n-salve, given
by Parson Foster, in his attack upon Dr. a Fluctibus, is mentioned as one
of its fathers, had also great faith in the efficacy of the magnet, and
operated upon the imagination of his patients in a manner which was then
considered so extraordinary that he was accused of being a magician, and
prohibited from practising by the court of Rome. Among others who
distinguished themselves by their faith in magnetism, Sebastian Wirdig and
William Maxwell claim especial notice. Wirdig was professor of medicine at
the university of Rostock in Mecklenburg, and wrote a treatise
called _The New Medicine of the Spirits_, which he presented to the Royal
Society of London. An edition of this work was printed in 1673, in which
the author maintained that a magnetic influence took place, not only
between the celestial and terrestrial bodies, but between all living
things. The whole world, he said, was under the influence of magnetism;
life was preserved by magnetism; death was the consequence of magnetism!

Maxwell, the other enthusiast, was an admiring disciple of Paracelsus, and
boasted that he had irradiated the obscurity in which too many of the
wonder-working recipes of that great philosopher were enveloped. His works
were printed at Frankfort in 1679. It would seem, from the following
passage, that he was aware of the great influence of imagination, as well
in the production as in the cure of diseases. "If you wish to work
prodigies," says he, "abstract from the materiality of beings--increase
the sum of spirituality in bodies--rouse the spirit from its slumbers.
Unless you do one or other of these things--unless you can bind the idea,
you can never perform any thing good or great." Here, in fact, lies the
whole secret of magnetism, and all delusions of a similar kind: increase
the spirituality--rouse the spirit from its slumbers, or, in other words,
work upon the imagination--induce belief and blind confidence, and you may
do any thing. This passage, which is quoted with approbation by M.
Dupotet[69] in a work, as strongly corroborative of the theory now
advanced by the animal magnetists, is just the reverse. If they believe
they can work all their wonders by the means so dimly shadowed forth by
Maxwell, what becomes of the universal fluid pervading all nature, and
which they pretend to pour into weak and diseased bodies from the tips of
their fingers?

[69] _Introduction to the Study of Animal Magnetism_, p. 318.