Human magnetism; its claims to dispassionate inquiry. Being an attempt to show the utility of its application for the relief of human suffering / [William Newnham].
- William Newnham
- Date:
- 1845
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Human magnetism; its claims to dispassionate inquiry. Being an attempt to show the utility of its application for the relief of human suffering / [William Newnham]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![pursuits! And we venture to believe that the cause would not thus be abandoned by investigators, if they did not compromise their character in public by continuing to inquire patiently after an EK] Dorado non-entity :—and if the pursuit could be then quietly carried on, under the shade of friendly privacy. An extension of the same principle would operate bene- ficially in another sense, upon an investigator, who is de- terred from public inquiry, because the phenomena of magnetism rest on unknown principles, and its manifes- tations appear to be so eccentric from commonly received ideas, that it requires a high degree of moral courage to avow belief in effects which he may not be able to pro- duce, and is then counted for a fool ;—or which if he succeed in producing, he is immediately characterised as an impostor. This unhappy choice of character—knave or fool, dependent upon the avowal of a belief in the truth of certain effects absolutely before his eyes, is enough to make him shrink from the avowal, and shut his eyes rather than be convinced. The fact that the greater number of magnetisers and of magnetised are to be found among unscientific and ignorant persons, whose appetite for delief is generally in proportion to their profound absence of knowledge ; and who have exhibited these characteristics by the ab- surdity of their publications, and by their close alliance with all kinds of quackery, has also formed a ground of objection against magnetism. It will be easily seen, how naturally this arises from the foregoing considerations ; while that portion of the objection which relates to the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33492967_0103.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
