Chapter II: Part 2

Upon this head the commissioners are of the opinion of M. Mesmer. He rejected the cure of diseases, when this method of proving the magnetism was proposed to him by a member of the academy of sciences: “It is a mistake,” replied he, “to imagine that this kind of proof is unanswerable; it cannot be demonstrated that either the physician or the medicine causes the recovery of the patient[10].”

The treatment of diseases can therefore furnish nothing but a result, always uncertain, often deceitful; nor can this uncertainty be dissipated, and all the causes of illusion compensated, but by an infinity of cures, perhaps by the experience of successive centuries. The object and importance of the commission demand means of a speedier description. It was the duty of the commissioners to confine themselves to arguments purely physical, that is, to the momentaneous effects of the fluid upon the animal frame, excluding from these effects all the illusions which might mix with them, and assuring themselves that they could proceed from no other cause than the animal magnetism.

They proposed to make experiments upon single subjects, who might be willing to submit to the various experiments which they should invent; and who, some of them by their simplicity, and others by their intelligence, should be capable of giving an exact and faithful account of their sensations. These experiments we shall not confine ourselves to relate in the order of time, but shall follow the order of the facts they were intended to elucidate.

The commissioners in the first place resolved to make their first experiments upon themselves, and personally to experience the action of the magnetism. They were extremely curious to become acquainted by their own sensations with the effects ascribed to this agent. They therefore submitted themselves to these effects, and in such a disposition, that they would not have been sorry to have undergone some accidents and a partial derangement of health, which being evidently produced by the operation of the magnetism, should have enabled them to decide this important question upon the spot, and with their own testimony. But in submitting themselves to the magnetism in this manner, the commissioners have employed one necessary precaution. There is not an individual, in a state of the fullest health, who, if he paid a close attention to the point, would not be sensible to an infinity of interior motions and variations, either of a pain infinitely slight, or of heat in different parts of his body; these variations which exist at all times are independent of the magnetism. To turn and fix in this manner ones attention upon oneself, is not perhaps itself entirely without its effects. There is so intimate a connection, whatever be the vehicle of that connection, between the volitions of the soul and the motions of the body, that it is not easy to prescribe limits to the influence of attention, which appears to be nothing more than a train of volitions, directed, constantly and without interruption, to the same object. When we recollect that the arm is moved by the will as it pleases, how can we be certain, that the attention being fixed upon some interior part of our frame, may not excite some slight emotion in it, direct the heat towards it, and so modify its actual situation as to produce in it new sensations? The first thing therefore, to which the commissioners were bound to attend, was not to observe too minutely what passed within them. If the magnetism were a real and operative cause, there was no need that it should be made an object of thought, in order to its action and manifesting itself: it ought, so to express ourselves, to compel and arrest the attention, and to render itself perceptible to a mind that should even be distracted from it by design.

But in determining to make experiments upon themselves, the commissioners unanimously resolved to make those experiments private, without admitting any stranger, except M. Deslon, by whom the operation was to be performed, or such persons as they should chuse; in like manner they engaged not to submit to the magnetism at the public process, in order that they might discuss freely their observations, and be in all events the sole, or at least the first judges of the symptoms observed.

In pursuance of these determinations, a particular apartment and a separate bucket were destined for their use in the house of M. Deslon, and the commissioners repaired thither once in the course of every week. The operation was continued in each experiment for two hours and a half, the branch of iron being in contact with the left hypochonder, surrounded with a cord of communication, and forming from time to time the chain of fingers and thumbs. They were magnetised either by M. Deslon, or, in his absence, by one of his pupils; some of them for a longer time and more frequently than others, and those with whom this was the case were the commissioners who appeared from constitution and habit the most susceptible. The operation was performed sometimes with the finger and the rod of iron presented and guided along the different parts of the body, sometimes by the application of the hands and the pressure of the fingers, either upon the hypochonders, or upon the pit of the stomach.

Not one of the commissioners felt any sensation, or at least none which ought to be ascribed to the action of the magnetism. Some of the commissioners are of a robust constitution; others have more delicate habits, and are subject to interruptions of their health: one of these last, was sensible of a slight pain at the pit of the stomach, in consequence of a considerable pressure that was employed upon that part. This pain continued all that and the next day, and was accompanied with a sensation of fatigue and dejection. Another felt, in the afternoon of one of the days in which the experiments were performed, a slight irritation of the nerves, to which he is very subject. A third, endowed with a still greater sensibility, and especially with an extreme restlessness of the nerves, was subject to a higher degree of pain and a more perceptible irritation; but these lesser accidents are the result of perpetual and ordinary variations in the state of their health, and are of consequence foreign to the operation they had undergone, or proceed only from the pressure employed upon the region of the stomach. The commissioners do not speak of these slight details, but from a scrupulous fidelity; they relate them, because they have imposed it as a law upon themselves constantly and in every particular to lay the truth.

