and they experience at first no effects but such as are similar to
those, obtained by the commissioners in various experiments. It is even
acknowledged that for the most part the crises do not commence in less
than the space of two hours. By little and little the impressions are
communicated from one to another, and reinforced, in the same manner as
the impressions which are made by theatrical representation, where the
impressions are greater in proportion to the number of the spectators,
and the liberty they enjoy of expressing their sensations. The
applause, by which the emotions of individuals are announced, occasions
a general emotion, which every one partakes in the degree in which he
is susceptible. The same observation has been made in armies upon a day
of battle, where the enthusiasm of courage, as well as the impressions
of terror, are propagated with so amazing rapidity. The drum, the sound
of the military musical instruments, the noise of the cannon, the
musquetry, the shouts of the army, and the general disorder impress the
organs, have a uniform effect upon the understanding, and exalt the
imagination in the same degree. In this equilibrium of inebriation,
the external manifestation of a single sensation immediately becomes
universal; it hurries the soldiery to the charge, or it determines them
to fly. The same cause is deeply concerned in rebellions; the multitude
are governed by the imagination; the individuals in a numerous assembly
are more subjected to their senses, and less capable of submitting to
the dictates of reason; and where fanaticism is the presiding quality,
its fruit is the tremblers of the Cevennes[12]. It has been usual to
forbid numerous assemblies in seditious towns, as a means of stopping
a contagion so easily communicated. Every where example acts upon
the moral part of our frame, mechanical imitation upon the physical
part: the minds of individuals are calmed by dispersing them; the same
method puts a stop to their spasmodic affections, always contagious in
their nature: we have had a recent example of this in the young ladies
of Saint Roch, who were in this manner cured of the convulsions with
which they were affected when together[13].
The magnetism then, or rather the operations of the imagination,
are equally discoverable at the theatre, in the camp, and in all
numerous assemblies, as at the bucket, acting indeed by different
means, but producing similar effects. The bucket is surrounded with
a crowd of patients; the sensations are continually communicated and
recommunicated; it ought to be expected that the nerves should be at
length worn out with this exercise, they are accordingly irritated,
and the woman of most sensibility in the company gives the signal.
Immediately the cords, every where stretched to the same degree and
in perfect unison, respond to each other; the crises are multiplied;
they mutually reinforce each other, and are rendered violent. In the
mean time the men, who are witnesses of these emotions, partake of them
in proportion to their nervous sensibility; and those with whom this
sensibility is greatest and most easily excited become themselves the
subjects of a crisis.
This propensity to irritation, partly natural and partly acquired,
becomes in each sex habitual. The sensations having been felt once or
oftener, nothing is now necessary, but to recal the memory of them, and
to exalt the imagination to the same degree, in order to operate the
same effects. This will never be difficult when the subject is placed
in the same circumstances. The public process is no longer necessary,
you have only to touch the hypochonders and to conduct the finger and
the rod of iron before the countenance; the signs are well known.
Even these are not necessary, it is sufficient that the patients be
blindfolded, made to believe that these signs are repeated upon them,
and that they are magnetised; the ideas are reexcited, the sensations
are reproduced, the imagination, employing its accustomed instruments
and resuming its former routes, gives birth to the same phenomena.
These cases happen exactly to the patients of M. Deslon, who fall
into a crisis without the bucket, and without being excited with the
spectacle of the public process.
Compression, imagination, imitation are therefore the true causes of
the effects attributed to this new agent, known by the appellation
of animal magnetism, this fluid, which is said to circulate through
the human body, and to be communicated from individual to individual.
Such is the result of the experiments of the commissioners, and
the observations they made upon the means employed and the effects
produced. This agent, this fluid has no existence. Chimerical however
as it is, the idea is by no means novel. Some authors, particularly
physicians of the last age, have expressly treated of it in various
performances. The curious and interesting enquiries of M. Thouret have
convinced the public, that the theory, the operations and the effects
of the animal magnetism, proposed in the last age, were nearly the same
with those revived in the present. The magnetism then is no more than
an old falshood. The theory indeed is now presented, as was necessary
in a more enlightened age, with a greater degree of pomp; but it is
not less erroneous. Human nature is formed to seize, to quit and to
resume the mistake which is flattering to its wishes. There are errors
which will be eternally dear to the sublunary state. How often has the
pretended science of astrology vanished and reappeared! The magnetism
is calculated to lead us back to it. Its professors have been desirous
of connecting it with the celestial influences, that it might have
the stronger seduction, and attract mankind by the two hopes that
are nearest their heart, that of looking into futurity, and that of
prolonging their existence.
