are to pay
fifteen guineas, which will include the whole expense."

Hannah More, in a letter addressed to Horace Walpole in September 1788,
speaks of the "demoniacal mummeries" of Dr. Mainauduc, and says he was in
a fair way of gaining a hundred thousand pounds by them, as Mesmer had
done by his exhibitions in Paris.

So much curiosity was excited by the subject, that, about the same time, a
man named Holloway gave a course of lectures on animal magnetism
in London, at the rate of five guineas for each pupil, and realised a
considerable fortune. Loutherbourg the painter and his wife followed the
same profitable trade; and such was the infatuation of the people to be
witnesses of their strange manipulations, that at times upwards of three
thousand persons crowded around their house at Hammersmith, unable to gain
admission. The tickets sold at prices varying from one to three guineas.
Loutherbourg performed his cures by the touch, after the manner of
Valentine Greatraks, and finally pretended to a divine mission. An account
of his miracles, as they were called, was published in 1789, entitled _A
List of New Cures performed by Mr. and Mrs. de Loutherbourg, of
Hammersmith Terrace, without Medicine; by a Lover of the Lamb of God.
Dedicated to his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury_.

This "Lover of the Lamb of God" was a half-crazy old woman, named Mary
Pratt, who conceived for Mr. and Mrs. de Loutherbourg a veneration which
almost prompted her to worship them. She chose for the motto of her
pamphlet a verse in the thirteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles:
"Behold, ye despisers, and wonder and perish! for I will work a work in
your days which ye shall not believe, though a man declare it unto you."
Attempting to give a religious character to the cures of the painter, she
thought a _woman_ was the proper person to make them known, since the
apostle had declared that a _man_ should not be able to conquer the
incredulity of the people. She stated, that from Christmas 1788 to July
1789, De Loutherbourg and his wife had cured two thousand people, "having
been made _proper recipients to receive divine manuductions_; which
heavenly and divine influx, coming from the radix _God_, his Divine
Majesty had most graciously bestowed upon them to diffuse healing to all,
be they deaf, dumb, blind, lame, or halt."

In her dedication to the Archbishop of Canterbury she implored him to
compose a new form of prayer, to be used in all c