The commissioners could not avoid being struck with the difference of the private experiment made upon themselves from the public process. All was calm and silence in the one, all restlessness and agitation in the other; there multiplied symptoms, violent crises, the ordinary state both of body and mind interrupted and overthrown, and nature wrought up to the highest pitch; here the body free from pain, and the mind from anxiety, nature preserving her ordinary course and her equilibrium, in a word the absolute privation of every kind of effect: the stupendous influence, which creates such an astonishment in the public process, appears no longer; the magnetism stripped of its energy seems perfectly supine and inactive.

The commissioners, having at first submitted to the experiment only once a week, were desirous to ascertain whether a continuity of experiment would produce any effect; they submitted to it three days successively, but their insensibility was the same, and the magnetism appeared with respect to them perfectly impotent. This experiment, made at once upon eight different subjects, several of whom were subject to habitual derangements of health, authorises the conclusion that the magnetism has little or no action in a state of health, or even in a state of lesser infirmity. We then resolved to make experiments upon persons really diseased, and we chose them out of the lower class.

Seven of these were assembled at Passy, at the house of Dr. Franklin; the operation was performed upon them by M. Deslon in the presence of all the commissioners.

The widow Saint-Amand, asthmatic, having the belly, legs and thighs swelled; and dame Anseaume, who had a swelling upon her thigh, felt no sensation; the little Claude Renard, a child of six years of age, scrophulous, almost consumptive, having the knees swelled, the legs bent inward, and the articulation nearly deprived of motion, a very interesting child, and possessing a greater degree of understanding than is usual at his age, was likewise conscious to no sensation; any more than Geneviève Leroux, nine years of age, subject to convulsions, and to a disorder greatly resembling that which is called St. Vitus’s Dance. François Grenet experienced some effects; he had a distemper in his eyes, particularly in the right, in which he had scarcely any sight, and in which there was a considerable tumour. When the operation was directed towards the left eye, by approaching and moving backward and forward the thumb very near and for a considerable time, he was sensible of a pain in the ball of the eye, and the eye watered. When the operation was directed to the right eye, which was the most disordered, he felt no sensation in it; he felt the same pain in the left eye, and nothing in any other part of the body.

Dame Charpentier, who had been thrown down against a log of wood by a cow two years before, had experienced the most unfortunate consequences from this accident; she lost her sight, recovered it afterwards in part, but remained in a state of habitual infirmities; she declared that she had two ruptures, and the belly of so great sensibility, that she could not bear the pressure of the strings of her petticoats: this sensibility belongs to the case of nervous irritation; the slightest pressure upon the region of the belly is capable of determining this irritation, and producing, through the correspondence of the nerves, effects in every part of the body.

The operation was performed upon this woman as upon the rest by the application and the pressure of the fingers; the pressure was extremely painful to her: afterwards, in directing the finger towards the rupture, she complained of a pain in her head; the finger being placed before her face, she said she could not draw her breath. Upon the repeated motion of the finger upwards and downwards, she had sudden starts of the head and shoulders, like those which are commonly occasioned by surprise mixed with terror, for instance that of a person who has some drops of cold water suddenly thrown in his face. She appeared to have the same startings when her eyes were closed. The fingers being held under her nose, while her eyes were shut, she complained of a sensation of faintness so long as they were continued there. The seventh subject, Joseph Ennuyé, experienced sensations of a similar nature, but much less considerable.

Of these seven patients four felt no sensation at all; three experienced some effects from the operation. These effects deserved to engage the attention of the commissioners, and demanded an accurate examination.

The commissioners, to obtain further light, and to define their ideas upon this part of the subject, resolved to make the experiment upon patients, placed in other circumstances, and selected from the polite world; such as could not be suspected of sinister views, and whose understanding made them capable of enquiring into and giving a faithful account of their sensations. Mesdames de B---- and de V----, messieurs M---- and R---- were admitted to the private bucket together with the commissioners; they were intreated to remark their sensations, without fixing upon them too regular an attention. M. M---- and madame de V---- were the only persons who experienced any sensation. M. M---- had an indolent tumour over the whole articulation of the knee, and a constant pain in the patella. He declared, during the operation, that he felt nothing in any part of his body, except in the moment that the finger was guided before the diseased knee; he then thought that he felt a slight degree of heat in the place, in which he has habitually the sensation of pain. Madame de V----, attacked with a nervous disorder, was several times upon the point of falling asleep during the operation. The experiment having continued for an hour and nineteen minutes without interruption, and for the greater part by the application of the hands, she was sensible to nothing but a sensation of irritation and dejection. These two subjects underwent the experiment only once. M. R----, whose distemper was the remainder of an obstruction in the liver, the consequence of a very violent disorder of that kind ill cured, underwent the operation three times and felt nothing. Madame de B----, severely attacked with obstructions, underwent the experiment constantly at the same time with the commissioners, and felt nothing; it is necessary to observe, that she submitted to the magnetism with an extreme tranquility, which originated in the highest degree of incredulity.

