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 526 ANIMAL MAGNETISM number of experiments before them. In their re- port to the government the commissioners say that, " in regard to the existence and the util- ity of animal magnetism, they have come to the unanimous conclusion that there is no proof of the existence of the animal magnetic fluid ; that this fluid, having no existence, is consequently without utility; and that the violent effects which are to be observed in the public practice of magnetism are due to the manipulations, to the excitement of the imagination, and to that sort of mechanical imitation which leads us to repeat anything which produces an impression upon the senses." The special report of the committee of the academy of sciences, con- sisting of Franklin, Le Roy, Bory, Lavoisier, and Bailly, and made to the academy itself, concludes as follows : " Magnetism, accordingly, will not have been altogether valueless for the philosophy which pronounces its condemnation ; it is one more fact to be recorded in the history of the errors of the human mind, and an im- portant experiment upon the power of the imagination." (Histoire de Vacademie royale des sciences, 1784, p. 15.) This report of the commission, together with a previous quarrel in regard to money matters between Mesmer and his partisans, seems to have rapidly dimin- ished the prosperity and esteem which he had enjoyed in Paris. He left that city in 1785, and passed the rest of his life in retirement in Switzerland, in the possession of considerable wealth acquired from his former magnetic prac- tice. About the time of Mesmer's retirement from Paris, animal magnetism entered upon a new phase of development, by the discovery by the marquis de Puysegur of the magnetic sleep, or somnambulism, which afterward be- came still further developed by the addition of clairvoyance. It is under this title that the most surprising phenomena of animal magnet- ism have been exhibited during the present century. A magnetic clairvoyant is a person who, having been thrown into the somnambu- listic condition by the manipulations of the magnetizer, becomes possessed of extraordinary powers of sense and perception. The term clairvoyant designates the power which is claimed for these persons of seeing distinctly through the substance of opaque objects. Thus a clairvoyant, it is said, can read a book un- opened, or a letter which is enclosed in a solid wooden box. He can do this as well as with his eyes closed or bandaged as if they were open and uncovered. Sometimes the sense of sight, or a faculty capable of perceiving things which the normal man perceives only by means of the organ of vision, seems seated in the fore- head, in the backhead, in the fingers, or in the knuckles of the hand. It is asserted that the clairvoyant can hear also without using his ears, and with more acuteness than can others in the waking state using" their ears. Some- times the sense of hearing appears to have its seat at the pit of the stomach, and the clair- voyant hears no sounds except those n;ade at his breast. The senses of taste, touch, and smell are ordinarily inactive. But while insen- sible to impressions upon his own nerves,he feels all those which are experienced by his magne- tizer ; and if the latter be pinched, the clair- voyant winces, as though he felt the pain at the corresponding part of his own body. He is governed by the will of the magnetizer; whatever the latter orders him to do, he does ; and this order is understood and obeyed, even if not spoken, but merely thought. As the theory of these alleged phenomena was gradu- ally developed, mesmerism again rose into some degree of favor. M. Deleuze, assistant secre- tary and naturalist of the Jardin des Plantes, published in 1813 a favorable " Critical History of Animal Magnetism;" and other friendly publications followed rapidly in France and Germany. Several able German physiologists spoke of the new agent as worthy of attention. Well conducted magazines were established to propagate its principles. The Prussian govern- ment took notice of it in 1817, so far as to order that none save physicians should practise it ; and in the following year the academy of sciences of Berlin offered a prize for the best treatise on the subject, but this offer was sub- sequently withdrawn. Ennemoser, Kluge, Kieser, Wolfarth, and Nees von Esenbeck defended mesmerism in books and magazines before the German public, and Deleuze kept the subject before France by publishing a num- ber of works. In 1825, Dr. Foissac, a young physician and an enthusiastic believer in animal magnetism, demanded of the royal academy of medicine in Paris that another commission should be appointed, and another investigation made. The academy consented and appointed a commission of five members to conduct the inquiry. Their report, not made till 1881, while it did not concede by any means all that the believers in the new force claimed, was in general favorable to the theory of its existence and effects ; and although not regularly adopted by the academy, or printed as a part of its for- mal memoirs, it gave a powerful impulse to the investigation of mesmerism, and extended it into Britain and America, where it had been almost unknown before. In 1838 J. 0. Colquhoun published in English a translation of the report with remarks ; in 1886 he published an original work on the same subject, entitled his Reve- lata. In 1837 the subject was again taken up by the academy. A committee of nine was appointed, among whom were Roux, Bouillaud, and Cloquet, who tested in several sessions the phenomena exhibited by a reputed clairvoyant. Their report, made Aug. 17, 1837, detailed all the particulars of their investigations, and ex- pressed the results as follows : "The facts which had been promised by M. Berna (the magnetizer) as conclusive, and as adapted to throw light on physiological and therapeutical questions, are certainly not conclusive in favor of the doctrine of animal magnetism, and have nothing in common with either physiology or