Mesmerism, or System of Interactions

XVI

so that it now seemed quite comprehensible to me how he could not be understood by the scholars of that time, and how his discovery could be misjudged; for which reason both the discoverer and the magnetism proclaimed by him, along with all the facts, were considered by this scholarly ignorance as nonexistent, and thus the matter could be kept in the dark through an unheard-of procedure. But that none of the earlier and later German adherents of magnetism who appeared as writers had drawn from the source itself, that none had turned to the discoverer to receive instruction and communication from him; this would be completely incomprehensible if one did not consider the political storms particularly intervening here, which made every connection all the more difficult, as Mesmer—tired, in any case, of the injustices and persecutions with which organized scholarship did not cease to embitter his life, even during the most brilliant successes of his healing method, and induced to do so by the dangers threatening him during the French Revolution—exchanged his residence in France for one in his fatherland, and withdrew to a small, little-known place in Switzerland *)

*) Frauenfeld in the Canton of Thurgau; currently, Konstanz is his place of residence.