Magnetism is a universal agent; there is nothing in it but the name; and it is a paradox only to those who are disposed to ridicule everything, and who ascribe to the influence of Satan all those phenomena which they cannot explain.

Magnetism is that occult influence which bodies exert over each other at a distance, whether by attraction or by repulsion.

He defines magnetism as “that occult influence which bodies exert over each other at a distance, whether by attraction or by repulsion,” and considers that it acts through a fluid, the Magnate Magnum, an ethereal spirit which penetrates all bodies, and in the human frame is found in the blood, and is directed by the will. Man can so use it as to affect objects at a distance, and the strength of his impulsion depends on the energy and concentration of his volition. “This magical power lies dormant in man.” So thoroughly convinced was Van Helmont of the reality of the magnetic force, that when the plague was raging at Brussels, he went thither to tend the sick. Many other authors wrote on the same lines during the seventeenth century, as Sir Kenelm Digby, in 1660, William Maxwell, 1679, and Robert Fludd. A most emarkable quotation from a work published in 1673 by Sebastian Wirdig, is given by Mr. Colquhoun: “Totus mundus constat et positus est in magnetismo; omnes sublunarium vicissitudines fiunt per magnetismum; vita conservatur magnetismo; interitus omnium reruni fiunt per magnetismum.” In 1889, Dr. Buck writes, in words that are wellnigh an echo of the seventeenth century philosopher: “We thus discern an underlying substance everywhere diffused, of great tenuity, permeating all things as the common basis of matter and force. This substance, with its characteristic polarizing tendency, and its universal diffusibility, outwardly displayed in atoms of elements, and in all objective phenomenal nature, is magnetism.”