There is room to believe that the imagination is the principal of the
three causes which we have assigned to the magnetism. It appears by
the experiments we have related that it suffices alone to produce the
crises. The pressure and the touch seem to serve it as preparatives;
it is by the touch that the nerves begin to be excited, imitation
communicates and extends the impressions. But the imagination is that
active and terrible power, by which are operated the astonishing
effects, that have excited so much attention to the public process. The
effects strike all the world, the cause is enveloped in the shades
of obscurity. When we consider that these effects seduced in former
ages men, venerable for their merit, their illumination and even their
genius, Paracelsus, Van Helmont and Kircher, we cease to be astonished,
that persons of the present day, learned and well informed, that even
a great number of physicians have been the dupes of this system. Had
the commissioners been admitted only to the public process, where there
is neither time nor opportunity of making decisive experiments, they
might themselves have been led into error. It was necessary to have
liberty to insulate the effects, in order to distinguish the causes; it
was necessary to see as they have done the imagination act, if we may
be allowed the expression, partially, and produce its effects one by
one and in detail, to have an idea to what the accumulation of those
effects might amount; to conceive the extent of its power, and to
account for all its prodigies. Such an examination demanded a sacrifice
of time, and a number of systematical researches, which we have not
always the leisure to undertake for our private instruction or private
curiosity, nor even the power properly to pursue without being like the
commissioners charged with the mandates of the sovereign, and honoured
with the confidence of the public.
M. Deslon is not much averse to the admission of these principles.
He declared in our session held at the house of Dr. Franklin the
19th of June, that he thought he might lay it down as a fact, that
the imagination had the greatest share in the effects of the animal
magnetism; he said that this new agent might be no other than the
imagination itself, whose power is as extensive as it is little known:
he affirmed that he always acknowledged the concern of this faculty in
the treatment of his patients, and he affirmed with equal confidence
that many persons have been either entirely cured or infinitely
amended in the state of their health under his direction. He remarked
to the commissioners that the imagination thus directed to the relief
of suffering humanity, would be a most valuable means in the hands
of the medical profession[14]; and persuaded of the reality of the
power of the imagination, he invited the commissioners to embrace the
opportunity which his practice afforded to study its procedure and
its effects. If therefore M. Deslon be still attached to his first
idea, that these effects are to be ascribed to the agency of a fluid,
which is communicated from individual to individual by the touch or
under the guidance of a conductor, he cannot however avoid conceding
to the commissioners that only one cause is requisite to one effect,
and that since the imagination is a sufficient cause, the supposition
of the magnetic fluid is useless. It cannot be denied that we are
surrounded with a fluid which peculiarly belongs to us; the insensible
perspiration forms around us an atmosphere of insensible vapours: but
this fluid has no agency but such as is common to other atmospheres;
cannot be communicated by the touch but in infinitely small quantities;
is not capable of being directed either by conductors, or by the eyes,
or by the will; is neither propagated by sound, nor reflected by
mirrors; and is in no case susceptible of the effects ascribed to it.
