An Introduction to the Study of Animal Magnetism

At length, having communicated his views and mode of treatment in the most frank and unreserved manner to all in Vienna who cared to be instructed in them, and being deeply interested in the success of his discovery, he determined to proceed to Paris. His reputation had already preceded him, and upon his arrival in the French capital in February 1778, he became the object of general interest and attraction. His doctrines, however, were violently assailed; the members of the Académie Royale de Médecine (Royal Academy of Medicine) summarily repudiated them and threatened to excommunicate all who adopted or promulgated them. But in the midst of every description of abuse, satire, and insult, he maintained a quiet self-possession that could only have sprung from an inward conviction of the truth of the principles he maintained.

Surrounded as Mesmer was by enemies, both public and private, his unassuming manners, his manifest sincerity, his earnest yet silent enthusiasm, and, above all, his benevolent disposition, won him the esteem of people of almost all ranks and pretensions. Men of high birth, learning, and scientific eminence crowded around him and listened with delight; many not only became converts to his doctrines but began advocating them with the most unbounded enthusiasm. Among the number of his converts was Dr. Deslon, first physician to the Comte D'Artois and a member of the Académie Royale de Médecine, who soon threw off the mantle of his allegiance to the tyrannical authority of the Academy and became one of his most zealous disciples. It is impossible, indeed, to conceive...