Experiments were made at other times upon different subjects, but without the assistance of the bucket. One of the commissioners, in a violent head-ach, had the operation performed upon him by M. Deslon for half an hour; one of the symptoms of his disorder was an extreme cold in his feet. M. Deslon brought his foot near that of the patient, the foot was never the warmer, and the head-ach lasted its ordinary term. The patient, having placed himself near a fire, obtained from it the salutary effects which heat has constantly procured him, without experiencing, either during that day or the night following, any effect from the magnetism.

Dr. Franklin, though the weakness of his health hindered him from coming to Paris, and assisting at the experiments which were there made, was magnetised by M. Deslon at his own house at Passy. The assembly was numerous; every person who was present underwent the operation. Some sick persons, who had come with M. Deslon, were subject to the effects of the magnetism in the same manner as at the public process; but madame de B----, Dr. Franklin, his two relations, his secretary, and an American officer, felt no sensation, though one of Dr. Franklin’s relations was convalescent, and the American officer had at that time a regular fever.

The experiments we have related, furnish a number of facts, calculated to illustrate, and fit to be compared with each other, and from which the commissioners were at liberty to deduce certain inferences. Of fourteen sick persons five only appeared to feel any effect from the operation, nine felt no effect at all. The commissioner, who had the head-ach and coldness in the feet, derived no benefit from the magnetism, nor did his feet recover their natural heat. This agent has not therefore the property which has been attributed to it of communicating heat to the feet. The magnetism has also been said to have the property of discovering the species, and particularly the seat of diseases, by the pain, which the action of this fluid infallibly occasions in that part. Such an advantage would be of great consequence; the fluid which was the instrument of it would be a valuable means in the hands of the physician, often deceived by equivocal symptoms: but François Grenet felt no sensation, no pain, but in the eye least affected. If the redness and tumour of the other eye had not furnished external symptoms, in judging from the effect of the magnetism we should have been led to conclude that it was undistempered. M. R---- and madame de B----, both attacked with obstructions, and madame de B---- with great severity, as they were conscious to no sensation, would have received no intelligence, either respecting the species, or the seat of their disease. And yet obstructions are among the disorders, which are said to be particularly subject to the action of the magnetism; since according to the new theory the free and rapid circulation of this fluid through the nerves, is a means of opening the channels and destroying the obstacles, that is, the obstructions, which it encounters in its passage. It is at the same time said that the magnetism is the touchstone of health: if therefore M. R---- and madame de B---- had not experienced the derangements and the sufferings inseparable from obstructions, they would have had a right to believe that they enjoyed the best health in the world. The same thing may be said of the American officer: the magnetism therefore announced as the discoverer of diseases completely failed of its effect.

The heat that M. M---- felt in the patella, is an effect too slight and fugitive to authorise any conclusions. It may be suspected that it proceeded from the cause already descanted on, a too great attention to observe what passes within us: the same attention would discover similar sensations at any other time, when the magnetism was not employed. The drowsiness experienced by madame de V---- must undoubtedly be ascribed to the regularity and fatigue of preserving the same situation; if she was sensible to any vaporous emotion, it must be remembered that it is a known property of nervous affections, to have much dependency upon the attention that is paid them; to renew them it is only necessary to hear them spoken of, or to think of them. It is easy to judge what ought to be expected from a woman, whose nerves are extremely irritable, and who, being magnetised for an hour and nineteen minutes, had during that time no other subject of reflection than that of the disorders which are habitual to her. She might have had a nervous crisis more considerable than that we have described, without our having a right to be surprised at it.

There remains then only the effects produced upon dame Charpentier, François Grenet and Joseph Ennuyé, which can be supposed to derive from the operation of the magnetism. In comparing these three particular facts to the rest, the commissioners were astonished that three subjects of the lower class should be the only ones who felt any thing from the operation, while those of a more elevated rank, of more enlightened understandings, and better qualified to describe their sensations, have felt nothing. Without doubt François Grenet experienced a pain and a watering in the eye when the thumb was approached very near to it; dame Charpentier complained, that in touching her stomach the pressure corresponded to her rupture; and the pressure might have been in part the cause of what she felt; but the commissioners suspected that these sensations were augmented by moral causes.

Let us represent to ourselves the situation of a person of the lower class, and of consequence ignorant, attacked with a distemper and desirous of a cure, introduced with some degree of ceremony to a large company, partly composed of physicians, where an operation is performed upon him totally new, and from which he persuades himself before hand that he is about to experience prodigious effects. Let us add to this that he is paid for his compliance, that he thinks he shall contribute more to our satisfaction by professing to experience sensations of some kind; and we shall have definite causes to which to attribute these effects; we shall at least have just reason to doubt whether their true cause be the magnetism.

