gave public
lectures on the subject. People of rank and fortune soon came from
different cities to be magnetized or to place themselves under his
tuition. He afterward established himself in London where he was
equally successful in attracting and curing people. 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.
Large crowds gathered to hear him at the rate of five guineas for each
pupil.

Loutherbourg, the painter, and his wife entered upon a similar work.
"Such was the infatuation of the people to be witnesses of their
strange manipulations," says Mackay, "that at times upwards of three
thousand persons crowded round their house at Hammersmith, unable to
gain admission. The tickets sold at prices ranging from one to three
guineas." Loutherbourg later became a divine healer. From 1789 to 1798
magnetism attracted little or no attention in England. At the latter
date a Connecticut Yankee, Benjamin Douglas Perkins, invented
"metallic tractors." The Society of Friends built a hospital called
the "Perkinean Institute" where all comers might be magnetized free of
cost.

About 1786 animal magnetism appeared in two different places in
Germany--on the upper Rhine and in Bremen. At this time Lavater paid a
visit to Bremen and exhibited the magnetizing process to several
doctors. Bremen was for a long time a focus of the new doctrine, and
thereby was brought into bad repute. About the same time the doctrine
spread from Strasburg over the Rhine provinces. Among those active in
experiments were Boeckmann of Carlsruhe, Gmelin of Heilbronn, and
Pezold of Dresden. Soon it spread all over Germany. In 1789 Selle of
Berlin brought forward a series of experiments made at the Charite
(Hospital), in which he confirmed some of the alleged phenomena but
excluded the supernormal.

Notwithstanding the early dislike, animal magnetism flourished in
Germany during the first twenty years of the nineteenth century. In
1812 the Prussian government sent Wolfart to Mesmer at Frauenfeld, to
acquaint himself with the subject. He returned to Berlin an ardent
adherent of Mesmer and introduced magnetism into the hospital
treatment. From this magnetism flourished so much in Berlin that, as
Wurm relates, the Berlin physicians placed a monument on the grave of
Mesmer at Moersburg, and theological candidates received instruction in
physiology, pathology, and