Human magnetism : its claims to dispassionate inquiry, being an attempt to show the utility of its application for the relief of human suffering / by W. Newnham.

Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Human magnetism : its claims to dispassionate inquiry, being an attempt to show the utility of its application for the relief of human suffering / by W. Newnham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    will be uppermost, and there must be an inevitable pre- judice excited against every thing which may decrease the means of subsistence—and of this number must he reckoned human magnetism ; hut if so, its friends will he slowly gained, and generally recruited from those who are not so dependent for their daily food. It is im- possible not to admit, that this argumentum ad crumenam must bias the minds of many against any change which may endanger the hope of their gains, and tend in any degree to supersede their craft, or at all events to en- danger its estimation. It will he observed that all these reasons are operating not so much against magnetism itself, as against the inquiry into its nature, and objects, and efficiency, all which we presume to be misunderstood. It is for this reason, that we are anxious to promote investigation, and that we shall now refer to some early writers, in order to prove that this doctrine is not a novelty, hut that m some shape or other, its traces are to he found from the first records ; and that its phenomena have always existed as the recognized manifestations of disease. It would lead me far beyond the reach of my own powers, or of your patience, to attempt a history of mag- netism’from its earliest period, to the present time ; and indeed it is difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain its first traces, or to define its origin, because it exists in the constitution of nature, and is therefore as old as the creation: it is occasionally visible as it has been de- veloped by circumstances or apparent accident, and is again lost sight of till awakened by some analogous events ; itDhas been known, and oftentimes unwittingly practised