Part 21

Some time after his arrival in Paris, Mesmer tried again to get into communication with the Academy of Sciences. This society even acceded to a rendezvous. But, instead of the empty words that were offered them, the academicians required experiments. Mesmer stated--I quote his words--that it was child's play; and the conference had no other result.

The Royal Society of Medicine, being called upon to judge of the pretended cures performed by the Austrian doctor, thought that their agents could not give a well-founded opinion "without having first duly examined the patients to ascertain their state." Mesmer rejected this natural and reasonable proposal. He wished that the agents should be content with the word of honour and attestations of the patients. In this respect, also, the severe letters of the worthy Vicq-d'Azyr put an end to communications which must have ended unsatisfactorily.

The faculty of medicine showed, we think, less wisdom. It refused to examine any thing; it even proceeded in legal form against one of its regent doctors who had associated himself, they said, with the charlatanism of Mesmer.

These barren debates evidently proved that Mesmer himself was not thoroughly sure of his theory, nor of the efficacy of the means of cure that he employed. Still the public showed itself blind. The infatuation became extreme. French society appeared at one moment divided into magnetizers and magnetized. From one end of the kingdom to the other agents of Mesmer were seen, who, with receipt in hand, put the weak in intellect under contribution.

The magnetizers had had the address to intimate that the mesmeric crises manifested themselves only in persons endowed with a certain sensitiveness. From that moment, in order not to be ranged among the insensible, both men and women, when near the rod, assumed the appearance of epileptics.

Was not Father Hervier really in one of those paroxysms of the disease when he wrote, "If Mesmer had lived contemporary with Descartes and Newton, he would have saved them much labour: those great men suspected the existence of the universal fluid; Mesmer has discovered the laws of its action"?

Count de Gebelin showed himself stranger still. The new doctrine would naturally seduce him by its connection with some of the mysterious practices of ancient times; but the author of The Primitive World did not content himself with writing in favour of Mesmerism with the enthusiasm of an apostle. Frightful pain, violent griefs, rendered life insupportable to him; Gebelin saw death approaching with satisfaction, so from that moment he begged earnestly that he might not be carried to Mesmer's, where assuredly "he could not die." We must just mention, however, that his request was not attended to; he was carried to Mesmer's, and died while he was being magnetized.

Painting, sculpture, and engraving were constantly repeating the features of this Thaumaturgus. Poets wrote verses to be inscribed on the pedestals of the busts, or below the portraits. Those by Palisot deserve to be quoted, as one of the most curious examples of poetic licences:--

"Behold that man--the glory of his age! Whose art can all Pandora's ills assuage. In skill and tact no rival pow'r is known-- E'en Greece, in him, would Esculapius own."

Enthusiasm having thus gone to the last limits in verse, enthusiasm had but one way left to become remarkable in prose: that is, violence. Is it not thus that we must characterize the words of Bergasse?--"The adversaries of animal magnetism are men who must one day be doomed to the execration of all time, and to the punishment of the avenging contempt of posterity."

It is rare for violent words not to be followed by violent acts. Here every thing proceeded according to the natural course of human events. We know, indeed, that some furious admirers of Mesmer attempted to suffocate Berthollet in the corner of one of the rooms of the Palais Royal, for having honestly said that the scenes he had witnessed did not appear to him demonstrative. We have this anecdote from Berthollet himself.

The pretensions of the German doctor increased with the number of his adherents. To induce him to permit only three learned men to attend his meetings, M. de Maurepas offered him, in the name of the king, 20,000 francs a year for life, and 10,000 annually for house-rent. Yet Mesmer did not accept this offer, but demanded, as a national recompense, one of the most beautiful chateaux in the environs of Paris, together with all its territorial dependencies.

Irritated at finding his claims repulsed, Mesmer quitted France, angrily vowing her to the deluge of maladies from which it would have been in his power to save her. In a letter written to Marie Antoinette, the Thaumaturgus declared that he had refused the government offers through austerity.

Through austerity!!! Are we then to believe that, as it was then pretended, Mesmer was entirely ignorant of the French language; that in this respect his meditations had been exclusively centered on the celebrated verse--

"Fools are here below for our amusement?"

