* * * * *

"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.'"

* * * * *

"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 naturae_. In this
direction the professors at Nancy and Paris are laboring. They
have given the experimental proof that _if the idea of an
org