It remains for us to enquire, whether the crises or convulsions,
excited by the methods of the pretended magnetism in the assemblies
round the bucket, be capable of any utility, or be calculated to
cure or relieve the patients. The imagination of sick persons has
unquestionably a very frequent and considerable share in the cure of
their diseases. With the effect of it we are unacquainted otherwise
than by general experience; but, though it has not been traced in
positive experiments, it should seem not to admit of a reasonable
doubt. It is a known adage, that in physic as well as religion, men
are saved by faith; this faith is the produce of the imagination: in
these cases the imagination acts by gentle means; it is by diffusing
tranquility over the senses, by restoring the harmony of the functions,
by recalling into play every principle of the frame under the genial
influence of hope. Hope is an essential constituent of human life; the
man that yields us one contributes to restore to us the other. But when
the imagination produces convulsions, the means it employs are violent;
and such means are almost always destructive. There are indeed a few
rare cases in which they may be useful; there are desperate diseases,
in which it is necessary to overturn every thing for the introduction
of an order totally new. These critical shocks are to be employed in
the medical art in the same manner as poisons. It is requisite that
necessity should demand, and œconomy employ them. The need of them
is momentary; the shock ought to be single. Very far from repeating
it, the intelligent physician exerts himself to invent the means of
repairing the indispensible evil which has thus been produced; but
in the public process of the magnetism the crises are repeated every
day, they are long and violent. Now since the state introduced by
these crises is pernicious, the habit cannot be other than fatal. How
indeed can it be conceived, that a woman, attacked for instance with
a pulmonary distemper, can undergo with impunity a crisis, some of
whose symptoms are a convulsive cough and compulsory expectorations; or
can safely fatigue, perhaps shatter the lungs by violent and repeated
efforts, when so great pains are necessary to convey to the wounded
frame the sanative and the balsamic? How can we imagine that a man,
be his disorder what it will, can need in order to his recovery the
intervention of crises, in which the sight appears to be lost, the
members stiffen, he strikes his breast with precipitate and involuntary
motions; crises in a word, that are terminated by an abundant spitting
of viscous humours and even blood? The blood thus discharged is neither
vitiated nor corrupted, it flows from vessels from which it is torn by
the violence of effort and contrary to the intention of nature; these
effects are therefore to be regarded as a real not a salutary evil, an
evil additional to the distemper be it what it will.
Nor is this the only danger with which they are attended. Man is
incessantly enslaved by custom; nature is modified by habit only in
a progressive manner, yet she is often so completely modified, as to
suffer an entire metamorphosis, and to be scarcely capable of being
known for the same. Who will assure us that this state of crises, at
first voluntarily induced, shall not become habitual? And should the
habit thus contracted frequently reproduce the same symptoms, in spite
of the will, and almost without the assistance of the imagination, how
dreadful the fate of an individual, subjected to so violent effects,
tormented, as well morally as physically, with their unfortunate
impression, whose days should be divided between apprehension and
agony, and whose life should be an uninterrupted state of suffering!
Nervous distempers of this description, even when natural, are the
opprobrium of the medical science; how little ought it to be the
object of art to produce them! The art, which thus interferes with all
the functions of the animal œconomy, urges nature out of her proper
course, and multiplies the victims of irregularity, is to be regarded
as pernicious. Its effects are the more to be apprehended, since
it not only aggravates the disorder of the nerves by renewing their
symptoms, and causing them to degenerate into habit; but if a distemper
of this kind be contagious, as it may be suspected to be, the method of
provoking nervous convulsions and of exciting them in public assemblies
is a means to diffuse them in great towns, and even to afflict with
them generations to come, since the diseases and the habits of parents
are transmitted to their posterity.
The commissioners having convinced themselves, that the animal magnetic
fluid is capable of being perceived by none of our senses, and had no
action either upon themselves or upon the subjects of their several
experiments; being assured, that the touches and compressions employed
in its application rarely occasioned favourable changes in the animal
œconomy, and that the impressions thus made are always hurtful to the
imagination; in fine having demonstrated by decisive experiments,
that the imagination without the magnetism produces convulsions, and
that the magnetism without the imagination produces nothing; they
have concluded with an unanimous voice respecting the existence and
the utility of the magnetism, that the existence of the fluid is
absolutely destitute of proof, that the fluid having no existence
can consequently have no use, that the violent symptoms observed in
the public process are to be ascribed to the compression, to the
imagination called into action, and to that propensity to mechanical
imitation, which leads us in spite of ourselves to the repetition of
what strikes our senses. And at the same time they think themselves
obliged to add as an important observation, that the compressions and
the repeated action of the imagination employed in producing the crises
may be hurtful, that the sight of these crises is not less dangerous on
account of that imitation which nature seems to have imposed upon us as
a law, and that of consequence every public process, in which the means
of the animal magnetism shall be employed, cannot fail in the end of
producing the most pernicious effects[15].
