Persone Curate da Lafontaine — Casi Clinici dai Mémoires/en
Persons Treated by Lafontaine collects the named clinical cases reported by Charles Lafontaine in his Mémoires d'un magnétiseur (1866, 2 vols.) and in L'Art de Magnétiser. The page has documentary value: it reports the cases as Lafontaine himself describes them, distinguishing where possible between full results and simple improvements, and highlighting the critical spirit with which Lafontaine exposed simulations.
Methodological premise
The Mémoires are an autobiographical source: the cases should be read as period testimony, not as modern clinical records. Significant is the fact that Lafontaine himself recounts episodes in which he discovered and denounced deceptions and simulated somnambulists — a sign of a non-credulous attitude (see the Bertrand/Féré case below).
Named cases
Jacques Arago — blindness and eye pain
Lafontaine reports having magnetized Jacques Arago, the famous traveler and writer who became blind. Without claiming to restore his sight, he reports having freed him from the extremely acute pain he had suffered for almost a year in his eyes, eyebrows, and frontal bone. It is Arago himself, before the prefect of police Delessert, who declares that «depuis la troisième magnétisation, je n'en souffre plus» (Mémoires, vol. II). The case is cited because it is documented by a direct and public testimony from the patient himself.
Georgina Burton — childhood deaf-mutism
The most famous case. The daughter of M.me Burton, a wealthy English lady, had become deaf and mute at nine months following convulsions that left her severely disfigured (one corner of her mouth almost touched her eye). Lafontaine reports that within a few months the young Georgina regained her hearing and speech, the facial contractions disappeared completely, and the child was able to learn to read, write, and converse. The case caused a great stir and was publicly presented at Lady Clavering's home (Mémoires, vol. II). Lafontaine notes with irony the contemptuous refusal of the Count of Léotaud, who did not want to subject his own deaf-mute son to the same treatment.
M. Bordères — paralysis
In Rouen, Lafontaine reports having cured a paralytic, M. Bordères, a lawyer at the court, in seventeen days, referring for the treatment details to L'Art de Magnétiser (p. 288 in the cited edition).
M. Bertrand — rheumatism (partial improvement)
Also in Rouen, Lafontaine provided great relief to M. Bertrand, a police commissioner, suffering from rheumatism, but — he honestly notes — the patient «ne me donna pas le temps nécessaire» to achieve a complete cure. The case is cited as an example of a partial result declared as such.
Deaf-mutes in series (Rouen, Pontoise, Saint-Germain)
Lafontaine repeatedly reports having «fait entendre des sourds-muets» during his public tours, particularly in Rouen, Pontoise, and Saint-Germain, in addition to experiences of prolonged catalepsy on volunteer spectators.
The episode of the unmasked deception (Bertrand–Féré)
In Rouen, M. Bertrand and Octave Féré (editor of a local newspaper) staged for Lafontaine a fake session of "second sight" in the manner of Robert-Houdin, with Féré playing the role of the false somnambulist. Suspicious, Lafontaine unexpectedly stuck a pin into the arm of the "somnambulist": Féré jumped up shouting «ceci n'était pas dans le programme», revealing the setup. The episode is significant because it shows that Lafontaine actively verified the reality of the phenomena and distinguished serious magnetism from stage simulation — and it also gave him, by his own admission, the key to understanding Robert-Houdin's tricks.
The healer and the Native Americans
A separate chapter is the attempt to cure a cancer using the herbal knowledge of the Redskin chiefs Manguados and Dicon at the Jardin des Plantes: the plants grown in the greenhouse did not have the virtues of those from their country and the cure was not achieved. Lafontaine reports it without emphasis, as an example of an unsuccessful attempt openly declared.
Primary sources
Verification dossier: each case on this page is traced back to the original passage in the dossier of primary source extracts on Drive (anti-hallucination system: each claim traced to source).
Digitized sources available in the ISI-CNV Drive folder "Lafontaine":
- Charles Lafontaine, Mémoires d'un magnétiseur, vol. I (Genève, 1866) — PDF Drive
- Charles Lafontaine, Mémoires d'un magnétiseur, vol. II (Genève, 1866) — cases Arago, Burton, Bordères, Bertrand, deaf-mutes — PDF Drive
- Charles Lafontaine, L'Art de Magnétiser ou le Magnétisme Animal — details of the treatment of M. Bordères (p. 288) — PDF Drive
Note: the exact page numbers of the individual cases in the two volumes of the Mémoires will be added in a later revision upon completion of the OCR verification.
See also
- Charles Lafontaine — Il Magnetizzatore Franco-Svizzero
- Metodo Lafontaine nei Materiali ISI-CNV
- Lafontaine e il Leone — La Dimostrazione del Magnetismo sugli Animali
- Lafontaine e gli Indiani d'America
- Lafontaine in Inghilterra e Braid — La Tournée del 1841 e l'Origine dell'Ipnotismo
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