---
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
chunk: 2/17
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_on_Animal_Magnetism"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:45:20.529918+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

From the perspective of a given phenomenon, one can look down to the entities and activities composing it. One can look up to the higher-level mechanisms of which it is a component. One can look back to the mechanisms that come before it or by which it developed. One can look forward to what comes after it. [And, finally] one can look around to see the wider context with which it operates.

=== Tensions within the royal family ===
Prior to his arrival in Paris in 1777 – with a letter of recommendation from Chancellor von Kaunitz of the Habsburg monarchy to the Austrian Ambassador to France, the Comte de Mercy-Argenteau (who, in turn, introduced Mesmer to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy (1720–1800), the Director of the Academy of Sciences) – Mesmer was already known to Marie Antoinette.
At the urging of her two closest friends, Marie-Paule Angélique d’Albert de Luynes (1744–1781), "the Duchesse de Chaulnes" and Marie Thérèse Louise de Savoie-Carignan (1749–1792), "the Princess of Lamballe", both of whom "had benefited from Mesmer's treatment", Marie Antoinette had been able to arrange for both Mesmer and d'Eslon to be officially "interviewed" by (an otherwise unidentified) representative of the King on 14 March 1781 (Walmsley, 1967, p. 267). At the conclusion of the interview, Mesmer reluctantly agreed to the proposed conditions: that a number of his (previous and current) patients be examined by a team of "commissioners" – it was also stipulated that, as a "requirement" of the King, Mesmer was to "remain in France", until his "doctrines" and his "principles" had been thereby "established", and that he was "not [to] leave except by permission of the King" – and that, if the commissioners' reports were "favourable", the government would issue "a ministerial letter" to that effect (Pattie, 1994, p. 110).
Within two weeks Mesmer had rescinded his agreement, on the grounds that it had been made under duress, and a new "interview" was conducted, involving Mesmer, d'Eslon, the unidentified bureaucrat, and the Minister of State, Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux de Maurepas.

The Minister ... began by saying that the King, informed of Mesmer's dislike of being investigated by commissioners, wished to excuse him from that formality and would grant him a life annuity of 20,000 French livres and pay 10,000 livres a year for the instruction of students, of whom three were to be selected by the government. "The rest of the benefits would be granted when the government's students recognize the utility of the discovery".
Once again, Mesmer rejected the offer made on behalf of the King; and, having been told that the King's decision was final, and given that the impetus for the first interview had come from the Queen, Mesmer wrote an extraordinary letter (translated at Pattie, 1994, pp. 112–115), the nature of which would have meant imprisonment in the Bastille, if it had been written 20 years earlier.

Meditating [on the Minister's use of the word "final",] Mesmer returned to his clinic and put his name to what would surely be one of the most extraordinary letters ever written to a queen of France [who also shared his "native land"] even if he had sent it privately. Instead, he had it printed, [be]rating her in public about the offer [that had been] made in her name and giving her an ultimatum.
So, there were many reasons for the 1784 Commission to satisfy the (French) interests of the King, rather than the (Austrian) interests of his queen.

=== Social impact ===
It is already more than six years since Animal Magnetism was announced to Europe, particularly in France and in this Capital. But it is only over about the last two years that it has been of particular interested to a considerable number of citizens and that it has become the object of public discussion. Never had a more extraordinary question divided the opinions of an enlightened nation.
Mesmer's overall stress on the quest for "harmony" as a therapeutic outcome and, especially, given the demonstrated fact that the effects of his 'animal magnetism' – predicated upon the presence of a force analogous to gravity – were equally demonstrated by all, regardless of age, gender, class, race, intellect, etc., was an important influence on many of the moves (and 'movers') within French society towards democracy and greater equality.

=== Festering political issues ===
The increasingly unpopular ancien régime was under considerable pressure from many quarters; and, within five years of the Commissions' Reports, the French Revolution had broken out. The storming of the Bastille took place on 14 July 1789; and four years later, King Louis XVI was executed on 21 January 1793, and his Queen, Marie Antoinette, the  daughter of Empress Maria Theresa, and the sister  of Emperor Joseph II, was executed on 16 October 1793.

=== Professional tensions ===
Apart from the wider issue of having to evaluate and decide how to deal with those within the medical profession "who saw animal magnetism as an interesting therapeutic resource" (Armando & Belmonte, 2018, p. 13) – namely, the boundary disputes between the conventional therapeutic practices of the sorts that Brockliss and Jones (1997) usefully identify as lying within the established "medical penumbra" (pp. 230–283) and the novel and innovative practices at the "frontier" that were (potentially) responsible for the "expansion of the medicable" (pp. 441–459) – there were also significant tensions, differences, and boundary disputes between the more theory- and principle-centred Paris Faculty of Medicine (formed some five centuries earlier), and the more practitioner-centred Royal Society of Medicine (formed just 5 years earlier), the "primary function" of which was "to evaluate patent medicines and, by extension, new forms of therapy" (Forrest, 1999, pp. 18–19).