To this end, M- sought to create, in his consulting room at 261 Landstrasse, an atmosphere sympathetic to such acceptance. Heavy curtains were drawn against the sun and external noise; his staff were forbidden from making sudden movements; there was calm and candlelight. Gentle music might be heard from another room; sometimes M- would himself play upon Miss Davies’s glass armonica, reminding both bodies and minds of the universal harmony that he was, in this small part of the world, seeking to restore.
M- commenced his treatment on 20th January 177-. An external examination confirmed that Maria Theresia’s eyes showed severe malformation: they were quite out of their normal alignment, grossly swollen and extruded. Internally, the girl seemed to be at a pitch where the passing phases of hysteria might lead to chronic derangement. Given that she had suffered fourteen years of disappointed hope, and fourteen years of unremitting blindness, this was not an unreasonable response from a young body and mind. M- therefore began by emphasising again how different his procedure was from all others; how it was not a matter of order being reimposed by external violence, but rather of a collaboration between doctor and patient, aimed at re-establishing the natural alignment of the body. M- talked generally; in his experience it did not help for the patient to be constantly aware of what was to be expected. He did not speak of the crisis he hoped to provoke, or predict the extent of the cure he envisioned. Even to the girl’s parents, he expressed only the humble ambition of alleviating the gross ocular extrusion.
He explained his initial actions carefully, so they would come as no surprise. Then he addressed the loci of sensitivity on Maria Theresia’s head. He placed his hands, formed into cups, around her ears; he stroked her skull from the base of the neck to the forehead; he placed his thumbs on her cheeks, just below the eyes, and made circular motions around the affected orbs. Then he gently laid his stick, or wand, on each eyebrow. As he did so, he quietly encouraged Maria Theresia to report any changes or movements she experienced within her. Then he placed a magnet on each temple. Immediately, he felt a sudden sensation of heat upon her cheeks, which the girl confirmed; he also observed a redness in the skin and a trembling of the limbs. She then described a gathering force at the base of her neck which was compelling her head backwards and upwards. As these movements occurred, M- noted that the spasms in her eyes were more marked and at times convulsive. Then, as this brief crisis came to its end, the redness left her cheeks, her head resumed its normal position, the trembling ceased, and it appeared to M- that her eyes were in a better alignment, and also less swollen.
He repeated the procedure each day at the same time, and each day the brief crisis led to an evident improvement, until by the end of the fourth day the proper alignment of her eyes had returned and no extrusion was to be remarked. The left eye appeared to be smaller than the right, but as the treatment continued, their sizes began to balance. The girl’s parents were amazed: M-’s promise had been fulfilled, and their daughter no longer showed the deformity which might alarm those who watched her play. M-, however, was already preoccupied with the patient’s internal condition, which he judged to be moving towards the necessary crisis. As he continued his daily procedures, she reported the presence of sharp pains in the occiput which penetrated the whole of her head. The pain then followed the optic nerve, producing constant pinpricks as it travelled and multiplied across the retina. These symptoms were accompanied by nervous jerkings of the head.
For many years, Maria Theresia had lost all sense of smell, and her nose produced no mucus. Now, suddenly, there was a visible swelling of the nasal passages, and a forceful discharge of green, viscous matter. Shortly afterwards, to the patient’s further embarrassment, there were additional discharges, this time in the form of copious diarrhoea. The pains in her eyes continued, and she reported feelings of vertigo. M- recognised that she was at a time of maximum vulnerability. A crisis was never a neutral occurrence: it might be benign or malign – not in its nature, but in its consequences, leading either to progress or regress. He therefore proposed to the girl’s parents that she take up residence for a short period at 261 Landstrasse. She would be looked after by M-’s wife, though she could bring her own maid if necessary. There were already two young female patients established in the household, so questions of decorum need not arise. This new plan was swiftly agreed.
On Maria Theresia’s second day in the house, and still in the presence of her father, M-, after touching her face and skull as before, placed the patient in front of a mirror. Taking his wand, he pointed it at her reflection. Then, as he moved the wand, the girl’s head slightly turned, as if following its movements in the glass. M-, sensing that Herr von P- was about to give tongue to his astonishment, quieted him with a gesture.
‘You are aware that you are moving your head?’
‘I am.’
‘Is there a reason why you are moving your head?’
‘It is as if I am following something.’
‘Is it a noise that you are following?’
‘No, not a noise.’
‘Is it a smell that you are following?’
‘I still have no sense of smell. I am merely… following. That is all I can say.’
‘It is enough.’
M- assured Herr von P- that his house would always be open to him and his wife, but that he expected progress in the ensuing days to be slow. In truth, he judged the girl’s cure more likely if he could treat her without the presence of a father who struck him as overbearing, and a mother who, perhaps by reason of her Italian blood, seemed liable to hysteria. It was still just possible that Maria Theresia’s blindness was caused by atrophy of the optic nerve, in which case there was nothing that magnetism, or any other known procedure, could do for her. But M- doubted this. The convulsions he had witnessed, and the symptoms reported, all spoke of a disturbance to the whole nervous system due to some powerful shock. In the absence of any witnesses at the time, or of the patient’s memory, it was impossible to determine what kind of shock it might have been. This did not perturb M- unduly: it was the effect he was treating, not the cause. Indeed, it might be fortunate that the Fräulein could not recall the precise nature of the precipitating event.
In the preceding two years, it had become increasingly apparent to M- that in bringing the patient to the necessary point of crisis, the touch of the human hand was of central, animating importance. At first, his touching of the patient at the moment of magnetism was designed to be calming, or at best emphatic. If, for instance, magnets were placed on either side of the ear, it seemed a natural gesture to stroke that ear in a manner confirming the realignment being sought. But M- could not help observing that when all favourable conditions for cure had been created, with a circle of patients around the baquet in the soft candlelight, it was often the case that when he, as a musician, removed his fingers from the rotating glass armonica and then, as a physician, laid them on the afflicted part of the body, the patient might be instantly brought to crisis. M- was at times inclined to ponder how much was the effect of the magnetism, and how much that of the magnetiser himself. Maria Theresia was not apprised of such wider considerations, any more than she was asked to join other patients around the oaken tub.
‘Your treatment causes pain.’
‘No. What is causing pain is that you are beginning to see. When you look in the mirror you see the wand I am holding and turn your head to follow it. You say yourself that there is a shape moving.’