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juries. Therefore the physicians should see how much they might affect by it in the art of healing"-Aphorism 22. "There is a linking together of spirits, or of emanations, even when they are far separated from each other. what is this linking together? It is an incessant out

pouring of the rays of one body into another."

But

"In the meantime it is not without danger to treat of this. Many abominable abuses of this may take place:" which, according to his opinion, would be immensely mischievous. Let us hear himself. (Conf. XIII. cap. conclus. 12.)

"But I will not allure to forbidden things; if thou shouldst find anything in my writings which is dangerous. do not make it known. As I have brought forward the wonders of this art, and its great advantages, I cannot, at the same time, be silent on its disadvantages, of which a pernicious use may be made. For to turn the mind from such things requires, besides a commanding will, a strong power and the combination of many circumstances. But the ignorant people do not understand this, and therefore they calumniate the truth, and declare it to be lies, or the work of the devil."

In reply to the charge of being eccentric, and of desiring to establish a new doctrine, he says:-"That I have quitted the track of the multitude of philosophers, I acknowledge; for I admit either none at all, or at most a very small portion, of school philosophy. He who only is acquainted with the ordinary philosophy of the schools, and as a physician, with Galen, I pray to desist from the_reading of my treatise, for he is neither in a condition to judge of it, nor even to understand it. It departs too far from his custom.

"What can I expect from severe and ignorant judges? "Our teaching is founded on a genuine and unquestionable experience, from which, as from a very liberal fountain, the most beautiful stream flows"-(cap. vii. conclus. 6).

"We will, therefore, instigated by love and for the public good, give the cure of six of the most difficult complaints, and which the mob of physicians declare to be incurable. These are-Insanity, epilepsy, impotence, dropsy, lameness, and continued as well as intermittent fever,"-(1. c. in præfatione.)

Finally, he says in another place," Have we not in past ages seen the whole world, as it were, moved into furious hostility against this means of cure? Was it not, by the loud expression of certain experience, which yet must be held even sacred and unquestioned, declared to be sorcery, devilish, and deemed crime and folly ?"-(Preface.)

I believe we may conclude from these few passages that Maxwell well understood and was familiar with the practice of magnetism; and that his views upon it so entirely agreed with ours, that the magnetic physician of the present time may adopt his expressions as their own.

GRAHAM was another Scottish physician of Edinburgh, who was not so much a teacher of magic and a defender of magnetism as that he was the introducer of a peculiar bed of state for the healing of diseases; and which may probably be regarded as a very excellent magnetic means, as we have already seen that amongst the ancients there were similar beds placed in the temples for that purpose. He was also said to have discovered a magnetic water and powder. I take from the already mentioned Anti-magnetism the description of this bed :

"He termed his house the temple of Hygeia, in which he united the useful and agreeable. Everywhere prevailed the highest splendour. In the front court itself, our eyewitness declares that art, discovery, and wealth, had actually exhausted themselves. On the walls of the apartments electric fires made rainbow glories, star-beams gushed out, and transparent glasses of all colours were brought together with infinite taste and discrimination. All this, says the eye-witness, is exciting to the imagination in the highest degree.

His grand means of cure, combined with a spare diet and a bottle of medicine, was his magnetic, elastic bed. This stood in a splendid chamber, to which a cylinder was introduced from an adjoining apartment, and through it was conveyed the healing stream into the sleeping room, as well as all sorts of fragrant but strengthening medicines and Eastern perfumes through glass tubes. The heavenly bed itself rested on six transparent pillars; the bed-clothes, of purple and sky-blue satin, were spread over mattresses,

wet through with Arabian and Oriental odoriferous waters, in the taste of the Persian Court. The room in which it stood he called the Sanctum Sanctorum.

He showed the bed to nobody, not even to those to whom he showed all the rest: "For who," he said, "could resist the pleasure and intoxication that this enchanting place excited ?" To all this must be added the melodious tones of the harmonicon, of soft flutes, pleasant voices, and a large organ. He said truly that nothing had restored to shattered nerves their vigour so amazingly as this heavenly bed. He had this bed in London; and any one who wished to make use of it must apply to him by letter, and send enclosed £50 sterling; on which he received an admission ticket.

VALENTINE GRATERAKES was an Irishman, born in the county of Waterford in 1628. In the year 1662 he dreamed that he possessed the gift of curing goitre by merely laying on his hand. At first he paid no attention; but as he dreamed the same thing again many times, he first made the experiment on his wife, and it succeeded to admiration. He tried it on others, and with the same result. In 1665 he began to use his hand for the cure of all diseases without exception. In 1666 he went to London, where he was summoned by the Court to Whitehall. There he tried his healing power on many persons. But the courtiers endeavoured in all manner of ways to ridicule and insult him, because he did not disdain to cure animals also. was no longer able to support it, and at length removed to a house near the capital, where he touched and cured diseases.