Beside this it may be enquired, why the magnetism produced these effects upon persons, who knew what was done to them, and might imagine they had an interest in saying what they said, while it took no sort of hold upon the little Claude Renard, upon an organisation endowed with all the delicacy of infancy, so irritable, so susceptible? The sound understanding and ingenuous temper of this child evince the veracity of his relation. Why too has this agent produced no effect upon Geneviève Leroux, who was in a perpetual state of convulsion? Her nerves were certainly sufficiently irritable, how comes it that the magnetism did not display its power, either in augmenting, or diminishing her convulsions? Her indifference and impassibility induced the belief, that the reason of her having felt nothing, was the idiotism which did not permit her to judge that she ought to have felt any thing.

From these facts the commissioners are at liberty to observe, that the magnetism has seemed to have no existence for those subjects, who have submitted to it with any degree of incredulity; that the commissioners, even those who have their nerves most irritable, having expressly turned their attention to other objects, and having armed themselves with that philosophic doubt which ought always to accompany enquiry, have felt none of those sensations, which were experienced by the three patients of the lower class; and they have a right to suspect that these sensations, supposing their reality, were the fruits of anticipated persuasion, and might be operated by the mere force of imagination. Of this suspicion another class of experiments has been the result. Their subsequent researches were directed towards a new object; it was necessary to destroy or confirm the suspicion they had formed, to determine to what degree the power of the imagination can influence our sensations, and to demonstrate whether it can be the cause, in whole or in part, of the effects attributed to the magnetism.

At this time the commissioners heard of the experiments, which were made at the house of M. the dean of the faculty by M. Jumelin, doctor of physic; they were desirous of seeing these experiments, and they met M. Jumelin in a body at the house of M. Majault, one of the commissioners. M. Jumelin declared to them that he was a disciple neither of M. Mesmer, nor of M. Deslon; he had learned nothing respecting the animal magnetism from them, but had formed his principles and digested his process from what he had heard upon the subject in conversation. His principles consist in regarding the animal magnetic fluid, as a fluid which circulates in the human body, and which flows from it, but which is essentially the same with the principle of animal heat; like all other fluids he conceived that it tended to an equilibrium, and that it therefore passes from the body in which the greatest quantity of it resides, into that which has the least. His method does not differ from that of messieurs Mesmer and Deslon less than his principles; like them he performs the operation with the finger and the rod of iron as conductors, and by the application of the hands, but without any distinction of poles.

Eight men and two women submitted to the operation in the first experiment, and felt nothing; at length a woman, who waits in the hall of M. Alphonse le Roy, doctor of physic, having been magnetised in the forehead, but without touching her, said that she felt the sensation of heat. M. Jumelin guiding his hand, and presenting the five extremities of his fingers over the whole of her face, she said that she felt as it were a flame, that passed from place to place; magnetised in the stomach she said that she felt heat; magnetised upon the back she made the same declaration: she also said that she felt hot in every part of her body, and that her head ached.

The commissioners, observing that, of eleven persons that underwent the experiment, one only had been sensible to the magnetism of M. Jumelin, were of opinion that this person had experienced certain sensations, only because she had probably an imagination more easily excited than the rest: the opportunity was favourable for clearing up the point. The sensibility of this woman being perfectly established, the business was only to protect her from the illusions of the imagination, or at least to leave her imagination without any thing to direct its operations. The commissioners proposed to blindfold her, in order to observe what her sensations would be, when she could no longer know any thing respecting the conduct of the experiment. She was accordingly blindfolded and magnetised; the phenomena no longer answered to the places towards which the magnetism was directed. Magnetised successively upon the stomach and in the back, she felt only a heat in her head, a pain in both eyes and in the left ear.

The bandage was removed from her eyes, and M. Jumelin having applied his hands upon the hypochonders, she said that she felt heat; after a few minutes she said that she was ready to faint, and she fainted in effect. When she was tolerably recovered, the experiment was resumed, she was blindfolded, M. Jumelin was removed, silence recommended, and the woman was induced to believe that the operation was performing. The effects were the same, though no operation, either near or distant was performed; she felt the same heat, the same pain in her eyes and in her ears; besides which she felt a heat in her back and loins.

After a quarter of an hour, a sign was made to M. Jumelin to magnetise her in the stomach, she felt no sensation; in the back, it was the same thing. The sensations diminished instead of augmenting. The pains in her head continued, the heat in her back and loins ceased.

We see in this instance certain effects produced, and these similar to those which were experienced by the three subjects, respecting whom the experiment has already been detailed. But the former and the latter were obtained in different methods; it follows that this difference is of no consequence. The process of messieurs Mesmer and Deslon, and an opposite process have produced the same phenomena. The distinction of poles is therefore chimerical.

