INTRODUCTION

our profession as a physician guarantees him a little of our physiological knowledge, and as for the rest, we refer him to our career and our works, the only guarantors we can offer in response to the insinuations and slanders that have always surrounded our work of realization.

We harbor no illusions regarding the numerous imperfections of this summary, which is, in a way, only the preface to a much more complete and voluminous work that we will publish in fascicles under the name Methodical Treatise on Practical Magic. This methodical treatise will be, if we realize our desire, an encyclopedia of the subject and will contain the reproduction in extenso of the rarest books, manuscripts, and grimoires.

Let us add that this elementary treatise, which is constituted by a portion of the notes we have been gathering for several years, was written in six months in the most diverse environments, day by day throughout our material life. Thus, the first chapters of the theory were executed in the countryside, in the vicinity of Paris. The realization was written in Paris, at the National Library, which is very rich in manuscripts and rare books on these questions. Finally, the adaptation was begun in Brussels, continued in Paris, and finished in the winter, in the month of January, in Cannes. This is why we appeal to the reader's every possible indulgence, while affirming that all our care has been applied to the arrangement of these materials, which are so unfamiliar to many of our contemporaries.