GUERISSEURS FRANCAIS
NATURE AFFORDS A UNIVERSAL MEANS OF
HEALING AND PRESERVING MEN.
Anton Mesmer
French Healers – numerous physicians and laymen took up Mesmer's animal magnetism to aid families and friends in distress. Those works eventually to spread to distant shores. Notes: Some of the following reports may be a little more difficult to read than others – as they have been translated from the French, change tenses, and use slang phrases at times. When Deleuze mentions somnambulism, he tells of the common occurrence of patients and even onlookers going into a sleep-like state when magnetism is practiced. The chain of which he speaks is the circle of people who link themselves around the patient in some magnetic work to focus and magnify the vital force available. Joseph Philip François Deleuze was a naturalist and botanist as well as librarian at National Museum of Natural History in Paris.  From
Critical History of Animal Magnetism by JPF
Deleuze
I lived then in the country near Sistéron, and I passed the autumns with a friend who resided in Aix the rest of the year. I learned that this friend, a man of cold reason and enlightened mind, had gone to see Monsieur Mesmer at the house of M. Servant; that, on his return to Aix, he had tried to magnetize, and that he had a somnambulist. I resolved to go and find out if it was true. I made the journey on foot, botanizing; the second day I arrived at Aix at noon, having run since four o'clock in the morning. I enter my friend's house, and explain to him the motive of my journey; I beg him to tell me what to think of the wonders that have been told to me; he smiles and answers me coldly: Stay and you will see what it is, the patient must come at three o'clock. At three o'clock, indeed, the patient arrives with some people who had to make the chain. I put myself in this chain, and I see, after a few minutes, the patient falling asleep. I look with astonishment; but I could not long look at it: in less than a quarter of an hour I fell asleep myself. During my sleep I spoke a great deal, and I agitated myself in a manner to disturb the chain: what I have known because one tells me when I was awake, and when I see everybody laughing around me, for I have he no memory of it. The next day I did not sleep, I observed the somnambulism, and I begged my friend to instruct me in the process. When I returned home, I tried magnetism on the patients who lived in the hamlets next to my country house. I took care not to act on their imagination; I touched them under various pretenses, persuading them that slight friction would do them good. I thus obtained curious and salutary effects which strengthened my belief. At the end of autumn I went to the city; I addressed myself to a young physician, of great merit, who had the wisdom to doubt, and the desire to fix his opinion by experiments. I begged him to point out to me a person ill enough that, if magnetism cured her, the proof was conclusive, but the condition of which, however, was not dangerous enough for me to be afraid of seeing her die during treatment. He took me to a woman sick for seven years. This woman habitually suffered the most cruel pains; she was extremely enfeebled; she had a very large obstruction at the spleen, and deafness which showed outside; she could neither walk nor lay down flat. I produced in her body crises of sweat and urine; the blood resumed its natural course, the swelling and the obstruction disappeared, and I put her in a condition to go out and go about her business.  In the next generation, Jules du Potet took up magnetism near the time of Mesmer’s death in 1815. Like Mesmer, he became a student and lover of Nature – the trees and forests, streams and rivers, the air and sun. Du Potet never became a physician but did sit in on medical school classes in Paris and consulted briefly with prominent magnetists of the day. Instead, of taking a medical degree, he devoted five years to teach himself magnetism. Then, he ventured to share his version of animal magnetism, to produce healings and magic in public, and to write and teach widely in France and beyond. His writings included a journal of magnetism and several books including Magnetism and Magic.
Extract from The Manual of the Student Magnetizer
by Jules du Potet
case of Doctor Besuchet. During the winter of 1830, Madame F…, a young woman of twenty-four years, was taken with an inflammatory malady of the most intense kind. All the viscera of the belly as the seat of an inflammation carried to a most violent degree which could be seen. Soon the disagreeable symptoms which characterized her state were complicated with violent pains of the head, which were followed with a most grave cerebral congestion. Madame F… was of a very pronounced sanguine temperament, sharp, impatient to the excess, and of a character, by consequence, very irritable; I do not need to say that the most active medicine was employed by me as soon as the beginning of the malady, but unfortunately, the numerous applications of leeches, baths, etc., were totally useless, or at least did not reach to inhibit the march of the malady. Professor Fouquier, called in consultation, joined his efforts to mine; but the blisters to the thighs, which he proposed, were obstinately repulsed by the patient; it no longer appeared possible to attempt new bleedings, because of the state of weakness where the patient was found. We judged the case so grave, that we announced to the family that we predicted a catastrophe as infinitely probable and forthcoming. I saw the patient three times a day; she declined sensibly, and in the latter days, they ran often in all haste to me, begging me to go there very quickly, because they believed at every instant that she was going to die. One evening that she was extremely ill, I wished to see her one last time before returning to my house; it was between ten and eleven hours, the day had been bad; the whole family, exhausted from fatigue, took a little repose; the keeper even, fighting against sleep, half awake on her seat. My arrival disturbed no one, and I approached my patient, who was without movement; I seated myself in silence beside her, and contemplated for some instants this interesting woman, whose death seemed already taken over. Her beautiful figure was barely illuminated by the light of a candle which was dimming: it was the calm precursor of nothingness. The patient made a slight movement; I took her hand and made her know that I was near her; she recognized me, but did not speak to me. There came to me all of a sudden the thought to magnetize her; I do not know in truth how this idea came to me, for there had been at least two years that I had not had occasion to renew the magnetic experiments, and I certainly would not have thought of proposing such a means in such circumstances. Finally, I magnetized her, I then indeed said, in the presence of God alone, except for the keeper, without knowing me there, abandoned herself to sleep in all surety of conscience, and my patient, to be sure, was hardly in a state to be occupied with what I was doing. I magnetized then, and I magnetized with this resolved confidence that gives a good intention. Around twenty minutes passed during which the most profound silence reigned in the apartment; I certainly did not want to interrupt it; I had too much fear, in trying to question my patient, to destroy the hope that I began to take in seeing a beneficent calm coming over her little by little. I continued until fatigue constrained me to stop myself in order to rest my arms a little; then I remarked that the patient was as if inundated with an abundant sweat which covered her visage and her chest; but, fearing to deceive myself because of the darkness which nearly enveloped us, I carried the hand onto her forehead; soon she said to me in a little voice hardly articulated: “My God! What good you do to me!…” Then a little later: “What are you then doing which does so much good?” I avow that these words and the manner in which they were pronounced produced on me an indefinable feeling of pleasure; I responded to her: “Do not occupy yourself with any other than of reestablishing yourself; you have a transpiration which will be salutary for you; one goes to change the linen for you, and the night will be good, I hope.” Immediately I awakened the keeper, who put herself to the duty of giving her patient the cares of which she had need, and I withdrew myself, the mind strongly occupied with what came to pass. The next day at a very good hour I hurried to the house of the patient; I found her sensibly better; she only had a very confused memory of the state where she found herself awake: she only remembered having seen me during the night, “and that I had given her or made her something which had done her very much good.” “Then,” I said to her, “do you wish that I continue?” “Oh! Without doubt.” she responded. ~~~
From Journal of Magnetism, volume 3. To
Monsieur Hebert (of Garnay).
Here is, my dear friend, a curious observation. M. Du Potet told us one day: “I am sure that magnetism will reduce strangulated hernias.” I who was strong (think! a prosector of anatomy, this is strong by nature, by predestination); then, very strong myself, I open great eyes, and permit myself to smile in petto [in the chest], and doubt with all the force of my comprehension, and I pardon majestically this mesmeric excess, in saying: “He has forgotten his anatomy. But, my dear, this is who comes to correct me for the future.” One of my relatives, Edme Flogny, age of fifty-six years, residing at Mercy (Yonne), carried a hernia for thirty years, without ever have been inconvenienced, well as he had no bandage. For fifteen days, this brave man was occupied to pick up the debris from stubble thrown to the ground by the workers who unearthed his house, the occupation which held him continually bent, the genitals hanging. Probably the normal intestinal loop dragged a neighboring portion, which distended the hernia sac out of custom, and from there inflammation. At midnight one came to look for me. I find the patient pale, hardly respiring: no stools, frequent vomiting. If it had been permitted to deceive me on the face, I would have thought cholera: think! we were in full epidemic! I go to examine the abdomen, the patient is opposed to it. “What the devil,” I say to him, “you are not a woman!” I uncover him with force and I perceive an enormous tumor (15 cm long, 20 circumference). “But it is a hernia!” I exclaim to myself; “what do you say about it now? – Oh! cousin, you see, this is hidden, these infirmities there!” And I had all the troubles in the world to make him understand that this infirmity was very common in our epoch, and that there was nothing dishonorable for him. Finally I examine the vomit. Already excremental material! I try to move it, one, two, three times; point of success. And certainly I had enough good school to say that then there was more hope than in the knife. I sent to look for a confrere immediately, in order to proceed to the operation. The accidents succeeded in a frightening manner. It was four hours in the morning; I waited. All of a sudden an idea luminous, fateful, raised itself in my brain: the saying of M. Du Potet. – Here is my hand on the tumor, without movement, without pressure, simply applied. Note this well, it is important. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter hour, it is long in magnetism, in a similar perplexity. – Nothing – Twenty minutes, twenty-five minutes; my man was being tormented… and nothing. The vomiting had ceased, and colic was calmed… Suddenly the sweat mounted on my forehead … I came to feel a vermicular movement like the one of a cool scrotum, then something slipping very gently under my hand: it was the intestinal loop which did its own, and permitted itself to reenter honestly into its lodging. “That is it!” The patient exclaims to me; and immediately a sonorous stool, which he can not retain, flows on his bed. I was flattered. I can not prevent myself from laughing in my own way in relating this fact: my surprise was appalling … I hold to my expression. “Go back?” Said I with a deep sigh; “he will always be right, that old sorcerer of a magician.” I hold still to my expression, to cause understanding how much I was disappointed, I who sustained right then a magnificent operation, and had been innocent enough to make me a puff. I was petrified. But how, the devil! How has magnetism reduced this hernia? I believed however surgery under cover from attacks of Mesmer… And here I am remembering the whole history of hernias … I remember myself as an intern of the Hotel-Dieu, having etherized a patient for