It may be observed that while the woman was permitted to see the operation, she placed her sensations precisely in the part towards which it was directed; that on the other hand when she did not see the operation, she placed them at hazard, and in parts very distant from those which were the object of the magnetism. It was natural to conclude that these sensations, real or pretended, were determined by the imagination. Of this we were convinced when we saw that being entirely at rest, the preceding sensations having ceased, and the bandage being fixed over her eyes, this woman experienced all the same effects, though no operation was performed; but the demonstration was complete, when after a remission of a quarter of an hour, her imagination being undoubtedly cooled and worn down, the effects, in the room of augmenting, diminished at the moment in which the operation was actually renewed.

If she was seized with a faintness, women are sometimes liable to this accident from their garments being tight or otherwise burdensome. The application of the hands upon the hypochonders was capable of producing the same effect upon a woman extremely susceptible; but there is no need of having recourse to this cause to explain the appearance. The weather was extremely hot, the woman had unquestionably felt some emotion in the beginning of the experiment, she had made an effort upon herself to submit to a new and unknown operation, and it is by no means extraordinary that an effort, continued for a longer time than the constitution will bear, should occasion a propensity to faint.

This swoon had therefore a natural known cause, but the sensations, which she experienced when no operation was performed upon her, could be only the result of imagination. In similar experiments, which M. Jumelin made in the same place the next day, the commissioners being present, upon a man who was blindfolded, and upon a woman who was not blindfolded, the result was precisely the same; it was evident their answers were determined by the questions that were put to them, that is, the question pointed out where the sensation was expected to be; in the room of directing the magnetism upon them, all that was done was the exalting and directing their imagination. A child of five years of age being afterwards magnetised, felt nothing but the heat which he had just before contracted at play.

These experiments appeared sufficiently important to the commissioners, for them to desire a repetition of them, in order to obtain further light into the subject, and M. Jumelin had the complaisance to comply with their request. It would be to no purpose to object, that the method of M. Jumelin was a bad one; for at the present moment it was not proposed to bring the magnetism, but the imagination to the proof.

The commissioners agreed to blindfold subjects who had already undergone the magnetical operation, for the most part not to magnetise them at all, but to put to them interrogations, so framed as to point out to them their answers. This mode of proceeding was not calculated to deceive them, it only misled their imagination. In reality, when no operation was performed upon them, their sole answer ought to have been, that they felt no sensation; and when the operation was performed, the impression they felt, not the manner in which they were interrogated, ought to have dictated their replies.

The commissioners adjourned themselves to the house of M. Jumelin; they began with an experiment upon his servant. They fixed a bandage over his eyes, prepared for the purpose, and which they employed in all the succeeding experiments. The bandage was made of two calottes of elastic gum, whose concavity was filled with edredon; the whole inclosed and sown up in two pieces of stuff of a circular form. These pieces of stuff were then fastened to each other, and to two strings which were tied in a knot at the back part of the head. Placed over the eyes, they left in their interval room for the nose, and the entire liberty of respiration, without the person blindfolded being permitted to receive even the smallest particle of light, either through, or above, or below the bandage. These precautions having been contrived, with an equal view to the convenience of the subject, and the certainty of the result, the servant of M. Jumelin was persuaded that the operation was performing upon him. Upon this he felt an almost universal sensation of heat, and certain emotions in the region of the belly, together with an extreme heaviness; by degrees he grew drowsy and appeared upon the point of falling asleep. This experiment proves what we have already said, that the symptom of drowsiness is the effect of situation and weariness, not of the magnetism.

The same person being afterwards magnetised with his eyes uncovered, and a rod of iron being presented to his forehead, he experienced sensations of pricking: the bandage being then replaced and the circumstance repeated, he was conscious to no sensation. The rod of iron was then removed, and the patient being interrogated if he felt nothing in his forehead, he declared that he felt something move backward and forward from one side of it to the other.

M. B----, a man of learning, and particularly acquainted with the science of medicine, was then blindfolded, and presented us with the same spectacle, feeling certain sensations when he was not acted upon, and often feeling nothing when the operation was performed. These sensations went to such a length, that, previously to the being magnetised in any manner, but believing that the operation had been performing for ten minutes, he felt a heat in his loins which he compared to that of a stove. It is evident that M. B---- had a very strong sensation, since, in order to convey an idea of it, he thought it necessary to have recourse to such a comparison; this sensation however he owed solely to imagination, which was the only agent concerned in the affair.

