TODAY'S TRIAL

The miraculous powers of Jacomet the magnetizer

Two little men, with long moustaches and whitening temples, who seem like ordinary petty bourgeois, although one of them, Mr. Dubar, evokes, by his hooked profile, certain portraits of the great Condé. Are these two characters, who appear today before the 13th correctional chamber for fraud, charlatans; or is one of them, Jacomet, endowed with a quasi-miraculous power?

It's a fantastic story. Once upon a time there was a poor devil, a laborer in a printing press, who took his meals every evening in a dive on the rue Saint-Sébastien. And behold, around him, in the last years of the war, a reputation was born and spread: "Jacomet had the gift of healing, and of curing all diseases. Hundreds of witnesses proclaimed his benefits. And daily scrofulous patients, crutches, tuberculosis patients came to implore him for joy and health."

The treatment he applied? In truth, the simplest in the world. Jacomet began by prohibiting doctors, remedies and diets: all of this, according to him, can only harm. And he passed his hands over the sick parts, without making them undress, on the leg, the stomach, the kidney, throwing the saving fluid from his fingers. He renewed the sessions from time to time and recommended to his patients to eat rare meats and drink generous wine. And that was all.

Jacomet's reputation became such that Mr. Dubar, advertising agent for a house in disarray, decided to exploit, for the happiness of men, such a marvelous gift. He took Jacomet as a subsistence and led him, from district to district, in borrowed rooms, to practice his industry as a therapist.
This lasted until the day when Mr. Mignard, an electrician whose wife had died of tuberculosis despite Jacomet's promises that he would cure her, filed a complaint against the two partners.

Mr. Mignard, before the court, reiterated his accusations.

"You are lying," Jacomet shouted at him... I extended your lady's stay for two and a half months, but I never promised to cure her.

"You are the one who is lying," the witness retorted... "You had forbidden me to call the doctor; and all you did was burn Armenian paper to keep the spirits away, and other antics."

"That is false. I have never done that."

But here, on the other hand, is the procession of those who were miraculously cured. Mr. Primault, a police inspector, had heard Jacomet's praises sung. Although he was skeptical, he agreed to try the test, and the admirable Jacomet cured not only Primault, but his wife, his baby, and a police commissioner who was his friend. Mr. Raradenc, a driver, suffered from chronic bronchitis; Mr. Stenovici, an accountant, from a double hernia; Mr. Dosogne, a publicist, from a varicose wound that had resisted the care of eminent doctors; Mr. Porcheron, from a stomach ache. All of them, today, thanks to Jacomet's magnetic passes, have only the memory of their ailments. And Mr. Louis Rieffel, an engineer, explains:

When he puts his hands on you, you feel a great shiver. You feel that something is emerging from him... Even more astonishing. The little one. Mrs. Ronsay's daughter had her leg in a cast and was to remain so for three months according to the doctors' prescriptions. Jacomet had this device removed, and eight days later, she was running free. Her mother took her to the hearing and presented her to the judges, the tiny little woman contemplates the court with eyes that are not intimidated. However credulous one may be, however extravagant the two cronies Dubar and Jacomet may seem, one cannot help but be struck by so many attestations of this kind. It would be possible that Jacomet, while being a joker, had acted on sick nerves by the influence of a stronger will. But Mr. Durville, publisher and theoretician of magnetism, cited at the request of the defense, strives to establish that the passes really release a therapeutic power. The human being, he says, is a generator of radiant energy, and a healthy organism can thus pour into a failing organism the extra nervous force that it needs. The prestige that surrounds healers creates by itself an atmosphere that heals, by restoring confidence and sleep in the sick person. And the magnetic pass is like the fanfare that revives the exhausted soldier for the charge; it awakens and releases the nervous forces that give salvation and healing. Magnetism is as old as the world. The magical gestures of the Egyptian priests were gestures of magnetism, and the modern work of the Nancy School has scientifically demonstrated the reality of magnetic influence.

All these facts seemed disturbing enough for Mr. Ronguet, on behalf of the public prosecutor, to ask the court to order an expert report. The defendants' lawyers, Mr. Maurice Garçon and Mr. Jean Dumont, opposed this request, referring to the case law of the Court of Cassation: "Magnetism," declared the Supreme Court, "can be used as a therapeutic method without in itself constituting a fraudulent maneuver." In law, the fraud attributed to Dubar and Jacomet would therefore be non-existent.

As for the fact, it is not an investigation that will resolve the age-old conflict between official medicine and the followers of magnetism, many of whom are undeniable scholars.

We will know, in eight days, what the court will answer. It must be somewhat perplexed and embarrassed.

RENE DE PLANHOL.