body is instilled into the mind of the hypnotized, then such change will take place. In this we have a foundation for a PSYCHIC THERAPEUTICS which we hope will soon put an end to the anarchic condition of medicine of the present day. But the greatest curse to science of old, and which makes its appearance even to-day, is that the old ideas are the greatest enemies of the new.”

“Unfortunately it is the same in the thought realm as in lifeless nature, vis inertiæ—the law of indolence, according to which nature remains in its condition to all eternity, until she is forced into some new condition from a new cause. This vis inertiæ is harder to conquer in the thought realm than in lifeless nature, for Mesmer appeared a hundred years ago, and yet to-day they call him “a perfect charlatan.” Braid, thirty years ago, started hypnotism, but only after Hansen made a multitude of experiments for profit and pleasure in the largest cities of Germany, did the physicians wake up to the idea of investigating it. They teach nothing of mesmerism or hypnotism at the universities. Yes, even one year ago a