---
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
chunk: 12/17
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_on_Animal_Magnetism"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:17:13.409273+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

==== Immediate publication and dissemination ====
The report was immediately published by the government printer; and at least 20,000 copies were rapidly and very widely circulated throughout France and neighbouring countries. Within four months (16 December 1784), the London publishing house of Joseph Johnson was announcing the publication of a complete English version, translated by William Godwin (i.e., Godwin, 1785), and, in between February and July 1785, four different "periodical abridgements of the Franklin report, each printed multiple times in the Atlantic coast publications" were published in the United States (Ogden, 2012, p. 167); and, in 1837, Godwin's complete translation was published, in Philadelphia, as part of a collected work.

==== Touch, imagination, and imitation ====
Clearly "recogniz[ing] that publicly endorsing the curative effects of a technique that had no demonstrable basis in the science of the late 18th century could lead to a proliferation of medical quackery" (McConkey & Perry, 2002, p. 328) and, based on their own "experiments" and "observations", the Commissioners concluded that "the true causes of the effects attributed to this new agent known by the name of animal magnetism, [and] to this fluid which is said to circulate in the body and to communicate itself from one individual to another" were "touch, imagination, [and] imitation":

... having demonstrated by decisive experiments, that the imagination without the magnetism produces convulsions, and that the magnetism, without the imagination produces nothing; [the Commissioners] concluded with an [sic] unanimous voice respecting the existence and the utility of the magnetism, that the existence of the fluid is absolutely destitude 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.

==== No evidence to support d'Eslon's claims ====
The Commission found no evidence of any kind to support d'Eslon's claim for the existence of a "magnetic fluid":

The most reliable way to ascertain the existence of animal-magnetism fluid [l'existence du fluide magnétique animal] would be to make its presence tangible; but it did not take long for the Commissioners to recognize that this fluid escapes detection by all the senses. Unlike electricity, it is neither luminescent nor visible. Its action does not manifest itself visibly as does the attraction of a magnet; it is without taste or smell; it spreads noiselessly & envelops or penetrates you without your sense of touch warning you of its presence. Therefore, if it exists in us & around us, it does so in an absolutely undetectable manner.

=== The Commission's secret report ("for the King's eyes only") ===
A second (brief) report – which had been presented privately to the King on 11 August 1784, but not made public until 1800 (i.e., in the time of The Consulate period of French First Republic) – specifically addressed the perceived moral dangers occasioned by the physical practices of the animal magnetists:

The uniformly critical tone of this private document was in stark contrast to the scrupulously evenhanded voice of the official report; ... [and its] message was blunt: the practice of animal magnetism was a threat not only to health ... but also to morality, especially in the case of weak, virtuous women. ... [It] provided an explicit description of a certain kind of prolonged "convulsion" that resulted not from the alleged healing power of animal magnetism but rather from the close physical contact and mutual arousal of male magnetizers and female patients who did not fully understand what was being done to them. Deslon [sic] himself had admitted, under interrogation by [the Chief of Paris Police] Lenoir [who was present at a number of the Commission's investigations], how easy it would be to abuse a woman in such a state. Many women had been in treatment for years without being cured. Most of them were not ill to begin with, but had been drawn to the clinic for the amusement it provided, attending regularly as a relief from boredom. Around the tub, the ease with which symptoms spread from person to person was striking. The commissioners reiterated the health risks of inducing full-blown crises, a dangerous practice that any responsible physician would shun. They [also] implied [in this secret report] the possibility that magnetic seances were a deliberate fraud.
In concluding their report, they stress that they had not observed any "real cures" (guérisons réelles) from d'Eslon's treatments – which were, they noted, both "very long" and "unfruitful" – and, also, stress that, among d'Eslon's patients, those who had been under his treatment for 18 months to 2 years, without any benefit, ceased to present for any further treatment, having exhausted their patience (p. 152).
Finally, they noted (pp. 153–155) that, although charged with investigating d'Eslon's claims and d'Eslon's methods alone, they were satisfied that – offering essentially the same explanation as that in their for-public-consumption report (see "The Report's final footnote" in the Gallery above) – although they had not examined any of Mesmer's methods, etc., their findings applied equally to Mesmer and his methods, especially in relation to the attribution of all observed phenomena to "contact", "imagination", and/or "imitation" (p. 154).

=== The Commission's brief "courtesy report" to the Royal Academy of Sciences ===