Theos-Talk Archives (March 2002 Message tt00501)

2. John King.

Dallas's posting : "Near the Earth's surface there hangs over us--to
use a convenient simile--a steamy moral fog, composed of the 
undispersed exhalations of human vice and passion. This fog penetrates 
the sensitive to the very soul's core; his psychic self absorbs it as the 
sponge does water, or as fresh milk effluvia." 

In the USA the popularity of animal magnetism was spurred by the 
publication in 1837 of a number of American translations of French 
magnetic literature. A complete translation of the Franklin
commission report, along with "An Historical Outline of the 'Science,"' an
abstract of the committee report of the Royal Academy of Medicine of 
1831, and other comments was published in Philadelphia in that year 
(Franklin 1837). This little treatise concluded with the caution: "We warn
females from submitting themselves to the action of magnetism; so 
gross have been the indecencies committed, that the arm of the law has 
more than once interposed to put a stop to its proceedings" (Franklin 
1837).

Despite his reservations, the anonymous author of the remark 
reluctantly conceded the reality of animal magnetism and called for 
serious experimentation with its phenomena.

In 1837 a work compiled by John King, a so called professor of animal 
magnetism, was published in New York. It contained a review of the 
same 1831 report, a summary of views antagonistic to animal 
magnetism that had appeared in the Journal of Commerce, and King's 
own theory of why animal magnetism was an effective physical and 
mental agent. King's book is significant in that it contains an
English translation of a small section of Puys6gur's Magnetisme animal
(1807). 
This seems to be the only English translation of any part of
Puysegur's work ever published.

The publication of an American translation of Deleuze's Instruction 
pratique gave those who were interested in practicing animal 
magnetism much more than the sketchy outline offered by Poyen's 
lectures. The translator, Thomas C. Hartshorn, included an appendix 
describing local cases of mesmeric practice known to him. Instances
of medical clairvoyance were described, such as a case in which a 
magnetic somnambulist insisted that a very ill patient had a disease
of the spleen although her doctor had not made that diagnosis. The
patient died a few days later, and an autopsy revealed that an infected
spleen was in fact the cause of death.

Although Deleuze's manual emphasized animal magnetism as a healing 
technique, in America the emphasis was on the more spectacular 
aspects of somnambulism, particularly clairvoyance (see Fuller 1982).
In 1837 William Leete Stone published a Letter to Doctor A(mariah) 
Brigham, on Animal Magnetism: Being an Account of a Remarkable 
Interview between the Author and Miss Loraina Brackett while in a
State of Somnambulism. Brackett had received a severe blow on the top 
of the head and had for some time been in a tate of impaired speech 
and blindness as a result, When she was treated with animal 
magnetism, her speech became normal and her eyesight improved But 
the most striking result of the treatment was her somnambulistic ance. 
Stone described her as being able, without eyesight, to recogfor 
example, became involved with animal magnetism in 1845. The Signs 
of the Times (185 1) reveals that terminology from mesmerist 
practitioners had entered into spiritualism's vocabulary. 

The spiritualistic "circle" where people sat in a ring was a 
magnetic circle" by spiritualist mediums. The circle was in electrical 
terms:"The clairvoyant spoke of the rappings, calling ciectrical 
vibrations, and said communications might be had from the aMd if a 
battery was formed. 
Inquiry was made how a battery could be The reply was, 'By sitting 
around a table.. Spirits were often electric beings" and the rapping
out of messages was described in the newly invented telegraph, with 
the "magnetic fluid" of Morse by the electrical impulses emanating
from spirits.

Bri.