A somewhat lengthy service follows, and in the middle is this rubric: ‘Then the Elders present shall anoint the sick person with the oil on the head or forehead, and, if the sick person request it, also on any part affected.’ And it winds up with the subjoined direction, ‘All the holy oil that shall remain after the anointing shall be forthwith consumed by Fire.’ I had intended to confine my subject entirely to English quacks, but the name of Mesmer is so allied to quackery in England that I must needs refer to him. He was born at Merseburg in Germany on May 23, 1733, and died at the same place March 5, 1815. He studied medicine, and took a doctor’s degree in 1766. He started his extraordinary theory in 1772 by publishing a tract entitled, ‘_De Planetarium_ _Influxu_,’ in which he upheld that tides exist in the air as in the sea, and were similarly produced. He maintained that the sun and the moon acted upon an etherial fluid which penetrated everything, and this force he termed _Animal Magnetism_. But there is every reason to believe that he was indebted for his discovery to a Jesuit father named Hel, who was professor of astronomy at Vienna. Hel used peculiarly made steel plates, which he applied to different portions of his patient’s body. Hel and Mesmer subsequently quarrelling about the prior discovery of each, the latter discontinued the use of the plates, and substituted his fingers. Then he found it was unnecessary to touch his patient, but that the same magnetic influence could be induced by waving his hands, and making what are called _mesmeric passes_ at a distance. But the Viennese are a practical race, and his failures to cure, notably in one case, that of Mademoiselle Paradis (a singer), who was blind, caused charges of deceit to be brought against him, and he was told to leave Vienna at a day’s notice. He obeyed, and went to Paris, where he set up a superb establishment, fitted up most luxuriously. The novelty-loving Parisians soon visited him, and here, in a dimly lit room, with pseudo-scientific apparatus to excite the imagination, and a great deal of corporal manipulation, tending to the same purpose, to the accompaniment of soft music or singing, hysterical women went into convulsive fits, and laughed, sobbed, and shrieked, according to their different temperaments. Having reached this stage, Mesmer made his appearance, clad in a gold embroidered robe of violet silk, holding in his hand a magnetic rod of wondrous power. With slow and solemn steps he approached his patients, and the exceeding gravity of his deportment, added to their ignorance of what might be coming next, generally calmed and subdued those who were not insensible. Those who had lost their senses he awoke by stroking them, and tracing figures upon their bodies with his magnetic wand, and, on their recovery, they used to testify to the great good his treatment had done them.