The method of supplying good for unsound teeth, though long laid aside, in consequence of the danger with which the practice was attended, by the communication of disease from an unhealthy to a healthy person, was at one time as much the rage as the transfusion of blood. This practice, notwithstanding the objections which stand opposed to it, might, nevertheless, be adopted with success on many occasions, could persons enjoying a sound and wholesome state of body be found to answer the demand, however unnatural it may appear. A few untoward cases soon raised the hue and cry against the continuance of the practice, as in the transfusion of blood, though the latter has recently been attempted in the case of an individual exhausted by excessive hermorrage with a success which answered the expectation. There is little doubt that both the transfusion of blood, and engrafting or transplanting of teeth, are capable, with judgment and discrimination, of being made subservient in a variety of cases; though the chances of general success militate against these experiments; for it is the unalterable plan of nature to proceed gradually in her operations; all outrage and extravagance being at variance with her established laws. FOOTNOTES: [144] The art of exciting sleep in persons under the influence of animal magnetism, with a view to obtain or rather extort during this artificial sleep, their verbal declarations and directions for curing the diseases of both body and mind. Such, indeed, was the rage for propagating this mystical nonsense, that even the pulpit was occasionally resorted to, in order to make, not fair penitents, but fair proselytes. CHAPTER XXII. THE ROSICRUCIANS OR THEOSOPHISTS. This remarkable sect was founded upon the doctrines of Paracelsus, during the latter part of the sixteenth, and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. The society was known by the name of the Rosencrucians or Rosecrucians; and as it has not been without its followers and propagators in different shapes, even to the present time, we shall here present the reader with a concise account of the origin and tenets of that fanatical sect. The first intimation of the existence of this order we find announced to the world in a book published in the German language, in the year 1614, with the following title, "_The universal and general Reformation of the world, together with an account of the famous fraternity of the Rosencrucians_." The work contains an intimation, that the members of the society had been secretly engaged for a century preceding, and that they had come to the knowledge of many great and important secrets, which, if communicated to the world, would promote the happiness of man.