"Ce domaine de la Suggestion est immense. Il n'y a pas un
seul fait de notre vie mentale qui ne puisse être reproduit et
exageré artificiellement par ce moyen."--_Binet et Frère, Le
Magnetisme Animal_.

Omitting the many vague indications in earlier writers, as well as
those drawn from ancient Oriental sources, we may note that
POMPONATIUS or POMPONAZZO, an Italian, born in 1462, declared in a
work entitled _De naturalium effectuum admirandorum Causis seu de
Incantationibus_, that to cure disease it was necessary to use a
strong will, and that the patient should have a vigorous imagination
and much faith in the _praê cantator_. PARACELSUS asserted the same
thing in many passages directly and indirectly. He regarded medicine
as magic and the physician as a wizard who should by a powerful will
act on the imagination of the patient. But from some familiarity with
the works of PARACELSUS--the first folio of the first full edition is
before me as I write--I would say that it would be hard to declare
what his marvelous mind did _not_ anticipate in whatever was allied to
medicine and natural philosophy. Thus I have found that long before
VAN HELMONT, who has the credit of the discovery, PARACELSUS knew how
to prepare silicate of soda, or water-glass.

Hypnotism as practiced at the present day, and with regard to its
common results, was familiar to JOHANN JOSEPH GASSNER, a priest in
Suabia, of whom LOUIS FIGUIER writes as follows in his _Histoire du
Merveilleux dans les Temps Modernes_, published in 1860:

"GASSNER, like the Englishman VALENTINE GREAT-RAKES, believed himself
called by divine inspiration to cure diseases. According to the
precept of proper charity he began at home--that is to say on himself.