Archives du Magnetisme Animal.
L'ignorance des lois de la Nature Enfanta les faux miracles
1820--1823 Monthly, irregular
Paris, France.
Language: French.
Editor: Etienne-Felix, Baron d'Henin de Cuviller.
Publisher: Barrois l'aine: Treuttel et Wurtz; Imprimerie de P. Gueffier.
Succeeds: Bibliotheque du Magnetisme Animal
1/1, May 1820-1823.
Illustrated.
23-25 francs a year, 96 pp.

Four volumes of three numbers each were to be published a year. Six numbers (in two volumes) were published in 1820, the first volume of which consisted of 287 pages, intended to constitute three issues (May-July, 1820) but without internal separations or title pages, which indicates that they were published as a single volume rather than as individual issues. The journal was suspended during 1821 while Henin d'Couviller says he was occupied preparing his Magnetisme Animal Retrouve dans l'Antiquite and a book on Christian morals, and the journal was begun anew with volume 3, number 7, in 1822. The journal is in some sense the successor of the Bibliotheque du Magnetisme Animal, which Henin d'Couviller had edited in 1817-1818. It consisted mainly of long essays written by Henin d'Couviller (1755-1841) in an effort to understand the "system of the mystic doctrine of the Magnetists"--a term he claimed to have coined. He did coin the use of the prefix "hypn" (from the Greek hypnos, sleep) to describe the phenomena of mesmerism, as in hypnosis, hypnotic, and the like. He was a diplomat and marechal-de-camp and a disciple of Mesmer, although he rejected the notion of a magnetic fluid and thought that belief and suggestion were the ultimate causes of the magnetic phenomena. The journal also featured the reflections of the editor on rabdomancy, hydromancy, Nostradamus (with a succinct biography and portrait), etc., and on the opinions of Deleuze, Abbe Faria, voyages of somnambules to the moon, magic (dismissed as merely animal magnetism rather than miraculous), and accounts of healings by a variety of practitioners, mainly of the old aristocracy. Crabtree 297. NYPL; Yale University; University of Chicago; Harvard University; National Library of Medicine; BL; BNF; and other locations in OCLC.

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