"The bottle was tried, with what result is easily imagined. Monsieur Campan grew worse. Improving the opportunity of the lady's absence, Mesmer bled and blistered the patient, who recovered. "Imagine the lady's astonishment when Mesmer asked for and actually obtained a written certificate of cure by magnetism" (Mesmerism). This is more easily believed when one learns that Mesmer obtained his degree on an address, or thesis, relating to "planetary influence on the human body," and that afterwards, in answer to the inquiry by a learned Paris physician, who asked him why he ordered his patients to bathe in the Seine, instead of spring water, as the waters of the Seine were always dirty, Mesmer replied,-- "Why, my dear doctor, the cause of the water which is exposed to the sun's rays being superior to all other water is, that it is magnetized by the sun. I myself magnetized the sun some twenty years ago." All that sort of fellows have ever a short course. Mesmer reached his zenith in Paris about the year 1784, when, for one year's practice, he received the enormous sum of four hundred thousand francs. The government, at the instigation of Count Maurepas, had previously offered him an annuity of twenty thousand francs, with ten thousand francs additional, to support a college hospital, if he would remain and practise only in France. "One unpleasant condition was attached to this offer, which prevented its acceptance; viz., three nominees of the crown were to watch the proceedings." The government appointed a commission, consisting of Dr. Guillotin, and three other physicians, and five members of the Academy,--Franklin, Bailly, Borey, Leroi, and Lavoisier,--to examine the means employed by Mesmer. The result of the investigation--the discovery of his battery, which he termed the _baquet_, around which his patients assembled, and his windy pretensions to the self-possession of some animal magnetism beyond even his disciples, Bergasse and Deslon--was unfavorable to the truth of animal magnetism and morality, and the enthusiasm in his favor rapidly subsided. Mesmer soon found it convenient to repair to London. Here he made no great impression; his day had gone by. He died in his native town, in all but penury and obscurity, in 1815. Clairvoyance now made its appearance, which was but a different phase of magnetism, and Mesmerism was soon but indifferently practised in France. In England the faculty entirely ignored it. CLAIRVOYANCE. What is it? The word is French, meaning, literally, clear-sightedness. It is a power attributed to certain persons, or claimed by certain persons, of seeing things not visible to the eye, or things at a distance. It is the action of mind over mind,--the seeing, mentally, of one mind through another.