ced
through and through, rolling on the ground, and drenched in blood, say
to his adversary with an exhausted voice: "The blow was harsh, but yet I
prefer it to your medicine!"

It is not truth alone that has the privilege of rendering men
passionate. Such was the legitimate result of these retrospective views.
I now ask myself whether, by labouring to put the truth of this aphorism
in full light, the passionate advocate of Mesmerism showed proof of
ability!

Gentlemen, let us put all these personal attacks aside, all these
recriminations against science and its agents, who unfortunately had not
succeeded in restoring the health of the morose magistrate. What remains
then of his pamphlet? Two chapters, only two chapters, in which Bailly's
report is treated seriously. The medical commissioners and the members
of the Academy had not seen, in the real effects of Mesmerism anything
more than was occasioned by imagination. The celebrated magistrate
exclaims on this subject, "Any one hearing this proposition spoken of
would suppose, before reading the report, that the commissioners had
treated and cured, or considerably relieved by the force of imagination,
large tumours, inveterate obstructions, gutta serenas, and strong
paralyses." Servan admitted, in short, that magnetism had effected most
wonderful cures. But there lay all the question. The cures being
admitted, the rest followed as a matter of course.

However incredible these cures might be, they must be admitted, they
said, when numerous witnesses certified their truth. Was it owing to
chance that attestations were wanting for the miracles at the Cemetery
of St. Medard? Did not the counsellor to the parliament, Montgeron,
state, in three large quarto volumes, the names of a great multitude of
individuals who protested on their honour as illuminati, that the tomb
of the Deacon, Paris, had restored sight to the blind, hearing to the
deaf, strength to the paralytic; that in a twinkling it cured ailing
people of gouty rheumatism, of dropsy, of epilepsy, of phthisis, of
abscesses, of ulcers, &c.? Did these attestations, although many
emanated from persons of distinction, from the Chevalier Folard, for
example, prevent the convulsionists from becoming the laughingstock of
Europe? Did they not see the Duchess of Maine herself laugh at their
prowess in the following witty couplet?--

"A scavenger at the palace-gate
Who, his left heel being lame,
Obtained