The commissioners, particularly those of the faculty of medicine, made an infinite number of experiments upon different subjects, whom they either magnetised themselves, or persuaded that they underwent the operation. They performed the operation indifferently, either opposite to, or in the direction of the poles or at right angles with them, and in each case obtained the same effects; experiencing in all these experiments no other difference, than that of an imagination more or less susceptible[11]. They were therefore convinced that the imagination alone is capable of producing various sensations, and causing the patient to experience both pain and heat, and even a very considerable degree of heat, in all parts of the body, and they concluded that it of course entered for a considerable share into the effects attributed to the animal magnetism. It must at the same time be admitted, that the process of the magnetism produces in the animated body changes more distinguished, and derangements more considerable, than those we have just reported. None of those subjects, whom we have hitherto described as the imaginary objects of the magnetical operation, were so far impressed as to produce convulsions; it was therefore a new subject for the experiments of the commissioners, to enquire, whether by the mere energies of the imagination it were possible to produce crises, similar to those which we have stated in the public process.

Many experiments were thought of for the decision of this question. When a tree has been touched according to the principles and method of the magnetism, every person who stops under it, ought to experience in a greater or less degree the effects of this agent; there have even been some in this situation who have swooned, or experienced convulsions. We communicated our ideas upon this subject to M. Deslon, who replied, that the experiment ought to succeed, provided the subject were extremely susceptible; and it was agreed that it should be made at Passy in the presence of Dr. Franklin. The necessity that the subject should be susceptible, led the commissioners to conceive, that to render the experiment decisive and unanswerable, it was necessary that it should be made upon a person of M. Deslon’s choice, and of whose susceptibility to the operations of the magnetism he was already convinced. M. Deslon therefore brought with him a boy of about twelve years of age; an apricot tree was fixed upon in the orchard of Dr. Franklin’s garden, considerably distant from any other tree, and calculated for the preservation of the magnetical power which might be impressed upon it. M. Deslon was led thither alone to perform the operation, the boy in the mean time remaining in the house, and another person along with him. We could have wished that M. Deslon had not been present at the subsequent part of the experiment, but he declared that he could not answer for its success, if he did not direct his cane and his countenance towards the tree, in order to augment the action of the magnetism. It was therefore resolved, that M. Deslon should be placed at the greatest possible distance, and that some of the commissioners should stand between him and the boy, in order to ascertain the impracticability of any signals being made by M. Deslon, or any intelligence being maintained between them. These precautions in an experiment the essence of which must be authenticity, are indispensible, without giving the person with respect to whom they are employed a right to think himself offended.

The boy was then brought into the orchard his eyes covered with the bandage, presented successively to four trees upon which the operation had not been performed, and caused to embrace each of them for the space of two minutes, the mode of communication which had been prescribed by M. Deslon himself.

M. Deslon, present, and at a considerable distance, directed his cane towards the tree which had been the object of his operations.

At the first tree the boy being interrogated at the end of a minute, declared that he perspired in large drops; he coughed, spit, and complained of a slight pain in his head; the distance of the tree which had been magnetised was about twenty seven feet.

At the second tree he felt the sensations of stupefaction and pain in his head; the distance was thirty six feet.

At the third tree the stupefaction and head-ach increased considerably; he said that he believed he was approaching to the tree which had been magnetised; the distance was then about thirty eight feet.

In fine at the fourth tree which had not been rendered the object of the operation, and at the distance of about twenty four feet from the tree which had, the boy fell into a crisis; he fainted away, his limbs stiffened, and he was carried to a neighbouring grass-plot, where M. Deslon hastened to his assistance and recovered him.

The result of this experiment is entirely contrary to the theory of the animal magnetism. M. Deslon accounted for it by observing, that all the trees by their very nature, participated of the magnetism, and that their magnetism was beside reinforced by his presence. But in that case a person sensible to the power of the magnetism, could not hazard a walk in a garden without the risk of convulsions; an assertion confuted by the experience of every day. The presence of M. Deslon had no greater influence here, than in the coach, in which the boy came along with him, was placed opposite to him, and felt nothing. If he had experienced no sensation even under the tree which was magnetised, it might have been said that at least upon that day he had not been sufficiently susceptible: but the boy fell into a crisis under a tree which was not magnetised; the crisis was therefore the effect of no physical or exterior cause, but is to be ascribed solely to the influence of imagination. The experiment is therefore entirely conclusive: the boy knew that he was about to be led to a tree upon which the magnetical operation had been performed, his imagination was struck, it was exalted by the successive steps of the experiment, and at the fourth tree it was raised to the height necessary to produce the crisis.

Other experiments were made calculated to support this, and the result was the same. One day when the commissioners were all together at Passy at the house of Dr. Franklin, and M. Deslon with them, they previously intreated the latter to bring some of his patients with him, selecting those of the lower class, who were most susceptible to the magnetism. M. Deslon brought two women; and while he was employed in performing the operation upon Dr. Franklin and several persons in another apartment, the two women were separated, and placed in different rooms.

