communication with the Academy of Sciences. This society even acceded to
a rendezvous. But, instead of the empty words that were offered them,
the academicians required experiments. Mesmer stated--I quote his
words--that _it was child's play_; and the conference had no other
result.

The Royal Society of Medicine, being called upon to judge of the
pretended cures performed by the Austrian doctor, thought that their
agents could not give a well-founded opinion "without having first duly
examined the patients to ascertain their state." Mesmer rejected this
natural and reasonable proposal. He wished that the agents should be
content with the word of honour and attestations of the patients. In
this respect, also, the severe letters of the worthy Vicq-d'Azyr put an
end to communications which must have ended unsatisfactorily.

The faculty of medicine showed, we think, less wisdom. It refused to
examine any thing; it even proceeded in legal form against one of its
regent doctors who had associated himself, they said, with the
charlatanism of Mesmer.

These barren debates evidently proved that Mesmer himself was not
thoroughly sure of his theory, nor of the efficacy of the means of cure
that he employed. Still the public showed itself blind. The infatuation
became extreme. French society appeared at one moment divided into
magnetizers and magnetized. From one end of the kingdom to the other
agents of Mesmer were seen, who, with receipt in hand, put the weak in
intellect under contribution.

The magnetizers had had the address to intimate that the mesmeric crises
manifested themselves only in persons endowed with a certain