It was through Deleuze's influence, also, that mesmerism was transplanted to America. As early as 1837, Charles Poyen lectured and wrote on animal magnetism in New England; he exhibited the usual phenomena, made the usual claims for supernatural faculties, and gave the usual fanciful expositions. It was, however, through Dods and Grimes, in 1850, that mesmerism became prominent in America, under the absurd name of "electro-biology." The popular interest which they aroused may be inferred from the fact that they were invited to exhibit before Congress, the signatures of Clay and Webster appearing in the letter of invitation. The absurdity of their writings is sufficiently evident in the following extracts: "Let two persons of equal brain, both in size and fluid, sit down. Let one of these individuals remain perfectly passive, and let the other exercise his mental and physical energies according to the true principles of mesmerizing, and he will displace some of the nervo-vital fluid from the passive brain and deposit it in his own instead. The next day let them sit another hour, and so on day after day, until the acting brain shall have displaced the major part of the nervo-vital fluid from the passive brain and filled up that space with its own nervous force, and the person will yield to the magnetic power and serenely slumber in its inexpressible quietude." "Your brain being magnetically subdued is worth hundreds of dollars to you. You are then ready for the day of distress." An ignorant young man is magnetized and forthwith converses with a "mental activity which put to blush men of superior education and intellectual endowments." An eminent lawyer is astonished at his learning and his quotations from legal authorities. He speaks Greek, Latin, French, Polish, all perfectly, and without accent; though when awake he knows no language but English. Grimes determined the function of parts of the brain from the answers of his somnambulist, and thus discovered that the corpus callosum is designed to equalize the flow of the nervous fluid. From the same source he received the assurance of the correctness of his phrenological views. "I then asked her concerning the location and uses of several new phreno-organs, which I supposed that I had discovered, and to my surprise she answered me without the least hesitation, and confirmed all my previous opinions, not even excepting those opinions which I had never mentioned to any one, and which she could only have known by clairvoyance."