But mesmerism contained two things,--a bold empirical practice and a mystical theory. Mesmer strove, by the latter, to explain the effects which his practice produced. An odd fate his method and his theory will have had. His method was considered, by many of his contemporaries, as of solid importance; his theory was for the most part ridiculed as that of a half-crazed enthusiast and impostor. Now, no reasonable person can regard his practice in any other light than as a rough and hazardous experiment. But his theory, in the mean time, is ceasing to be absurd; for it admits of being represented as a very respectable anticipation of Von Reichenbach's recent discoveries. Mesmer, a native of Switzerland, was born in 1734. He became a student at Vienna, where his turn for the mystical led him to the studies of alchemy and astrology. In the year 1766, he published a treatise on the influence of the planets upon the human frame. It contains the idea that a force extends throughout space through which the stars can affect the body. In attempting to identify this force, Mesmer first supposed it to be electricity. Afterwards, about the year 1773, he adopted the belief that it must be ordinary magnetism. So at Vienna, from 1773 to 1775, he employed the practice of stroking diseased parts of the body with magnets. But, in 1776, making a tour in Bavaria and Switzerland, he fell in with the notorious Father Gassner, who had at that time undertaken the cure of the blind prince-bishop of Ratisbon by exorcism. Then Mesmer observed that, without employing magnets, Gassner obtained very much the same kind of effects upon the human body which he had produced with their aid. The fact was not lost upon him. He threw away his magnets, and henceforth operated with the hand alone. In 1777, his reputation a little damaged by a failure in the case of the musician Paradies, Mesmer left Vienna, and the following year betook himself to Paris. The great success which he obtained there drew upon him the indignation and jealousy of the faculty, who did not scruple to brand him with the stigma of charlatanism. They averred that he threw difficulties in the way of a satisfactory examination of his method; but perhaps he had reason to suspect want of fairness in the proposed inquiry. He refused, from the government, an offer of twenty thousand francs to divulge his method; but he was ready to explain it, it is true, under a pledge of secresy, to individuals for one hundred louis. But his practice itself gave most support to the allegations against him. His patients were received and treated with an air of mystery and studied effect. The apartment, hung on every side with mirrors, was dimly lighted. A profound silence was observed, broken only by strains of music, which occasionally floated through the rooms. The patients were arranged around a large vessel, which contained a heterogeneous mixture of chemical ingredients. With this and with each other, they were placed in