Genre:

Letter, Spoof; Polemic

Subjects:

Animal Magnetism, Mesmerism

    Describes his visit to an 'exhibition of animal magnetism' at the Hungerford Hall in London. Reports that Auguste Lassaigne sent Prudence Bernard to sleep and 'caused her to do things that make her appear extremely wide awake'. These 'things' include moving a magnet 'without touching it', a feat that the author ascribed to either a 'magnetic influence' or by 'communicating vibration through the floor'. Adds that the stage managers tried unsuccessfully to show him that it was the former. In a description of a 'thought-reading' display, records how Lassaigne made Prudence Bernard believe she was walking over flowers. The author records how he established that 'grasping the hand of the somnambulist', an apparently important condition of the display, had no effect on the somnambulist. He is confident that 'Collusion or trick seemed impossible' but denies that he should believe in a miracle because he 'cannot imagine how it is done'. (184) Concludes by criticising mesmerists for not allowing analysis of their 'extraordinary phenomena' and compares them to 'friars and quacks'.