Papers of John Adams, volume 16
e.7
br.1784.
La besogne que vous trouverez, ci-joint, c’est à dire la copie & traduction d’une Résolution aussi importante, m’empeche encore de répondre cet ordinaire en détail à votre faveur du 25 du passé, com̃e je me l’etois proposé. Je crois qu’il importe autant que V. E. & Mess. vos Collegues voient cela en passant que le Congrès, pour votre governe.1
Mes respects à Auteuil & à Passy. Je suis avec grand respect & en hâte / De Votre Excellence / Le très-humble & très-obeissant / serviteur
La fameuse Caat Mossel, & sa Conseillere intime Zwarte Keet, ou Blak-Keet, sont coffrées à Rotterdam. C’est le premier effet de la Com̃ission à Rotterdam.2 J’écris à notre ami Turq, pour le complimenter de l’entrée de ces Belles dans son Serrail, & je lui recom̃ande de ne pas tout garder pour lui seul, mais de penser que Mr. Visscher est sans Sultane.3 Com̃e elles ont chacune au moins
313
30
łb.
de chaque côté par le haut, & le reste à proportion, ils y trouveront leur compte tous les deux.
The work that you will find enclosed, that is to say the copy and translation of such an important resolution, still prevents me from responding in the usual detail to your letter of the 25th of last month, as I had intended. I believe that it is as important for your excellency and your colleagues to see this for your information as it is for Congress.1
My respects to Auteuil and to Passy. I am with great respect and in haste your excellency’s very humble and very obedient servant
The famous Kaat Mossel and her intimate advisor Keet Zwenke, or Blak-Keet, are behind bars at Rotterdam. This is the first effect of the commission at Rotterdam.2 I am writing to our friend the Turk to compliment him on the entry of these beauties into his harem, and I am recommending that he not keep all for himself but remember that Mr. Visscher is without a sultana.3 As each woman has at least thirty pounds atop each side, and the rest in proportion, both men will find there all they need.
RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “A S. E. Mr. Adams.”
Dumas enclosed his 3 Sept. letter to the president of Congress, with which he sent the States General’s 30 Aug. resolution in response to the Comte de Barbiano-Belgiojoso’s 23 Aug. memorial to the Dutch plenipotentiaries at Brussels, for which see JA’s 25 Aug. letter to Dumas, note 2, above. The resolution firmly rejected Austrian demands that navigation of the Scheldt River be totally free and that Austrian vessels have access to Dutch ports in Europe and the East and West Indies (PCC, No. 93, III, f. 65–68, 137–140; No. 115B, f. 41, 48–50;
Dipl. Corr., 1783–1789
, 3:511–515).
Catharina Mulder, nicknamed Kaat Mossel, was a Rotterdam vendor and inspector of mussels, while Cornelia Toppen, known as Keet Zwenke, ran a secondhand shop and alehouse in the same city. Both women were leaders of Orangist popular resistance among the working class of Rotterdam. In early 1784, after the local Patriot militia was incorporated into the civic guard, Orangist mobs continually harassed the watch, ultimately provoking an incident in which four people were killed and many wounded. An investigatory commission empowered by the States General and backed by a considerable military force arrested Mulder and Toppen for sedition. Dumas kept Congress informed of the course of events throughout the spring and summer (Huygens Institute of Netherlands History, Online Dictionary of Dutch Women, www.inghist.nl; Wayne Ph. te Brake, Rudolf M. Dekker, and Lotte C. van de Pol, “Women and Political Culture in the Dutch Revolutions,” in Harriet B. Applewhite and Darline G. Levy, eds., Women and Politics in the Age of the Democratic Revolution, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1990, p. 114;
Dipl. Corr., 1783–1789
, 3:486, 490, 492, 493, 500, 501, 503, 511).
The identity of “the Turk” has not been determined. Carel Wouter Visscher, pensionary of Amsterdam, although a member of the commission at Rotterdam that arrested Mulder and Toppen, advocated leniency toward the two women, including the immediate termination of criminal proceedings. Visscher married Anna Anthonia van Muiden in 1759 but became a widower ten years later and remained so until his death in 1802 (Gazette d’Amsterdam, 15 Oct. 1784; H. Wildeboer,
314
“Carel Wouter Visscher (1734–1802): Portret van een patriots pensionaris,” in Eenentachtigste jaarboek van het genootschap Amstelodamum, Amsterdam, 1989, p. 140).
r.8. 1784
I received your friendly Letter of the 19. June, by my dear Mrs Adams, with great Pleasure and Shall ever be obliged to you for a Line when you have Leisure.— I am very glad our University has so able a Professor of Physick, and I doubt not you will soon Silence all Opposition.1 I should be obliged to you for your two orations.2
All Paris, and indeed all Europe, is at present amused with a Kind of Physical New Light or Witcraft, called Animal Magnetism. a German Empirick by the Name of Mesmer, has turned the Heads of a multitude of People. He pretends that his Art is an Universal Cure, and wholly Superseeds the Practice of Physick and consequently your Professorship, so that you will not, I hope become his Disciple.
The Thing is so Serious that the King has thought it necessary to appoint a Number of Phisicians and Accademicians, with your Friend Franklin at their Head to enquire into it. They are all able Men And have published a Masterly Report, which Shews very clearly that this Magnetism can never be usefull, for the best of all possible Reasons viz because it does not exist. one would think the Report Sufficient to annihilate the Enthusiasm but it has not yet fully Succeeded, on the Contrary it has Stirred up a Nest of Hornets against the Authers of it, and Mesmer has the Boldness to apply to Parliament by a Public Process, to have his Art examined anew. What may be the Consequence I dont know: But I think the Phrenzy must evaporate.3
The Professors of the Art have acquired sometimes a Surprising Ascendency over the Imaginations of their Patients so as to throw them into violent Convulsions, only by a few odd Gestures. All this the Commissioners ascribe to Imagination and I suppose justly, but if this Faculty of the Mind can produce Such terrible Effects upon the Body, I think you Physicians ought to study and teach Us some Method of managing and controuling it.—
I am, sir with great Esteem, your Friend / and humble servant
RC (MHi:Adams-Waterhouse Coll.); internal address: “Dr Waterhouse”; endorsed: “Adams”; notation: “J. A. / on Mesmerism.”
The letter from Waterhouse, who since 1782 was the Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic at the Harvard Medical School, has not been found (
AFC
, 5:66).
In the left margin is a notation, possibly by Waterhouse, keyed to the text at this point. It reads, “Latin inaugural Oration. & […] Introductory Med. oration.” The first almost certainly was Waterhouse’s “Oratio inauguralis,” given at the opening of the Harvard Medical School in 1783 but not published until 1829. The second may be his paper “Of Epidemic Diseases,” given at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and published in the Boston Continental Journal on 5 and 12 June 1783.
German physician Franz Anton Mesmer arrived in Paris in 1778 and caused a sensation with demonstrations of animal magnetism. Positing that a magnetic fluid flowed from the stars through all living things and that disease resulted from obstructions in its circulation, Mesmer claimed the ability to manipulate the fluid and cure illness. By 1784 French authorities considered Mesmer and his theories a threat to Enlightenment rationalism and national dignity. That spring Louis XVI appointed a commission combining physicians from the Faculté de médecine de Paris with members of the Académie royale des sciences to investigate and put Benjamin Franklin in charge of the effort. The report of the commissioners was read on 4 Sept. and published on the 24th as Rapport des commissaires chargés par le roi de l’examen du magnétisme animal, Paris, 1784 (Claude-Anne Lopez, “Franklin and Mesmer: An Encounter,” Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 66:325–331 [July–Aug. 1993]).