One of them, dame P----, had films over her eyes; but as she could always see a little, the bandage already described was employed. She was persuaded that M. Deslon had been brought into the room to perform the magnetical operation; silence was recommended; three commissioners were present, one to interrogate, another to make minutes of the transaction, and the third to personate M. Deslon. The conversation was pretended to be addressed to M. Deslon; he was desired to begin the operation; the three commissioners in the mean time remained perfectly quiet and solely occupied in observing her symptoms. At the end of three minutes the patient began to feel a nervous shuddering; she had then successively a pain in the back of her head, in her arms, a creeping in her hands, that was her expression, she grew stiff, struck her hands violently together, rose from her seat, stamped with her feet: the crisis had all the regular symptoms. Two other commissioners, who were in the adjoining room with the door shut, heard the stamping of the feet and the clapping of the hands, and without seeing any thing were witnesses to this noisy experiment.

The two commissioners we have mentioned were with the other patient, mademoiselle B----, who was subject to nervous distempers. No bandage was employed upon her, but her eyes were at liberty; she was seated with her face towards a door which was shut, and persuaded that M. Deslon was on the other side, employed in performing upon her the magnetical operation. This had scarcely taken place a minute, before she began to feel the symptom of shuddering; in another minute she had a chattering of the teeth and an universal heat; in fine in the third minute she fell into a regular crisis. Her respiration was quick, she stretched out both her arms behind her back, twisting them extremely, and bending her body forward: her whole body trembled; the chattering of her teeth became so loud that it might be heard in the open air; she bit her hand, and that with so much force, that the marks of the teeth remained perfectly visible.

It is proper to observe that neither of these subjects were touched in any manner; their pulse was not even felt, that it might not be possible to say that the magnetic fluid was communicated; the crises however were complete. The commissioners, who had been desirous to know the effect of the influence of the imagination, and to appreciate the share it might have in the magnetical crises, had now obtained all that they desired. It is impossible to see this influence displayed in a clearer or more incontrovertible manner than in these two experiments. If the subjects have declared that their crises were stronger in the public treatment, it must be ascribed to the power of communication possessed by the numerous emotions, and that in general every individual symptom has been increased by the contemplation of similar symptoms.

We had occasion to try a second experiment upon dame P----, and to experience how much she was under the dominion of her imagination. The experiment of the magnetic bason was proposed: this experiment consists in discovering among a number of basons one that has been magnetised. They are successively presented to a patient susceptible to the magnetism; he ought to fall into a crisis, or at least to experience sensible effects, when the magnetic bason is presented to him, he ought to be perfectly indifferent to all the rest. All that was necessary according to the recommendation of M. Deslon, was to present them to him in the direction of the poles, in order that he who presents the bason may not himself magnetise the patient, and that there may be no other effect than that of the magnetism of the bason itself.

Dame P---- was sent for to the arsenal to the house of M. Lavoisier, where M. Deslon was; she began with falling into a crisis in the anti-chamber, before she had seen either the commissioners or M. Deslon, and merely from the knowledge she had that she was about to see him; a distinguished effect of the influence of imagination.

When she had been tolerably recovered, she was led into the room destined for the experiment. Several china basons were presented to her which had not been magnetised; at the second bason she began to feel the usual symptoms, and at the fourth fell into a complete crisis. It may be objected that her actual state was a state of crisis, that it had begun in the anti-chamber, and was renewed by its own single energy; but a circumstance which is decisive, is that having asked for something to drink, the bason which had been magnetised by M. Deslon himself was presented to her; she drank with perfect calmness and said that she felt herself much better. The bason and the magnetism had therefore failed of their effect, since the crisis was tranquilized in the room of being augmented.

Some time after, while M. Majault examined the films she had over her eyes, the magnetic bason was presented to the back of her head, and continued there for twelve minutes; she was unconscious of the operation and felt no effect from it; she had even at no time been more tranquil, because her imagination was diverted, and fixed upon the examination that was making into the disorder of her eyes.

The commissioners were informed that while this woman had been left alone in the anti-chamber, different persons unacquainted with the animal magnetism had approached her, and the convulsive emotions had recommenced. She was desired to observe that the magnetical operation was not performed upon her; but her imagination was struck to such a degree that she replied: If you did nothing to me, I should not be in the condition in which I am. She knew that she had been sent for in order to be made the subject of the experiments; and the approach of any person towards her, or the slighted noise attracted her attention, excited the idea of the magnetism and renewed her convulsions.

The imagination, in order to its acting with considerable strength, has often need that you should touch several cords at a time. It has a correspondence with each of the senses; and its reaction may be expected to be in proportion, both to the number of senses applied to, and of sensations received: the commissioners were led to this observation by the following experiment. M. Jumelin had spoken to them of a young lady, twenty years of age, whom he had deprived of the faculty of speech by the influence of the magnetism; the commissioners repeated the experiment at his house, the young lady consented to submit to it, and to suffer herself to be blindfolded.

