With the title of
A Mystery, several newspapers reported the following fact in May:
“Two ladies, from the Faubourg Saint-Germain, presented themselves, one of these last days, to the commissioner of their district and pointed out to him the named P…, who had, they said, abused their confidence and their credulity, by assuring them that he would cure them of diseases, against which his care had been powerless. “Having opened an investigation on this subject, the magistrate learned that P… passed for a skillful doctor, whose clientele increased every day, and who made extraordinary cures. From his answers to the commissioner's questions, P… seems convinced that he is endowed with a supernatural faculty that gives him the power to heal, just by placing his hands on the sick organs. For twenty years he was a cook; he was even cited as one of the most skillful in his profession, that he abandoned a year ago to devote himself to the art of healing. According to him, he would have had several mysterious visions and apparitions, in which an envoy of God would have revealed to him that he had to accomplish a humanitarian mission on Earth, that he should not fail or be damned. Obeying, he said, this order from heaven, the former cook moved into an apartment in the rue Saint-Placide, and the patients were quick to abound to his consultations. He doesn't prescribe drugs; he examines the patient that he must treat when fasting. He feels the patient, searches for and discovers the seat of the disease, on which he applies his hands arranged in a cross, pronounces a few words that are, he says, his secret; then, in his prayer, an invisible Spirit comes and takes illness away. P… is certainly mad; but what is extraordinary, inexplicable, is that he proved, as the investigation shows, that by this singular process, he cured more than forty people suffering from serious illnesses. Several expressed their gratitude to him by donating money; an old lady, owner in the vicinity of Fontainebleau, made him her heir for a sum of 40,000 francs, by a will found in his house, where a search has been carried out. P… was kept under arrest, and his trial, that will, undoubtedly take place soon, in the correctional police, promises to be curious." We are neither the apologist nor the detractor of Mr. P… whom we do not know. Is he in good or bad conditions? Is he sincere or charlatan? We don't know; it is the future that will prove it; we do not take side for or against him. We mention the fact as it is reported, because it is added to the idea of all those that support the existence of one of those strange faculties, that confuse science and those who do not want to admit anything outside the visible and tangible world. After hearing so much about it and seeing the facts multiply, we are forced to agree that there is something, and little by little we distinguish between truth and deception.
In the report above, we have, no doubt, noticed this curious passage, and the not less curious contradiction that it contains: “
P… is certainly mad; but what is extraordinary, inexplicable, is that he proved, as the investigation shows, that by this singular process, he cured more than forty people suffering from serious illnesses.” Thus, the investigation confirms the healings; but because the means he employs is inexplicable and unrecognized by the Faculty, he is
certainly mad. On this account, the Abbé Prince de Hohenlohe, whose marvelous cures we have reported in the Spiritist Review of December 1866, was a fool; the venerable
Cure of Ars, who also performed cures by these singular procedures, was a madman, and so many others; Christ, who healed without a diploma and did not use drugs, was mad, and would have paid many fines these days. Mad or not, when there is healing, there are many people who would rather be healed by a madman than be buried by a man of good sense.
With a diploma, all medical eccentricities are allowed. A doctor, whose name we have forgotten, but who earns a lot of money, employs a much more bizarre procedure; with a brush he paints the faces of his patients with small diamonds, red, yellow, green, blue diamonds with which he surrounds the eyes, nose and mouth, in a quantity proportional to the nature of the disease. What scientific data supports this kind of medication? A bad joke of an editor claimed that, to save himself enormous expenses of advertisements, this doctor had the patients worn them free of charge, on their faces. Seeing these tattooed faces in the streets, one naturally asks what it is? And the patients answer: It is the process of the famous doctor such. But he is a doctor; whether his process is good, bad or insignificant, that is not the question; he is allowed everything, even to be a charlatan: he is authorized to do so by the Faculty; if an unqualified individual wants to imitate him, he will be prosecuted for fraud.
They protest against the credulity of the public towards charlatans; one is astonished at the crowd that goes to the first comer that announces a new means of healing, to somnambulists, bonesetters and others; of the predilection for the remedies of the good woman, and attack the ineptitude of the human species! The real cause lies in the very natural desire that the patients have to be cured, and in the failure of medicine in too many cases; if the doctors cured more often and more surely, one would not go elsewhere; it almost always happens that one only resort to such exceptional means after all official means are uselessly exhausted; now, the patient who wants to be cured at any cost, worries little about being cured according to the rule or against the rule.
We will not repeat here what is clearly demonstrated today, on the causes of certain cures, inexplicable only to those who do not want to bother to go back to the source of the phenomenon. If the healing takes place, it is a fact, and this fact has a cause; is it more rational to deny it than to seek it out? It is chance, they will say; the patient would have healed on his own. Be it, but then the doctor who declared him incurable showed great ignorance. And then, if there are twenty, forty, a hundred such healings, is it always chance? It would be, we must admit, a singularly persevering and intelligent chance, to which one could give the name of
Dr. Hazard.
We will examine the question from a more serious point of view. People, without diplomas, that treat the sick by magnetism; by magnetized water, that is only a dissolution of the magnetic fluid; by the laying on of hands, that is an instantaneous and powerful magnetization; through the prayer, that is a mental magnetization, with the help of the Spirits, still a variety of magnetization, are they punishable by law against the illegal practice of medicine?
The terms of the law are certainly very elastic because it does not specify the means. Rigorously and logically, we can only consider as exercising the art of healing, those that make a profession, or put differently, who benefit from it. However, we have seen sentences passed against individuals given to such care out of pure devotion, without any ostensible or concealed interest. Therefore, the offense is, above all, in the prescription of medications. However, notorious selflessness is generally taken into account as a mitigating circumstance. Until now, it had not been thought that a cure could take place without the use of drugs; the law, therefore, did not provide for the case of curative treatments without remedies, and it would only be by extension that it would be applied to magnetizers and healing mediums. As official medicine does not recognize any efficacy in magnetism and its appendices, and even less in the intervention of Spirits, one cannot legally condemn for illegal exercise of medicine, magnetizers and healing mediums, who do not prescribe anything, or nothing other than magnetized water, otherwise that would be officially recognizing a virtue in the magnetic agent, and placing it among the curative means; that would be to understand magnetism and healing mediumship in the art of healing, and belie the Faculty. What is sometimes done, in such a case, is to convict for the crime of fraud, and breach of trust, as for selling something worthless, the one who derives a direct or misappropriated profit, or even concealed under the disguised name of optional compensation, a disguise that should not always be trusted. The appreciation of the fact depends entirely on the way of considering the thing in itself; it is often a matter of personal opinion, unless there is an alleged abuse, in which case the question of good faith always comes into play; justice then assesses the aggravating or mitigating circumstances. It is quite different for the one whose selflessness is proven and complete; considering that he prescribes nothing and receives nothing, the law cannot reach him, or else it would have to be given an extension that neither the spirit nor the letter include. One cannot see deception where there is nothing to gain. There is no power in the world that can oppose to the exercise of healing mediumship or magnetization, in the true sense of the word.
However, it will be said, Mr. Jacob did not charge anything, and he was nonetheless prohibited. That is true, but he was neither prosecuted nor convicted for the act in question; the ban was a measure of military discipline, due to the disturbance that the influx of people, who went there, could cause to the camp; and if since then he has apologized for this ban, it is because it suited him. If he hadn't been in the army, no one could worry him. (See Spiritist Review, March1866: Spiritism and the magistrature.)
[1]
[1] The correct reference should be March 1866 – a typo (T.N.)
