After being an invalid for five or six years, and consulting, all in
vain, many doctors, and taking their remedies all for naught, the idea
seized him that such an obstinate malady as his must have some
supernatural evil origin, or in other words, that he was possessed by
a demon.

"Therefore he conjured this devil of a disorder, in the name of Jesus
Christ to leave him--so it left, and the good GASSNER has put it on
record that for sixteen years after he enjoyed perfect health and
never had occasion for any remedy, spiritual or otherwise.

"This success made him reflect whether all maladies could not be cured
by exorcism . . . The experiment which he tried on the invalids of his
parish were so successful that his renown soon opened through all
Suabia, and the regions roundabout. Then he began to travel, being
called for everywhere."

GASSNER was so successful that at Ratisbon he had, it is said, 6,000
patients of all ranks encamped in tents. He cured by simply touching
with his hands. But that in which he appears original was that he not
only made his patients sleep or become insensible by ordering them to
do so but caused them to raise their arms and legs, tremble, feel any
kind of pain, as is now done by the hypnotist. "'In a young lady of
good family' he caused laughter and weeping, stiffness of the limbs,
absence of sight and hearing, and _anæsthesia_ so as to make the pulse
beat at his will."

M. FIGUIER and others do not seem to have been aware that a century
before GASSNER, a PIETRO PIPERNO of Naples published a book in which
there was a special exorcism or conjurations, as he calls them, for