Paris, the 11th day of August, 1784.
(Signed) B. FRANKLIN,
MAJAULT,
LE ROY,
SALLIN,
BAILLY,
D’ARCET,
DE BORY,
GUILLOTIN,
LAVOISIER.
FINIS.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “It must be confessed however, that the manner of directing the
pretended magnetism, is different in these systems. The ancients, as
well as M. Mesmer, regarded this fluid as universally diffused, as
pervading the bodies of animals, and as capable of being rendered the
vehicle of the most salutary influences. But, in order to call it into
action, they did not, like M. Mesmer, desire to touch, or so much as
to approach the patient. Their method consisted in a different order
of proceeding. To give a suitable direction to the universal spirit,
they were obliged to employ real parts, either extracted or evacuated,
of the individual upon whom they proposed to direct the magnetism. The
different humours of the human body, whether natural, as the blood,
the urine, the excrements, or contrary to nature, as the pus bred in
wounds; in fine, the solid parts of the frame, as the flesh, the nails,
the hair, in a state of separation from the body, afforded, according
to the ancient doctrine, the suitable and necessary means of employing
the magnetism. These different parts, so long as they remained in a
state of integrity, were supposed to be united in the link of a common
vital principle with the individual who had furnished them. The union
was operated by the intervention of the universal spirit, and in
acting upon them, the physician was said to act also upon the person
to whom they had belonged; an action, which, as it was independent of
contact, and was not superseded by distance, was regarded as magnetic.”
_Thouret._
[2] “Far be it from me,” says Maxwel, “to lead you to improper
actions. If from the perusal of my works, you become acquainted
with the means of such actions, you will do me the justice not to
divulge them.--I have seen,” adds he, “the most incredible effects,
and the greatest advantages from a right use of this method. I have
also seen infinite evils occasioned by the abuse of it.--Indeed, it
is scarcely prudent to treat of these subjects, on account of the
dangers that may result from it. If we were to express ourselves in a
manner universally intelligible, fathers could never be sure of their
daughters, nor husbands of their wives; women would be deprived of
their self-government in spite of the most judicious and obstinate
resistance.” _Maxwel, de medicina magnetica, apud Thouret._
[3] Paracelsus Arecolus Philippus Theophrastus Bombastus de Hohenheim
is to be regarded as the inventor of the magnetical system. He was born
at a village near Zurich in Switzerland in 1493, and died in 1541. His
profession was that of a physician, and he obtained great reputation
by the use of mercury and opium, medicines that were unknown, or not
employed by the physicians of those times. But beside this, he was a
proficient in alchymy, astrology, and magic. He was acquainted with the
philosopher’s stone, and the universal medicine. And he invented an
elixir, in the use of which a man could not fail to live to the age of
a thousand years.
Van Helmont was the immediate successor of Paracelsus in the pursuit
of the magnetical science, and wrote an express treatise De Magnetica
Vulnerum Curatione.
All the other persons enumerated, lived in the seventeenth century.
“To Maxwel, we are particularly indebted for the most complete and
copious treatise upon the subject, in which he has endeavoured to
support its declining credit by calling in the assistance of that
theory of the universal spirit, which he derived from the earliest
philosophers of antiquity, and in which we are presented with the exact
counterpart of the system of M. Mesmer.
“Another inhabitant of this island, the learned and illustrious sir
Kenelm Digby, is well known for his invention of the sympathetic
powder; which it was only necessary to apply to the linnen which had
imbibed the blood or pus of a wound, or to the arm or sword of him who
inflicted it, provided they were still stained with the blood of the
wounded person. It was necessary however, that the wound should be kept
perfectly clean, and protected from the air.
“There was a sympathetic sweating powder, invented so lately as the
year 1745. The means of applying it was, by mixing it with the urine of
the person diseased, and keeping it boiling over a fire, as long as you
wished the perspiration to continue. During the operation, the patient
was to keep his bed, to be covered up warm, and to drink several large
basons of tea. This medicine was never known to fail of its effect.”
