nd in a short time I found myself overwhelmed with
patients of high and low degree, begging me to heal them of their
diseases. For three months after the discovery of my gift the sudden
influx of patients who would not be denied left me no time to attend
to my practice; and, willy nilly, I was compelled to give up the law
and take to medicine--if you may call by the name of medicine a
profession in which no medicine is given."

"Then do you use no medicine at all?"

"None whatever. The nearest approach to medicine that I ever gave to a
patient is a little magnetized ointment--that is, camphorated lard,
and a little magnetized oil. But it is only occasionally that I use
these. Neither do I use passes, although it was by the use of passes
that I first discovered that I possessed this gift."

"But how do you proceed?"

"Variously. Sometimes I lay my hand upon the part affected; at other
times I breathe into the eye, ear, or mouth of the patient. Then,
again, on other occasions I am able to banish the disease by a mere
word or gesture."

"Are you a mesmerist or a magnetic healer?"

"Mesmerist I am not; for mesmerism implies the throwing of the patient
into a mesmeric sleep. Neither am I a magnetist, properly so called,
for there is no outgoing of magnetism from my body when I am healing.
The ordinary magnetist admits that he cannot cure more than four
persons per diem; I have cured as many as thirty, and beyond the
weariness caused by standing, I have been no worse at the end than at
beginning."

"How do you explain these miracles?"

"I don't call them miracles. They are marvels, and I cannot explain
them. All that I know is that I have gone through the Australian
colonies, New Zealand, and many of the States in America, and that
wherever I have gone the same effect followed. At my touch, diseases
and defects declared incurable by the first physicians of the faculty,
disappear. I remember well healing Sir James Martin, the chief justice
of New South Wales. Six years ago he was given up by the doctors and
declared to be dying, breathing with great difficulty, and hardly able
to speak without pain. I laid my hand upon his chest, and in a few
minutes all difficulty of breathing disappeared, he was able to speak
freely, and in a short time he had completely recovered. He resumed
his seat upon the bench, and remained a hale, active man till his
death, which occurred just the other day. That is only one case out of
man