He

As his cures were of a kind so wholly magnetic, as no man had so publicly performed such before, and as he produced the same crises and phenomena as the magnetic physicians now produce, we will briefly notice the history of his cures. They may be seen treated more at large in the writings of Pechlin (Observationes phys. med. lib. iii. c. 2, 1691), and in the monthly publications of Berlin (1786), and also in Deleuze's "Critical History of Animal Magnetism."

Pechlin says, "Amongst the most astonishing cures which history records, are those of an Irish gentleman in London, Oxford, and other cities of England and Ireland.

He himself published in London in 1666 a full account of them. Val. Graterakes, Esq., of Waterford, in the kingdom of Ireland, famous for curing several diseases and distempers by the stroak of his hand only: London, 1660.'”

Pechlin believes that no doubt whatever can be entertained of the reality of his cures, as they are related in his own work; and they are, therefore, worthy of being translated into all languages. Pechlin caused a number of letters and testimonies to be printed, which place the veracity and the character of Graterakes in the clearest light. In the first place, Joh. Glanville, the author of "Scepsis Scientifica," in which he treated all learning and human science as open to doubt, and who was also a chaplain to Charles II., says in a letter that Graterakes was a simple, amiable, and pious man, a stranger to all deceit. The same testimony was given to him by George Rust, Bishop of Dromore in Ireland. The bishop says that he was three weeks at his house, where he had an opportunity of observing his sound morals, and the great number of his cures of the sick. Through the simple laying on of his hands he drove the pains to the extremities of the limbs. Many times the effect was very rapid and as if by magic. If the pains did not immediately give way, he repeated his rubbings, and always drove them from the nobler parts to the less noble, and finally into the limbs.

The Bishop relates still further:-"I can as eye-witness assert that Graterakes cured dizziness, very bad diseases of the eyes and ears, old ulcers, goitre, epilepsy, glandular swellings, scirrhous indurations, and cancerous swellings. I have seen swellings disperse in five days that were many years old, but I do not believe by supernatural means; nor did his practice exhibit anything sacred. The cure was sometimes very protracted, and the diseases only gave way through repeated exertions; some altogether resisted his endeavours."

something healing, Graterakes himself especial gift of God.

It appeared to the bishop that something balsamic, flowed from him. was persuaded that his power was an He healed even epidemic complaints by his touch, and on that account he believed it his duty to devote himself to the cure of diseases.

To the bishop's may be added the testimonies of two physicians, Faireklow and Astel, who very assiduously inquired into the reality of his cures.

"I was struck," says Faireklow, "with his gentleness and kindness to the unhappy, and by the effects which he produced by his hand."

Astel says, "I saw Graterakes in a moment remove most violent pains merely by his hand. I saw him drive a pain from the shoulder to the feet. If the pains in the head or the intestines remained fixed, the endeavour to remove them was frequently followed by the most dreadful crises, which even seemed to bring the patient's life into danger; but by degrees they disappeared into the limbs, and then altogether. I saw a scrofulous child of twelve years with such swellings that it could not move, and he dissipated merely with his hand the greatest part of them. One of the largest, however, he opened, and so healed it with his spittle." Finally, Astel says that he saw a number of other cures, and repeats the testimonies of Rust and Faireklow on the character of Graterakes.

The celebrated Robert Boyle, President of the Royal Society of London, says :-"Many physicians, noblemen, clergy men, etc., testify to the truth of Graterakes' cures, which he published in London. The chief diseases which he cured were blindness, deafness, paralysis, dropsy, ulcers, swellings, and all kinds of fevers." Finally, it is said that “he laid his hand on the part affected, and so moved the disease downwards."

The celebrated innkeeper, Richter, of Stoyen in Silesia, was some years ago a second Graterakes.

Amongst the Italians Baptista Porta, Cordanus, Campanella, and Athanasius Kircher deserve to be mentioned. The first has contributed most eminently to convince the world of the superstition and groundlessness of sorcery, and the supernatural doings of devils; and to shew that such uncommon phenomena are partly the work of nature, and partly the tricks and delusions of self-interest, and has thereby rendered important services to magnetism.

In his book on Natural Magic (Magia naturalis, Lugduni, 1569), he says:-There is a universal World-spirit, which

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