Mesmerism and Christian science : a short history of mental healing / by Frank Podmore.

  • Frank Podmore
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mesmerism and Christian science : a short history of mental healing / by Frank Podmore. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    and the results in these later years differed materially from what had gone before. These records were at any rate admirably fitted to the particular purpose in view, since the Commissioners did not begin their investigations until 1784, and all this material for forming a judgment on the curative effects of the treatment was actually ready to their hands. Some account of these cures is introduced here, that the reader may see what grounds there were for the extraordinary vogue attained by Mesmer and his disciples, and, it may be added, for the extreme embitterment of the profession. The records published in 1784, under the title Supplement aux Deux Rapports de MM. les Commissaires, &c, deal with 115 cases.1 They are for the most part written by the patients themselves; the physicians were, no doubt for professional reasons, reluctant to let themselves appear as in any way concerned with a treatment which had just been authoritatively denounced as a gross and dangerous impos- ture. But it is clear that the diagnosis—where the nature of the disease permitted the science of that date to furnish any diagnosis—was derived in many instances from the physicians who had previously treated the case without success. And, it may be added, the few reports furnished by medical men which are included are scarcely more illuminat- ing, from the standpoint of modern medicine, than those written by laymen. It should be noted, further, that in several cases the physicians, confessedly at the end of their resources, themselves advised recourse to Animal Magnetism. No doubt the records were to some extent selected, though in one passage the editor implies that they were not. But, in view of the pressure of time, the collectors probably took every fairly good case which they could get. A large num- ber of those included, indeed, refer to cures still proceeding, and the patients can in such cases, therefore, record only 1 The summary at the end of the book speaks of in persons. But the number is not correct. The book, as will appear from the date, was compiled under great pressure ; there are many mistakes in proper names, and the compiler has omitted to take notice that some of the reports deal with more than one patient.
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