It is unnecessary to follow Mesmer through his minor performances. The relief sometimes obtained by stroking diseased parts with the hand had before been proclaimed by Dr Greatorex, whose pretensions had no less an advocate than the Honourable Robert Boyle. The extraordinary tales of Mesmer's immediate and instantaneous personal power over individuals are probably part exaggeration, part the real result of his confidence and practice in the use of the means he wielded. Mesmer died in 1815. Among his pupils, when at the zenith of his fame, was the Marquis de Puysegur. Returning from serving at the siege of Gibraltar, this young officer found mesmerism the mode at Paris, and appears to have become, for no other reason, one of the initiated. At the end of the course of instruction, he professed himself to be no wiser than when he began; and he ridiculed the credulity and the faith of his brothers, who were stanch adherents of the new doctrine. However he did not forget his lesson; and on going, the same spring, to his estate at Basancy, near Soissons, he took occasion to mesmerise the daughter of his agent, and another young person, for the toothach, who declared themselves, in a few minutes, cured. This questionable success was sufficient to lead M. de Puysegur, a few days after, to try his hand on a young peasant of the name of Victor, who was suffering with a severe fluxion upon the chest. What was M. de Puysegur's surprise when, at the end of a few minutes, Victor went off into a kind of tranquil sleep, without crisis or convulsion, and in that sleep began to gesticulate, and talk, and enter into his private affairs. Then he became sad; and M. de Puysegur tried mentally to inspire him with cheerful thoughts; he hummed a lively tune to himself, _inaudibly_, and immediately Victor began to sing the air. Victor remained asleep for an hour, and awoke composed, with his symptoms mitigated. The case of Victor revolutionised the art of mesmerism. The large part of his life in which M. Puysegur had nothing to do but to follow this vein of inquiry, was occupied in practising and advocating a gentle manipulation to induce sleep, in preference to the more violent crises. I have no plea for telling you how M. de Puysegur served in the first French revolutionary armies; how he quitted the service in disgust; how narrowly he escaped the guillotine; how he lived in retirement afterwards, benevolently endeavouring to do good to his sick neighbours by mesmerism; how he survived the Restoration; and how, finally, he died of a cold caught by serving again in the encampment at Rheims to assist as an old _militaire_ at the _sacre_ of Charles X.