Animal Magnetism - Animal Magnetism in England

Animal Magnetism in England

The physician J.B. De Mainaduc (died 1797) having received his medical training in England, moved to Paris in 1782 and while there learned animal magnetism from D'Eslon.

In the year 1788 delivered a course of lectures on animal magnetism at Bristol, and afterwards in London. He also treated magnetically, and with considerable success, a great number of cases, an account of which, with certificates from the patients themselves, he afterwards published in a pamphlet entitled "Veritas," which bears the appropriate motto, "Causa latet, vis est notissima" ("The cause is hidden, but its effect is well known"). His lectures excited considerable sensation in scientific and literary circles; and, a number of magnetic practitioners, in imitation of him, soon entered the field of competition.

We are informed by Dr. George Winter, that a person named Holloway, by giving lectures on animal magnetism at five guineas for each pupil, realised a considerable fortune; and the house of Mr. Loutherbergs, another magnetic professor, at Hammersmith, about the year 1790, was daily for many months crowded with patients. "In the year 1790," says Dr. George Winter, "I deem animal magnetism to have been at its height; it was credibly reported that 3000 persons have attended at one time to get admission to Mr. Loutherberg's, at Hammersmith, and that some persons sold their tickets for from one to three guineas each." (normally he did not charge for admission but tickets were issued on this day to maintain some sort of order) But, notwithstanding all this, while animal magnetism was making rapid progress in Germany and France, it does not appear to have made the same advancement in England; on the contrary, the fanatical interpretation which a Mrs. Pratt put on the cures of Loutherberg, could not fail to have disgusted many who might otherwise have been interested in the facts themselves, which were very clearly and unequivocally established.

Despite persistent popular interest, it took a long time for the intellectual establishment of England to give serious attention to animal magnetism. That began when Richard Chevenix gave lectures and demonstrations in London in 1829. One of those who attended was the physician John Elliotson (1791–1868), soon to become professor of medicine at University College and president of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society. When, in 1837, the famous French magnetizer Baron du Potet came to London, John Elliotson was further intrigued and decided to experiment with mesmerism. The English mesmerisers from 1840 to 1860 are a group that may be said to constitute a British School of Animal Magnetism, the key note of which may be found in the following paragraph of an article by Dr. James Esdaile in the "Zoist":-

"Wonderful to say, this greatly desiderated and almost unhoped for curative agent not only exists in Nature, but is an essential element in the human constitution, varying in different persons, of course, like all other bodily and mental gifts; and most persons possess the power of curing others, or of being themselves cured occasionally, by an inherent sanative influence propagatable between different individuals: for health is transmissible as well as disease, it appears."

The same note was struck by Mr. Barham, meeting at Bristol the Earl of Dude in the chair, when he said:-

"The great majority of those who have carefully investigated the subject have come to the conclusion that there exists in man, as one of his constituent principles, a certain subtle element, known by the names of animal electricity, animal magnetism, galvanism, the nervous energy, the nervous fluid, etc. This element occupies a sort of intermediate position between soul and body, and it is by means of this animal electricity that our mental will acts upon our bodily organs."

During those and the following years many excellent treatises on Mesmerism were published in England, and other works on the subject were translated from French and German; Ashburner, Barth, Townshend, Colquhoun, William Gregory, Sandby, and some others, have left works on Mesmerism of great interest and value. Townshend was a former skeptic who became very passionate about animal magnetism. Colquhon wrote “Isis Revelata” a book that was translated in many languages. Isis Revelata was one the few only treatises written in English which attempted to give a far-reaching exposition of the historical and philosophical context of animal magnetism. As such it furnished a strong impetus to the establishment in England of animal magnetism as a subject worthy of serious consideration.