Mesmer, who was the first to make the anæsthetic effects of certain passages of the hand over the bodies of patients known to the public, sought originally to explain them by the agency of electricity; but as early as 1773 he ascribed them to magnetism. From that day he employed magnets, and by passing them over the affected parts of his patients, he performed remarkable cures for many years in the city of Vienna. He looked upon the magnet as the physician, which cured the patient in the same way in which it attracted iron. Soon after, however, he became acquainted with the famous Father Gassner, of Ratisbon, who had obtained precisely the same results, without a magnet, by simple manipulations, and, henceforth, he also treated his patients with the hand only; but he retained the old name, looking now upon himself, and others who were endowed in the same manner, as possessing the powers of a strong magnet. In the meantime one of his pupils, the Marquis de Puységur, had quite accidentally discovered the peculiar nature of somnambulism, and with rare foresight profited by the moments of clear consciousness which at times interrupted the trance, in order to learn from his patients themselves the means of curing their diseases. He had from that moment devoted all the leisure of his life to the study of these singular but most beneficial phenomena, employing only the simplest manipulations in place of the more exciting means used by Mesmer, and doing an immense amount of good by his judicious cures.