hurches and chapels, that
nothing might impede this inestimable gift from having its due course. She
further entreated all the magistrates and men of authority in the land to
wait on Mr. and Mrs. de Loutherbourg, to consult with them on the
immediate erection of a large hospital, with a pool of Bethesda attached
to it. All the magnetisers were scandalised at the preposterous jabber of
this old woman, and De Loutherbourg appears to have left London to avoid
her,--continuing, however, in conjunction with his wife, the fantastic
tricks which had turned the brain of this poor fanatic, and deluded many
others who pretended to more sense than she had.

From this period until 1798 magnetism excited little or no attention in
England. An attempt to revive the belief in it was made in that
year, but it was in the shape of mineral rather than of animal magnetism.
One Benjamin Douglas Perkins, an American, practising as a surgeon in
Leicester Square, invented and took out a patent for the celebrated
"Metallic Tractors." He pretended that these tractors, which were two
small pieces of metal strongly magnetised, something resembling the steel
plates which were first brought into notice by Father Hell, would cure
gout, rheumatism, palsy, and, in fact, almost every disease the human
frame was subject to, if applied externally to the afflicted part, and
moved about gently, touching the surface only. The most wonderful stories
soon obtained general circulation, and the press groaned with pamphlets,
all vaunting the curative effects of the tractors, which were sold at five
guineas the pair. Perkins gained money rapidly. Gouty subjects forgot
their pains in the presence of this new remedy; the rheumatism fled at its
approach; and toothache, which is often cured by the mere sight of a
dentist, vanished before Perkins and his marvellous steel-plates. The
benevolent Society of Friends, of whose body he was a member, warmly
patronised the invention. Desirous that the poor, who could not afford to
pay Mr. Perkins five guineas, or even five shillings for his tractors,
should also share in the benefits of that sublime discovery, they
subscribed a large sum, and built an hospital, called the "Perkinean
Institution," in which all comers might be magnetised free of cost. In the
course of a few months they were in very general use, and their lucky
inventor in possession of five thousand pounds.

Dr. Haygarth, an eminent physician at Bath, recollectin