However this may be, the austerity of Mesmer did not prevent his being most violently angry when he learnt at Spa that Deslon continued the magnetical treatments at Paris. He returned in all haste. His partisans received him with enthusiasm, and set on foot a subscription of 100 louis per head, which produced immediately near 400,000 francs, (16,000l.) We now feel some surprise to see, among the names of the subscribers, those of Messrs. de Lafayette, de Segur, d'Epremesnil.

Mesmer quitted France a second time about the end of 1781, in quest of a more enlightened government, who could appreciate superior minds. He left behind him a great number of tenacious and ardent adepts, whose importunate conduct at last determined the government to submit the pretended magnetic discoveries to be examined by four Doctors of the Faculty of Paris. These distinguished physicians solicited to have added to them some members of the Academy of Sciences. M. de Breteuil then recommended Messrs. Le Roy, Bory, Lavoisier, Franklin, and Bailly, to form part of the mixed commission. Bailly was finally named reporter.

The work of our brother-academician appeared in August, 1784. Never was a complex question reduced to its characteristic traits with more penetration and tact; never did more moderation preside at an examination, though personal passions seemed to render it impossible; never was a scientific subject treated in a more dignified and lucid style.

Nothing equals the credulity of men in whatever touches their health. This aphorism is an eternal truth. It explains how a portion of the public has returned to mesmeric practices; how I shall still perform an interesting task by giving a detailed analysis of the magnificent labours published by our fellow-academician sixty years ago. This analysis will show, besides, how daring those men were, who recently, in the bosom of another academy, constituted themselves passionate defenders of some old women's tales, which one would have supposed had been permanently buried in oblivion.

The commissioners go in the first place to the treatment by M. Deslon, examine the famous rod, describe it carefully, relate the means adopted to excite and direct magnetism. Bailly then draws out a varied and truly extraordinary table of the state of the sick people. His attention is principally attracted by the convulsions that they designated by the name of crisis. He remarked that in the number of persons in the crisis state, there were always a great many women, and very few men; he does not imagine any deceit, however; holds the phenomena as established, and passes on to search out their causes.

According to Mesmer and his partisans, the cause of the crisis and of the less characteristic effects, resided in a particular fluid. It was to search out proofs of the existence of this fluid, that the commissioners had first to devote their efforts. Indeed, Bailly said, "Animal magnetism may exist without being useful, but it cannot be useful if it does not exist."

The animal magnetic fluid is not luminous and visible, like electricity; it does not produce marked and manifest effects on inert matter, as the fluid of the ordinary magnet does; finally, it has no taste. Some magnetizers asserted that it had a smell; but repeated experiments proved that they were in error. The existence, then, of the pretended fluid, could be established only by its effects on animated beings.

Curative effects would have thrown the commission into an inextricable daedalus, because nature alone, without any treatment, cures many maladies. In this system of observations, they could not have hoped to learn the exact part performed by magnetism, until after a great number of cures, and after trials oftentimes repeated.

The commissioners, therefore, had to limit themselves to instantaneous effects of the fluid on the animal organism.

They then submitted themselves to the experiments, but using an important precaution. "There is no individual," says Bailly, "in the best state of health, who, if he closely attended to himself, would not feel within him an infinity of movements and variations, either of exceedingly slight pain, or of heat, in the various parts of his body.... These variations, which are continually taking place, are independent of magnetism.... The first care required of the commissioners was, not to be too attentive to what was passing within them. If magnetism is a real and powerful cause, we have no need to think about it to make it act and manifest itself; it must, so to say, force the attention, and make itself perceived by even a purposely distracted mind."

The commissioners, magnetized by Deslon, felt no effect. After the healthy people, some ailing ones followed, taken of all ages, and from various classes of society. Among these sick people, who amounted to fourteen, five felt some effects. On the remaining nine, magnetism had no effect whatever.

Notwithstanding the pompous announcements, magnetism already could no longer be considered as a certain indicator of diseases.

Here the reporter made a capital remark: magnetism appeared to have no effect on incredulous persons who had submitted to the trials, nor on children. Was it not allowable to think, that the effects obtained in the others proceeded from a previous persuasion as to the efficacy of the means, and that they might be attributed to the influence of imagination? Thence arose another system of experiments. It was desirable to confirm or to destroy this suspicion; "it became therefore requisite to ascertain to what degree imagination influences our sensations, and to establish whether it could have been in part or entirely the cause of the effects attributed to magnetism."