The first object of the experiment was to endeavour to obtain the same effect without performing the operation; but, though in this situation she felt or believed she felt the effects of the magnetism, we were not able to strike her imagination, with the force that was necessary for the success of the experiment. The operation was then really performed, the bandage not being removed; and the success was the same. The bandage was then taken away; her imagination was now attacked at once through the different channels of sight and hearing, and the effects were more considerable; but though she complained of a heaviness in her head, an obstruction in the superior part of the nostrils, and a number of the symptoms which she had felt under the operation of M. Jumelin, she did not lose the faculty of speech. She observed herself, that the hand by which she was magnetised in the forehead, ought to descend to the level of the nose, recollecting that that was its situation at the time in which she had felt the loss of her voice. What she demanded was accordingly performed, and in three quarters of a minute she was dumb; nothing was now to be heard from her but low and inarticulate sounds, though the exertion of the muscles of the throat for the formation of sound, and that of the tongue and the lips in order to articulation were visible. This state lasted only a minute: it is obvious to observe that, finding herself precisely in the same circumstances, the seduction of the understanding and the effect of that seduction upon the organs of speech were the same. But it was not enough that she should be expressly informed that she was magnetised, it was also necessary that the sense of seeing should yield her a testimony, stronger, and capable of greater effects; it was necessary that a gesture with which she was already acquainted should re-excite her former ideas. It should seem that this experiment is admirably calculated to display the manner in which the imagination acts, the degrees by which it is exalted, and the different exterior succours it requires in order to its displaying itself in its greatest energy.

The power, which the sense of sight exercises over the imagination, explains the effects attributed by the doctrine of the magnetism to the eyes. The eyes possess in an eminent degree the power of magnetising; signs and gestures, as the commissioners were informed, have commonly no effect, except upon a subject who has been previously mastered by the employment of the eyes. The reason of this is very simple; it is the eyes that convey the most energetic expressions of passion, it is in them that is developed all that the human character has of the commanding or the attractive. It is natural therefore that the eyes should be the source of a very high degree of power; but this power consists merely in the aptitude they possess of moving the imagination, and that in a degree more or less strong in proportion to the activity of the imagination. It is for this reason, that the whole process of the magnetism commences from the eyes of the operator; and their influence is so powerful and leaves traces so strong and lively, that a woman, newly arrived at the house of M. Deslon, having encountered a look of one of his pupils, who had performed the operation upon her, just as she was recovering from a crisis, had her eyes set in her head for three quarters of an hour. For a long time she was haunted with the remembrance of this look; she always saw before her this very eye fixed to regard her; and she bore it uninterruptedly in her imagination sleeping as well as waking for three days. We see from this instance what an imagination is capable of doing, that can preserve one impression for so long a time, that is, can renew, of itself, and by its single power, the same sensation regularly and without interruption, for three days.

The experiments, which we have already reported, are uniform in their nature, and contribute alike to the same decision; they authorise us to conclude that the imagination is the true cause of the effects attributed to the magnetism. But the partisans of this new agent will perhaps reply, that the identity of effects does not always prove an identity of causes. They will grant that the imagination is capable of exciting these impressions without the magnetism: but they will maintain that the magnetism is also capable of exciting them without the imagination. The commissioners might easily destroy this assertion by applying the principles of all reasoning, and the laws of natural philosophy: of which the first, is to admit no new causes without an absolute necessity. When the effects observed are capable of having been produced by a known cause, and a cause whose existence other phenomena have already established, found philosophy teaches that the effects ought to be ascribed to that cause; and when on the other hand we are acquainted with the discovery of a cause hitherto unknown, found philosophy requires that its exigence be made out by effects, which do not belong to a known cause, and which cannot be explained but by the new cause. It therefore properly belongs to the partisans of the magnetism, to bring forward other proofs, and to discover effects which shall be entirely stripped of the illusions of the imagination. But as facts are more demonstrative than reasonings, and as their evidence is more universally striking, the commissioners have been desirous of establishing by experiment, what the magnetism could do in cases where the imagination had no concern.

For this experiment they made choice of two rooms, contiguous to each other, and united by a door of communication. The door was taken away, and a frame of wood substituted in its place, with transverse bars, and covered with a double texture of paper. In one of these rooms was a commissioner, who undertook to make minutes of the transaction, and a lady, who was given out to be just arrived from the country, and to have a suit of linen, which she wanted to have made up. Mademoiselle B----, a sempstress by profession, who had been already employed in the experiments at Passy, and whose sensibility to the magnetism was well known, was sent for. Every thing was arranged against her arrival in such a manner, that there was but one seat upon which she could place herself, and that seat stood within the frame of the door of communication.

The commissioners were in the other apartment, and one of them, a physician, who had upon former occasions performed the magnetical operation with success, had undertaken to magnetise mademoiselle B---- through the paper partition. It is a principle in the theory of the magnetism that this agent passes through doors, walls, &c. A partition of paper could therefore be no obstacle; beside M. Deslon had positively declared that the magnetism passes through paper.