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In the course of time, a very considerable number of magnetisers, acknowledging Barbarin for their model, and called after him Barbarinists, appeared in different parts, and were believed to have effected some remarkable cures.
Plans, absurd and impossible, but worked out with a business-like arrangement of detail which, when mingled with somnambulists and magnetisers, had a weird yet apparently fascinating effect on his hearers; magnificent diatribes against the wickedness of his special enemies, journalists, editors, and the Press in general; strange fancies to do with the world where Eugenie Grandet or Le Pere Goriot had their dwelling, all these ideas, opinions, and feelings came from his lips with an eloquence, a force, and a life which were all convincing.
From these delusions to those still more fashionable deceptions, practised by the whole tribe of magnetisers, the transition is very natural. With respect to them, it is equally proper to ask women a few questions. Do you know any thing of the construction of the human frame?
Upon these transplanted pieces were tattooed the letters of the alphabet; so that, when a communication was to be made, either of the persons, though the wide Atlantic rolled between them, had only to prick his arm with a magnetic needle, and straightway his friend received intimation that the telegraph was at work. Let modern magnetisers try and bring it to perfection.
Bourdois de la Motte, the President; Fouquier, Gueneau de Mussy, Guersent, Husson, Itard, Marc, J. J. Leroux, Thillay, Double, and Majendie. These gentlemen began their labours by publishing an address to all magnetisers, inviting them to come forward and exhibit in their presence the wonders of animal magnetism.
So much was said and written between the years 1820 and 1825, and so many converts were made, that the magnetisers became clamorous for a new investigation. M. de Foissac, a young physician, wrote to the Academie Royale du Medicine a letter, calling for inquiry, in which he complained of the unfairness of the report of Messrs.
A man ought not to say to a wandering journalist whom he has never seen before, in the presence of his own wife, that women are the inspirers and magnetisers of the world, and that he owes all that has made him what he is to the sweet presence and sympathetic tenderness of his Bessy. This, it seems to me, is the lowest kind of melodrama.
It appeared first in the shape of mineral, and afterwards of animal, magnetism, under which latter name it survives to this day, and numbers its dupes by thousands. The mineral magnetisers claim the first notice, as the worthy predecessors of the quacks of the present day.
All the magnetisers were scandalised at the preposterous jabber of this old woman, and De Loutherbourg appears to have left London to avoid her; continuing, however, in conjunction with his wife, the fantastic tricks which had turned the brain of this poor fanatic, and deluded many others who pretended to more sense than she had.
He was cited to appear in the Dean's Court, and prohibited from laying on his hands for the future: but he cared nothing for the church. He imagined that he derived his powers direct from Heaven, and continued to throw people into fits, and bring them to their senses again, as usual, almost exactly after the fashion of modern magnetisers.
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