ated them and supplied them
analogies. There is, they thought, an all-prevailing magnetic influence
which binds together not only celestial and terrestrial bodies, but all
living things. Life and death were for them simply the registry of the
ebbing and flowing of these immaterial tides and they ended by
conceiving a vital fluid which could be communicated from person to
person and in the communication of which the sick could be healed--the
driftwood of their lore has come down to us on the tides of time; we
still speak of magnetic personalities--and they sought in various ways
to control and communicate these mysterious forces.

One of them invented steel plates which he applied to the body as a cure
for disease. He taught his system to Mesmer who made, however, one
marked advance upon the technique of his predecessors and gave his name
to his methods; he produced his results through physical contacts and
passes. But he shared with his predecessors and stated with that compact
clearness of which the French language is so capable even when dealing
with obscure matters, that there is a "fluid so universally diffused and
connected as to leave nowhere any void, whose subtlety is beyond any
comparison and which by its nature is capable of receiving, propagating
and communicating all impressions of movement.... This reciprocal action
is subject to mechanical laws at present unknown."[19] This fluid in its
action governs the earth and stars and human action.

[Footnote 19: Price's "Historique de facts relatifs du Magnetisme
Animal," quoted by Podmore.]

He originated the phrase "Animal Magnetism" and was, though he did not
know it, the originator of hypnotism; until well within our own time
mesmerism was the accepted name for this whole complex group of
phenomena. The medical faculties examined his claims but were not
willing to approve them, but this made no difference in Mesmer's
popularity. He had so great a following as to be unable to deal with
them personally. He deputed his powers to assistants, arranged a most
elaborate apparatus and surrounded his whole procedure with a dramatic
setting of stained glass, mirrored and scented rooms and mysterious
music. The result of it all naturally, as far as his patients were
concerned, was marked excitements and hysterias. They had often to be
put into padded rooms. And yet the result of all this murky confusion
was said to be numbers of marked cures. He was investigated by the