"Electro-biology" made its way into England, and there found a place among the endless forms of absurdity and pseudo-science then prevalent. A few illustrations are powerless to give any adequate notion of the extent and variety of the extravagant pretensions with which animal magnetism was saturated in the years following Braid's observations. The diabolic origin of mesmerism was discussed by pulpit and press; a pamphlet, entitled "Dialogue between a Mesmerist and a Christian," maintained that the two faiths were incompatible. It was generally urged that mesmerism favored materialism, and in 1856 the Catholic Church issued an edict against the practice. The skepticism of the medical profession found expression in extreme and certainly unscientific statements. Dr. Buchanan (1851) of Glasgow, holding that the alleged condition was the result of acting and trickery, proposed the experiment of telling a hypnotized boy that he could not move, and then applying the birch; this, he felt confident, would satisfactorily refute the whole doctrine, and if, in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, the boy did not scamper off, though his feet were mesmerized, he promised to recant "and to believe in mesmerism ever after." There is unfortunately no record of the acceptance of this test, which, in comparison with the hypnotic anæsthesia of surgical operations then performed, would have been easily met. From the following comment of a medical journal, in 1843, one may infer that the controversy did not always recognize the _politesses_ of discussion. "The mesmero-mania has nearly dwindled in the metropolis into servile fatuity, but lingers in some of the provinces with the _gobe-mouches_ and chaw-bacons, who, after gulping down a pound of fat pork, would, with well-greased gullets, swallow such a lot of mesmeric mummery as would choke an alligator or boa-constrictor."