a last attempt of movement, feel the intestine go back as of itself at the first pressure, and that it explained this fact by the relaxation of the white tissues with which the seal is formed. Magnetism would have then released the ligaments: this is not the first time that it is encountered with ether. But how is the intestine returned all alone, without pressure? It is medical fact that a violent purgative has produced alone the return of a hernia; and what was this purgative doing there? It awakened simply the peristaltic movement, and the imprisoned loop regained liberty. Here is my affair: magnetism, sleep maker par excellence, has changed role: it has awakened, tonified, revivified. On one side, it relaxed the ligaments; on the other, it recalled to its place the descended intestine. With one stone two blows: I etherized and purged, and this simple manu [easy hand]. But, for the rest, I thought, it could not be otherwise. We heal tetanus; the hernia is admitted as a partial tetanus: then…. And here my prodigy became simple as tea of violet. This observation is very serious; we reckon very little of it, that I know; but impossible to give it to you in other terms, my dear: it would lose its naturalness. Medicine and surgery beaten by magnetism, under the same mantle, it is admirable! Nothing as funny as my visage then: my doubt punished, my little proper-love vexed, it was curious! So then, my dear friend, rehabilitate me near to the master, whose heart was always so debonair toward me; I incline myself forever before his prodigious experience, with perfect contrition. the Bible has said it well: In antiquis est sapientia, et multo tempore patientia [In the old is wisdom, and in much time patience.] Job XII, 12 – All yours, with heart, E.-V. Leger ~~~
From Journal of Magnetism “I lived,” wrote Doctor B… to us, “in a city of the provinces, when I was called to give care to a young girl aged around twenty years, strong, and of a sanguine temperament much pronounced. She found herself then in the capacity of a domestic in the house of one of my relatives; I learned from this patient that for around four months her menses were in part arrested as a result of imprudence that she had committed by putting her feet into cold water at the menstrual period. “The first days that I visited her, I found her affected with a rather acute ophthalmia, accompanied with other inflammatory symptoms in different regions of the head; the epigastrium was burning, and the pressure there developed into pain; for the rest, ardent thirst, pulse hard, full and frequent; no appetite. At these symptoms I thought to recognize a gastro-cephalitis accompanied with acute ophthalmia, which engaged me to practice, the same day, a bleeding of the arm of more than three palettes; I put then the patient to a severe diet, as well as the use of broths and emollient fomentations; finally, I made to apply cataplasm to the eyes and to the abdominal region. “The next day, the symptoms had diminished sensibly on the side of the brain, the ophthalmia was much calmed, but the gastritis made progress and was complicated with enteritis. The least movement awakened the pains so sharp in the pit of the stomach; the mouth was dry and the thirst more pressing. I proposed the application of leeches to the abdomen; but the patient, frightened of the great weakness that had occurred to her, she said, by the bleeding the day before, did not wish ever to consent to it. I limited myself then to prescribe the most severe diet, to continue the use of the emollients, and I ordered more clysters of the same nature to remedy a stubborn constipation. “This treatment was too little in energy to arrest in its march an inflammation so well characterized; the malady continued its progress; the irritation was carried specially on the small intestines, where it gave place to very sharp colic, and from there was extended as far as the bladder. The inflammation of this latter organ (cystitis) occasioned, a retention of urine; however the malady was at the seventh day of its invasion and in the period of decline, to speak the language of the pathologist: the retention of urine continued in spite of the employment of fomentations and a cataplasm on the hypogastrium. “For three days, the patient had not rendered a single drop of urine, and for several nights she had not closed the eye, experiencing continual desire to urinate, and, in spite of the most violent efforts could not achieve satisfying this need. The bladder began to form a tumor sensible enough in the region of the sub-pubes; in this extremity, I only saw more the sound [probe] which could remedy this incident, that one had to, with waiting longer, cause to cease, in order to prevent the much more serious. I proposed then to employ to my patient, but her modesty revolted at it; I insisted, I was all determined to it: vain efforts! She responded always, in delirium of a virtue assuredly misplace: ‘I like better to die than to let me be probed.’ “In the perplexity where I found myself, it came to me in the mind to try the action of magnetism against the alarming retention. Full of this idea, I rendered myself without deferring near to my patient; I find her prey to the same pains: I apply a hand on the region of the bladder, in the intention to relieve the patient, as I beg to leave my hand thus applied during some instants. I magnetized then with all the force of my will. During the whole operation, of which the patient did not suspect in any way, the need to urinate most keenly as even was felt: the bladder itself seemed to be contracting under my hand. I continued thus my magnetic action around twenty minutes, after which I invited my patient to try to urinate, which she did, to her great astonishment, with enough ease. The discharge of the urine produced a very prompt relief to the ill ease which entertained necessarily this retention. “The next day from this magnetic success, I left the province, I ceased consequently to give my care to this patient; but since I have had the satisfaction to learn that her convalescence and her complete healing had not taken a long time waiting.” |
The Great Physician
Love Heals
“Even as there is only one nature, one life, one health,
there is, only one disease, one remedy, one healing.”
Mesmer
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