AN

INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY

OF

ANIMAL MAGNETISM.

CHAPTER I.

HISTORY OF ANIMAL MAGNETISM.

In commencing a course of demonstrations in London on Animal Magnetism, I am aware of the many difficulties that surround me, and I rely on overcoming them only through the truth of the cause I advocate. In Paris, when this new discovery first became the theme of discussion, it was assailed by every species of hostility: learned professors denounced it from their lecture chairs; unlearned journalists made it the subject of their flippant jokes; it was turned into ridicule on the stage; and every satirist who could pen a poem directed the energies of his wit against it. But animal magnetism could not be put down in this way. In the same city, only a few years afterwards, when the shock of political convulsions had subsided and science and literature again resumed their dominion, the same facts again challenged attention. In vain were they denied; they were demonstrated over and over again in the public hospitals, in the presence of a numerous audience, to the conviction of the most skeptical; and the force of the evidence alone broke down those official barriers of prejudice which so