Progress of animal magnetism in New England : being a collection of experiments, reports and certificates, from the most respectable sources : preceded by a dissertation on the proofs of animal magnetism / by Charles Poyen, St. Sauveur.

  • Poyen, Charles.
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Progress of animal magnetism in New England : being a collection of experiments, reports and certificates, from the most respectable sources : preceded by a dissertation on the proofs of animal magnetism / by Charles Poyen, St. Sauveur. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    Several called at my lodgings and I taught them gratuitously. Some persons who seemed more friendly towards me, hlamed me for thus giving away my time and instruction; they observed that every thing was worth money among the Yankees; that having intro- duced magnetism in this country, I ought to keep the secret for me, or at least not to reveal it to any body else, unless he would consent to pay a high price for it. They observed, furthermore, that if I could not draw any benefit from the secret, on account of my ill health, I might hire a man to magnetize for me, under the written oath that he should not teach any one else without my authority, &c. To all this I replied that magnetism had never been and should not be considered as a secret practice; that it was a branch of natural science which ought to be known as widely as possible for the relief of those who are suf- fering, and for the advancement of the knowledge of the human mind ; that besides, I was not the discoverer of the art, and consequently had no claim to its exclu- sive possession ; that finally, my only ambition was to import it into America, for the sake of forwarding an important and useful truth. My object in teaching other people how to magne- tize, was to enable them to satisfy themselves about the truth of the science, and to furnish them with the means of eliciting, by personal application, a great number of facts that would have brought it, within a short time, into public notice. The results followed my expectations. Indeed, experiments were performed with the greatest success by some of those I had in- structed, not only in Boston, but also in Bangor, Cambridge, and Providence, even five or six months before I had made myself any attempt at magnetizing. There had been cases of somnambulism produced by