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.