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

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.