talking of anything so absurd. He persisted. Sarcasm and then
persecution obliged him to go abroad, and he came to Paris in
1778. The world of fashion and the court went crazy about him.
He then set up in the Palais Royal, where, it must be said, in a
way that was worthy of a charlatan, he worked his discovery. M.
Le Roy, of the Academy of Medicine, thought him on the scent of
a great truth. But the other doctors were of the bats' eyes
sort, and hunted Mesmer down. He went to stay at Creteil, where
he applied his method and made his famous magnetic pail, which
interested M. d'Eslon, head doctor to the Comte d'Artois--later
Charles X. He wrote about the magnetic pail. The Academy of
Medicine warned him to be more cautious in speaking of quack
inventions, and threatened to expel him from membership if he
did not retract what he had written. That body even made a new
rule to this effect: "No doctor declaring himself in favor of
animal magnetism, either in theory or practice, can be a member
of this society."

Mesmer, hearing the police had their eye on him, went to Spa.
But the ladies took his part with such ardor that the king named
a commission to inquire into his discovery. Its members, too,
were owls. They reported that "the magnetic fluid of which
Mesmer speaks does not exist." Jussieu stood out against the
owls and he only. He said: "All your efforts will not prevent
this truth from making its way. They can only prevent this
generation from profiting by it."

I should add that the influence gained by the hypnotic operator
remains after the subject awakes from the trance. Its action
then reminds one of the characters in the legends of olden times
who sold their souls to Satan. The Emperor of Brazil is very
anxious to study hypnotism, or, at least, to dip into it when he
comes back to Paris.

The reader will observe in the foregoing letter and in all medical
literature Mesmer is spoken of as a "charlatan" and "empiric."
Charlatan is an opprobrious term, but "empiric" literally means one
who follows experience instead of dogma, and should therefore be an
honorable designation; but as the medical profession has always been
dogmatic, and therefore hostile to empiricism, or fidelity to
experience, it has made empiricism an opprobrious term. Dr. Mesmer was
neither an ignoramus nor a quack, but a gr