at through it one man could influence another. No
attention was given his letter, except by the Academy of Berlin, which
sent him an unfavorable reply.

In 1778 Mesmer was obliged for some unknown reason to leave Vienna, and
went to Paris, where he was fortunate in converting to his ideas
d'Eslon, the Comte d'Artois's physician, and one of the medical
professors at the Faculty of Medicine. His success was very great;
everybody was anxious to be magnetized, and the lucky Viennese doctor
was soon obliged to call in assistants. Deleuze, the librarian at the
Jardin des Plantes, who has been called the Hippocrates of magnetism,
has left the following account of Mesmer's experiments:

"In the middle of a large room stood an oak tub, four or five feet in
diameter and one foot deep. It was closed by a lid made in two pieces,
and encased in another tub or bucket. At the bottom of the tub a number
of bottles were laid in convergent rows, so that the neck of each bottle
turned towards the centre. Other bottles filled with magnetized water
tightly corked up were laid in divergent rows with their necks turned
outwards. Several rows were thus piled up, and the apparatus was then
pronounced to be at 'high pressure'. The tub was filled with water, to
which were sometimes added powdered glass and iron filings. There were
also some dry tubs, that is, prepared in the same manner, but without
any additional water. The lid was perforated to admit of the passage of
movable bent rods, which could be applied to the different parts of the
patient's body. A long rope was also fastened to a ring in the lid, and
this the patients placed loosely round their limbs. No disease offensive
to the sight was treated, such as sores, or deformities.

"A large number of patients were commonly treated at one time. They drew
near to each other, touching hands, arms, knees, or feet. The
handsomest, youngest, and most robust magnetizers held also an iron rod
with which they touched the dilatory or stubborn patients. The rods and
ropes had all undergone a 'preparation' and in a very short space of
time the patients felt the magnetic influence. The women, being the most
easily affected, were almost at once seized with fits of yawning and
stretching; their eyes closed, their legs gave way and they seemed to
suffocate. In vain did musical glasses and harmonicas resound, the piano
and voices re-echo; these supposed aids only seemed to increase the
patients' convuls