Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery

Subjects:

Mesmerism, Animal Magnetism, Government, Charlatanry, Politics, Electricity, Quackery, Medical Treatment

    Reports on a hirsute London practitioner of animal magnetism whose attempts to deprive his patients of their senses proved difficult because they 'left all the sense they possess at home'. Suggests, in view of his ability to send politicians to sleep and to stupefy John Bull, that the Prime Minister Robert Peel is the 'Charles Lafontaine of political mesmerism'. Compares Lafontaine's tactics to those of Peel. For example, 'one resorts to electrics, the other to election tricks'.