Isis Revelata: An Inquiry into Animal Magnetism

dice against all further inquiry. Any attempt, subsequently made, to reintroduce the subject to public notice, must have been regarded as implying a preference for private investigation and individual judgment over the apparently solemn, deliberate, and authoritative decision of a celebrated scientific body. Besides, the names of the majority of those individuals—however respectable or distinguished among their own fellow citizens—who had made Animal Magnetism the object of their research on the Continent, and given their support to that mode of treatment as a healing process, were almost entirely unknown in this country. Consequently, they could have carried little weight, if authority alone were to be relied upon.

In more recent times, however—fortunately for my planned undertaking—a Committee consisting of some of the most distinguished members of one of those scientific societies which had formerly pronounced a judgment so apparently unfavorable in this interesting matter—the Royal Academy of Medicine at Paris—has drafted a new Report on the subject. This report is founded upon numerous experiments and may be fairly considered as having now replaced the former Report of the Commissioners appointed in 1784, thus placing Animal Magnetism on a footing of respectability, by