About the same time Balthazar Gracian, a Spaniard, boldly proclaimed his views. "The magnet," he said, "attracts iron; iron is found everywhere; everything, therefore, is under the influence of magnetism.... It is the same agent which gives rise to sympathy, antipathy, and the passions." Baptista Porta (1543-1615), one of the originators of the weapon-salve, had also great faith in the magnet. So effective was his work on the imaginations of his patients that he was considered a magician and prohibited from practising by the court of Rome. Sebastian Wirdig, professor of medicine at the University of Rostock, in Mecklenburg, wrote a treatise on "The New Medicine of the Spirits" which he presented to the Royal Society of London in 1673. He maintained that a magnetic influence took place, not only between the celestial and terrestrial bodies, but between all living things. The whole world was under the influence of magnetism: life was preserved by magnetism, death was the consequence of magnetism. Maxwell (1581-1640) propagated somewhat the same doctrine. He was a firm believer in sympathetic cures, and assumed a vital spirit of the universe which related all bodies. It was probably from this that Mesmer got his idea of what he called the universal fluid. It would seem, however, that Maxwell was aware of the great influence of imagination and suggestion. He said: "If you wish to work prodigies, abstract from the materiality of beings--increase the sum of spirituality in bodies--rouse the spirit from its slumbers. Unless you do one or other of these things--unless you can bind the idea, you can never perform anything good or great." About the same time, in Italy, Santanelli propagated the theory of a universal fluid. Everything material possessed a radiating atmosphere which operated magnetically. He also recognized, however, the great influence of the imagination. [Illustration: F. A. MESMER] About the year 1771, Father Hell, a Jesuit, and professor of astronomy at the University of Vienna, became famous through his magnetic cures, and invented steel plates of a peculiar form which he applied to the naked body as a cure for several diseases. In 1774 he communicated his system to Mesmer, the man who, more than any one else, drew the world's attention to the investigation of mental healing. Various estimates have been made of Mesmer's character and he frequently has been condemned. He was fond of display, but it is doubtful if he was more avaricious than most persons who lived before and have lived since. He was evidently honest in his scientific investigations and opinions, and this is our main concern.