from ancient Oriental sources, we may note that
POMPONATIUS or POMPONAZZO, an Italian, born in 1462, declared in a
work entitled _De naturalium effectuum admirandorum Causis seu de
Incantationibus_, that to cure disease it was necessary to use a
strong will, and that the patient should have a vigorous imagination
and much faith in the _prae cantator_. PARACELSUS asserted the same
thing in many passages directly and indirectly. He regarded medicine
as magic and the physician as a wizard who should by a powerful will
act on the imagination of the patient. But from some familiarity with
the works of PARACELSUS--the first folio of the first full edition is
before me as I write--I would say that it would be hard to declare
what his marvelous mind did _not_ anticipate in whatever was allied to
medicine and natural philosophy. Thus I have found that long before
VAN HELMONT, who has the credit of the discovery, PARACELSUS knew how
to prepare silicate of soda, or water-glass.

Hypnotism as practiced at the present day, and with regard to its
common results, was familiar to JOHANN JOSEPH GASSNER, a priest in
Suabia, of whom LOUIS FIGUIER writes as follows in his _Histoire du
Merveilleux dans les Temps Modernes_, published in 1860:

"GASSNER, like the Englishman VALENTINE GREAT-RAKES, believed himself
called by divine inspiration to cure diseases. According to the
precept of proper charity he began at home--that is to say on himself.
After being an invalid for five or six years, and consulting, all in
vain, many doctors, and taking their remedies all for naught, the idea
seized him that such an obstinate malady as his must have some
supernatural evil origin, or in other words, that he was possessed by
a demon.

"Therefore he conjured this devil of a disorder, in the name of Jesus
Christ to leave him--so it left, and the good GASSNER has put it on
record that for sixteen years after he enjoyed perfect health and
never had occasion for any remedy, spiritual or otherwise.

"This success made him reflect whether all maladies could not be cured
by exorcism . . . The experiment which he tried on the invalids of his
parish were so successful that his renown soon opened through all
Suabia, and the regions roundabout. Then he began to travel, being
called for everywhere."

GASSNER was so successful that at Ratisbon he had, it is said, 6,000
patients of all ranks encamped in tents. He cured by simply touching
with his hands. But that