An essay on the influence of the imagination and passions in the production and cure of diseases / by Arthur Jacob, M.D. ... to which is added, a translation of a memoir by Dr. C. Pfeufer ... on the cures performed by the operations of the Prince de Hohenlohe.

  • Jacob, Arthur, 1790-1874.
Date:
1823
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on the influence of the imagination and passions in the production and cure of diseases / by Arthur Jacob, M.D. ... to which is added, a translation of a memoir by Dr. C. Pfeufer ... on the cures performed by the operations of the Prince de Hohenlohe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    structed, went to pray there. Presently it went abroad that miraculous cures were performed at this tomb, the persons who extended themselves upon it falling into convulsions ; the sick were cured, the blind saw, and the tleaf heard. Many of these miraculous cures were officially proved in the Bishop's court in Paris ; they were sworn to by persons of credit and property, and every exer- tion was made to arrive at the source of the sup- posed imposture without effect. In fact the convulsions were produced, and real cures per- formed, as in other cases, by the mental impres- sion: The business caused such disturbance in Paris, that the court ordered the church yard to be shut up; and one Montgeron, a violent sup- porter of the tombstone's pretensions, in the warmth of his zeal, and the simplicity of his heart, presented a quarto catalogue of the cures to the king, who sent him to the Bastille for his paiEs. Of all the examples of cures performed by ex- citement of the imagination, not one has retained its celebrity so long as the animal magnetism, or Mes- merism, as it is sometimes called ; after a lapse of nearly one hundred years since it was first broached; it still has its adherents, and perhaps it remains to be determined, whether any other power than the mental impression operates in producing the results which distinguish it. It was first brought into general notice by Mesmer, a German, about the year 177^5, and he quickly acquired strong