Smith JVC. Mesmeric examinations. Boston Med Surg J 37: 85, 1847

"Mesmeric Examinations.--Before the discovery of the new use

of ether, the country swarmed with travelling mesmerizers who

lectured in every town and hamlet in New England--and made

such high pretensions, that gentlemen who presumed to

question the honesty of the vagabonds, made themselves quite

unpopular with the vulgar multitude. It was one of the great

boasts of the magnetizers that they could prepare the system,

by their extraordinary manipulations, or by an active mental

influence, so that the body would be insensible to pain. Whole

scores of silly girls were exhibited in public, on platforms,

pricked with needles, had their toes crushed and teeth extrac-

ted, of all which they were represented to be wholly unconscious.

The farce has been played off at the Tremont Temple, in the

city of Boston, repeatedly. Of late, however, the mighty boasters

have disappeared. Neither teeth are drawn, limbs amputated, or

tumors taken out, as they were, either here or in the state of

Maine, where some extraordinary operations were certified to, as

the triumphs of mesmerism, which were represented as "the hand-

maid to surgery, and destined to revolutionize the whole science

of medicine." How can this falling off be explained by those

noisy men and women who were offensively busy in propagating

the marvels of mesmerism one year ago? A few remnanat signs are

observable about our city, like these:--"mesmeric examinations

here," "all kinds of diseases investigated by an experienced

clairvoyant," &c. which are a reproach to the intelligence of the

age, to the good city in which they are to be seen, and a mor-

tifying evidence of the ignorance that passes for wisdom. A few

doughty champions of animal magnetism are struggling for professional

existence at Cincinnati under the less objectionable term of

neurologists, but we consider it as the same thing under a new

name."