d-hot brazier without flinching, and acquired for herself the nickname
of the _Salamander_; while others, desirous of a more illustrious
martyrdom, attempted to crucify themselves. M. Deleuze, in his critical
history of _Animal Magnetism_, attempts to prove that this fanatical
frenzy was produced by magnetism, and that these mad enthusiasts
magnetised each other without being aware of it. As well might he insist
that the fanaticism which tempts the Hindoo bigot to keep his arms
stretched in a horizontal position till the sinews wither, or his fingers
closed upon his palms till the nails grow out of the backs of his hands,
is also an effect of magnetism!

[70] _Dictionaire des Sciences Medicales_--Article
_Convulsionnaires_, par Montegre.

For a period of sixty or seventy years magnetism was almost wholly
confined to Germany. Men of sense and learning devoted their attention to
the properties of the loadstone; and one Father Hell, a Jesuit, and
professor of astronomy at the University of Vienna, rendered himself
famous by his magnetic cures. About the year 1771 or 1772 he invented
steel-plates of a peculiar form, which he applied to the naked body as a
cure for several diseases. In the year 1774 he communicated his system to
Anthony Mesmer. The latter improved upon the ideas of Father Hell,
constructed a new theory of his own, and became the founder of ANIMAL
MAGNETISM.

It has been the fashion among the enemies of the new delusion to decry
Mesmer as an unprincipled adventurer, while his disciples have extolled
him to the skies as a regenerator of the human race. In nearly the same
words as the Rosicrucians applied to their founders, he has been called
the discoverer of the secret which brings man into more intimate connexion
with his Creator, the deliverer of the soul from the debasing trammels of
the flesh, the man who enables us to set time at defiance, and conquer the
obstructions of space. A careful sifting of his pretensions, and
examination of the evidence brought forward to sustain them, will soon
shew which opinion is the more correct. That the writer of these pages
considers him in the light of a man who, deluding himself, was the means
of deluding others, may be inferred from his finding a place in these
volumes, and figuring among the Flamels, the Agrippas, the Borris, the
Boehmens, and the Cagliostros.

He was born in May 1734, at Mersburg, in Swabia, and studied medicine at
the University o