DISGUSTED with his treatment at Vienna, Mesmer shook the dust of the city off his feet and went to Paris. His rapidly growing reputation had preceded him. Expectation was a tiptoe. On all sides he was cordially received. The medical profession alone stood aloof, sceptical, unfriendly, suspicious. They saw in him only a rival using other methods than theirs. They also prepared for him a warm welcome—but of a different nature.
At first, finding his methods strange, people were inclined to laugh. But he had absolute confidence in himself, and a courage and perseverance which triumphed over all obstacles.
Very soon the number of patients who sought his aid became so great that he found it impossible to attend to them all personally. He therefore had recourse to the baquet.
This curious device consisted of an oval vessel, about four feet in diameter and one foot
deep. It was placed in the centre of the salon. In it were laid a number of wine-bottles, filled with magnetised water, well corked up, and disposed in radii, with their necks outwards. Water was then poured into the vessel until it covered the bottles, and filings of iron were thrown in occasionally "to heighten the magnetic effect." The vessel was then closed with an iron cover and pierced through with many holes. From each hole issued a long, movable rod of iron which the patients applied to such parts of their bodies as were afflicted.
In addition to the baquet assistant magnetisers, trained by Mesmer, were employed. They made passes and laid their hands upon the patients, with the object of increasing the magnetism. Rigorous silence was maintained during treatment, and, to produce a suitable atmosphere of repose, music and singing were employed.
A description of the scene was written by an eye-witness, the historian Bailly.
"The sick persons," wrote Bailly," arranged in great numbers, and in several rows, round the baquet, receive the magnetism by all these means: by the iron rods which convey it to them from the baquet, by the cords round their bodies, by the connection of the thumb, which
conveys to them the magnetism of their neighhours, and by the sounds of a pianoforte, or of an agreeable voice, diffusing the magnetism in the air. The patients are also directly magnetised by means of the finger and wand of the magnetiser moved slowly before their faces, above or behind their heads, and on the diseased parts, always observing the direction of the holes. The magnetiser acts by fixing his eyes on them. But, above all, they are magnetised by the application of his hands and the pressure of his fingers on the hypochondrium and on the regions of the abdomen. . . .
"Meanwhile the patients, in their different conditions, present a very varied picture. Some are calm, tranquil, and experience no effect. Others cough, spit, feel slight pains, local or general heat, and have sweatings. Others, again, are agitated and tormented with convulsions. These convulsions are remarkable in regard to the number affected with them, to their duration and force. They are preceded and followed by a state of languor or reverie, a kind of depression, and sometimes drowsiness. . . .
"Nothing is more astonishing than the spectacle of these convulsions. One who has not seen them can form no idea of them. The
observer is as much astonished at the profound repose of one portion of the patients as at the agitation of the rest—at the various accidents that are repeated, and at the sympathies that are exhibited. All are under the power of the magnetiser. It matters not in what state of drowsiness they may be, the sound of his voice, a look, a motion of the hand—brings them out of it."
"It is impossible," wrote Baron Dupotet, to conceive the sensation which Mesmer's experiments created in Paris. No theological controversy in the earlier ages of the Church was ever conducted with greater bitterness."
His adversaries hurled all the hard names at him they could find or invent, and the Abbé Fiard asserted that he had, beyond a doubt, sold himself to the Devil.