Note 15 — REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS, &c. (continued 2)

If it be objected to the commissioners that this decision concludes respecting the magnetism in general, instead of relating singly to the magnetism practised by M. Deslon, the commissioners reply that the intention of the king was to have their opinion upon the animal magnetism, and that in consequence they have not exceeded the bounds of their commission. Again they reply that M. Deslon has appeared to them acquainted with what are called the principles of the magnetism, and that he certainly possesses the means of producing the effects and exciting the crises which are ascribed to it.

The principles of M. Deslon are the very same with those included in the twenty seven propositions disseminated from the press by M. Mesmer in 1779. If M. Mesmer now announces a more extensive theory, it was not necessary for the commissioners to be acquainted with the theory to decide upon the existence and utility of the magnetism, it was sufficient to estimate the effects. It is by the effects that the existence of a cause is established, it is by the effects also that its utility must be demonstrated. The phenomena are learned from observation long before we can arrive at the theory which connects and explains them. The theory of the loadstone does not yet exist, and its phenomena are ascertained by the experience of successive ages. The theory of M. Mesmer is in this case indifferent and superfluous; the methods employed, the effects produced, this is what it was necessary to examine. Now it is easy to prove that the essential practice of the magnetism is known to M. Deslon.

M. Deslon was for many years the pupil of M. Mesmer. Constantly during that time he saw the process of the animal magnetism, and the means employed in exciting and directing it. M. Deslon himself administered the magnetism in the presence of M. Mesmer; separated from him he operated the same effects. Being afterwards reconciled they united their patients; the one and the other without distinction undertook the management of them, and of consequence the methods were the same. The method which is followed at this day by M. Deslon can be no other than the method of M. Mesmer.

The effects are not less correspondent. There are crises equally frequent, and accompanied by similar symptoms, at the house of M. Deslon and at the house of M. Mesmer; the effects do not therefore belong to the method of an individual, but to the practice of the magnetism in general. The experiments of the commissioners demonstrate that the effects obtained by M. Deslon are due to compression, to imagination and to imitation. These are therefore the causes of the magnetism in general. The observations of the commissioners have convinced them that these convulsive crises and these violent means cannot be useful in medicine any otherwise than as poisons, and they have judged independent of all theory that wherever it shall be the object to excite convulsions they may become habitual and pernicious, they may be epidemically diffused, and even extend to future generations.

The commissioners were of consequence obliged to conclude that not only the measures in a particular mode of proceeding, but the measures of the magnetism in general, might in the end produce the most pernicious effects.