Animal Magnetism
by
Tho’ famed was Mesmer, in his day,
Nor less so, in ours, is Dupotet,
To say nothing of all the wonders done
By that wizard, Dr. Elliotson,
When, standing as if the gods to invoke, he
Up waves his arm, and–down drops Okey![1]
Tho’ strange these things, to mind and sense,
If you wish still stranger things to see–
If you wish to know the power immense
Of the true magnetic influence,
Just go to her Majesty’s Treasury,
And learn the wonders working there–
And I’ll be hanged if you don’t stare!
Talk of your animal magnetists,
And that wave of the hand no soul resists,
Not all its witcheries can compete
With the friendly beckon towards Downing Street,
Which a Premier gives to one who wishes
To taste of the Treasury loaves and fishes.
It actually lifts the lucky elf,
Thus acted upon, above himself;–
He jumps to a state of clairvoyance,
And is placeman, statesman, all, at once!
These effects, observe (with which I begin),
Take place when the patient’s motioned in;
Far different of course the mode of affection,
When the wave of the hand’s in the out direction;
The effects being then extremely unpleasant,
As is seen in the case of Lord Brougham, at present;
In whom this sort of manipulation,
Has lately produced such inflammation,
Attended with constant irritation,
That, in short–not to mince his situation–
It has workt in the man a transformation
That puzzles all human calculation!
Ever since the fatal day which saw
That “pass” performed on this Lord of Law–
A pass potential, none can doubt,
As it sent Harry Brougham to the right about–
The condition in which the patient has been
Is a thing quite awful to be seen.
Not that a casual eye could scan
This wondrous change by outward survey;
It being, in fact, the interior man
That’s turned completely topsy-turvy:–
Like a case that lately, in reading o’er ’em,
I found in the Acta Eruditorum,
Of a man in whose inside, when disclosed,
The whole order of things was found transposed;
By a lusus naturae, strange to see,
The liver placed where the heart should be,
And the spleen (like Brougham’s, since laid on the shelf)
As diseased and as much out of place as himself.
In short, ’tis a case for consultation,
If e’er there was one, in this thinking nation;
And therefore I humbly beg to propose,
That those savans who mean, as the rumor goes,
To sit on Miss Okey’s wonderful case,
Should also Lord Parry’s case embrace;
And inform us, in both these patients’ states,
Which ism it is that predominates,
Whether magnetism and somnambulism,
Or, simply and solely, mountebankism.
[1] The name of the heroine of the performances at the North London Hospital.