_Thouret._
[4] The experiments of the ring and sword, are to be found in Kircher’s
Magnes, sive de arte magnetica. They are both well known. “That of
the sword consists in the balancing it upon the point of one of the
fingers, the consequence of which will be a very rapid rotatory motion,
_provided the person be properly magnetised_. That of the ring is
performed by a person initiated in the animal magnetism, holding it
suspended by a thread in the inside of a wine glass, when it will
invariably strike the hour of the day.” _Thouret._
[5] “Valentine Greatrakes, esq; was a native of Afane, in the kingdom
of Ireland. We are told, that one day he was conscious to a wonderful
internal revolution, and at the same time heard a voice like that
of a genius, which cried incessantly for a long time: “I endow you
with the faculty of curing diseases.” Importuned by this salutation,
from which he could in no way distract his attention, he determined
to make an experiment of the truth of the intelligence. The voice
had first announced to him the gift of curing the king’s evil. He
made an experiment upon this distemper, and succeeded. He afterwards
touched persons attacked with an epidemical fever, that raged in his
neighbourhood; the voice had announced to him the gift of curing this
disease. In fine, he was enabled to cure every species of disease; and
he succeeded in all cases, except where, as he observed, the malady
was too deeply rooted, or the patient laboured under a particular
indisposition to this method of cure. The exterior of this man was
extremely simple. His cures were accompanied with no degree of pomp and
ceremony, unless we should call such, his ascribing his success to God,
publicly expressing his gratitude, and inviting the patient to join
with him in the act of thanksgiving. But he made a very extensive use
of the operation of touch. The distemper fled before him, and he was
able, we are told, to dislodge it from its seat, and remove it to parts
the least useful. If its progress appeared to be suspended in any part,
he redoubled his frictions upon that part, to remove the obstacle. In
this operation nature, excited by the stroking, seemed frequently to
operate crises, and it produced stools, vomitings and perspirations.”
_Thouret._
“Greatrakes cured not only internal diseases, but also external ones,
such as wounds and ulcers. The second Villiers, duke of Buckingham, was
one of his patients. His attestations were signed by Boyle, Wilkins,
Whichcot, Cudworth and Patrick. He was born in 1628, received the gift
of healing 1662, and removed to London 1666.” _Des Maizeaux, Vie de St.
Evremond_.
“The cures of Gassner are of a much later date, and are not above ten
or twelve years old. This German, having in his youth been afflicted
with an ill state of health, which resisted the efforts of all the
physicians, suspected that his distemper might have a supernatural
cause, and derive from the influence of the devil. His conjecture was
verified by his success in expelling the devil, having adjured him
in the name of Jesus Christ. From that moment he enjoyed the most
perfect health for sixteen years. Encouraged by this event, he laid
aside the study of medicine, to which his distemper had prompted him,
and procured all the authors who had treated of exorcism. He began
with healing his parishioners in an obscure town upon the borders
of Switzerland and the Tirol, and his reputation increased so much,
that, in the two last years of his residence there, he had between
four and five hundred patients who applied to him. He then made a
progress through several of the Swiss cantons, and settled at Ratisbon
in 1774. He distinguished diseases into two classes, the natural and
the demoniac, the last of which were much the most numerous. Over the
former he pretended to no power. His cures were performed with much
pomp and solemnity; and it was observed, that he constantly rubbed his
hands upon his girdle and handkerchief previously to his touching the
patient. He performed his cures in the name of Christ, and by the faith
of the diseased in his holy name; if their faith failed, the cure did
not take place. He gave the sick, when he dismissed them, balm and oil,
which he considered as spiritual medicaments, together with certain
waters and powders, and a little ring, inscribed with the name of
Jesus, to prevent a relapse.” _Thouret._
Thouret considers the system of Gassner as having had an influence on
that of M. Mesmer. Astrology and possessions were extremely current
in Germany; and as Gassner had taken possession of, and ruined the
latter pretension, Mesmer had recourse to the former. It should however
be remembered, that Mesmer had written and published his thesis upon
astrology before the pretensions of Gassner were heard of.