Pulse

patients, M— discovered that cures beyond the prowess of a physician could sometimes be effected; the cases of Fräulein Oesterlin and the mathematician Professor Bauer were especially noted.
    Had M— been a fairground quack, and his patients credulous peasants crowded into some rank booth, as eager to be relieved of their savings as of their pain, society would have paid no attention. But M— was a man of science, of wide curiosity, and not obvious immodesty, who made no claims beyond what he could account for.
    ‘It works,’ Professor Bauer had commented, as his breath came more easily and he was able to raise his arms beyond the horizontal. ‘But how does it work?’
    ‘I do not yet understand it,’ M— had replied. ‘When magnets were employed in past ages, it was explained that they drew illness to them just as they attracted iron filings. But we cannot sustain such an argument nowadays. We are not living in the age of Paracelsus. Reason guides our thinking, and reason must be applied, the more so when weare dealing with phenomena which lurk beneath the skin of things.’
    ‘As long as you do not propose to dissect me in order to find out,’ replied Professor Bauer.
    In those early months, the magnetic cure was as much a matter of scientific enquiry as of medical practice. M— experimented with the positioning of the magnets and the number applied to the patient. He himself often wore a magnet in a leather bag around his neck to increase his influence, and used a stick, or wand, to indicate the course of realignment he was seeking in the nerves, the blood, the organs. He magnetised pools of water and had patients place their hands, their feet, and sometimes their whole bodies in the liquid. He magnetised the cups and glasses they drank from. He magnetised their clothes, their bedsheets, their looking glasses. He magnetised musical instruments so that a double harmony might result from their playing. He magnetised cats, dogs and trees. He constructed a baquet , an oaken tub containing two rows of bottles filled with magnetised water. Steel rods emerging from holes in the lid were placed against afflicted parts of the body. Patients were sometimes encouraged to join hands and form a circle round the baquet , since M— surmised that the magnetic stream might augment in force as it passed through several bodies simultaneously.
    ‘Of course I remember the gnädige Fräulein from my days as a medical student, when I was sometimes permitted to accompany Professor Stoerk.’ Now M—was himself a member of the Faculty, and the girl was almost a woman: plump, with a mouth that turned down and a nose that turned up. ‘And though I can recall the description of her condition then, I would nonetheless like to ask questions which I fear you have answered many times already.’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘There is no possibility that the Fräulein was blind from birth?’
    M— noticed the mother impatient to reply, but restraining herself.
    ‘None,’ her husband said. ‘She saw as clearly as her brothers and sisters.’
    ‘And she was not ill before becoming blind?’
    ‘No, she was always healthy.’
    ‘And did she receive any kind of shock at the time of her misfortune, or shortly before?’
    ‘No. That is to say, none that we or anyone else observed.’
    ‘And afterwards?’
    This time the mother did answer. ‘Her life has always been as protected against shock as we are able to make it. I would tear out my own eyes if I thought it would give Maria Theresia back her sight.’
    M— was looking at the girl, who did not react. It was probable that she had heard this unlikely solution before.
    ‘So her condition has been constant?’
    ‘Her blindness has been constant’ – the father again – ‘but there are periods when her eyes twitch convulsively and without cease. And her eyeballs, as you may see, are extruded, as if trying to escape their sockets.’
    ‘You are aware of such periods, Fräulein?’
    ‘Of course. It feels as if water is slowly rushing in to fill my head, as if I shall faint.’
    ‘And she suffers in the liver and the spleen afterwards. They become disorderly.’
    M— nodded. He would need to be present at such an attack in order to guess its causes and observe its progress. He wondered how that might best be effected.
    ‘May I ask the doctor a question?’ Maria Theresia had lifted her head slightly towards her parents.
    ‘Of course, my child.’
    ‘Does your procedure