---
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
chunk: 7/17
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"
---

[The baquet] is a vat about six to seven feet, more or less, in diameter by eighteen inches in height. There is a double bottom in the interior of this vat, in which fragments of broken bottles, gravel, stones, and sticks of pounded sulfur and iron filings are placed. All of this is filled with water and covered up with a floor nailed into the vat. On the surface of the lid, six inches in from the rim, one makes various holes in order to allow the passage of iron rods which are arranged so that one end penetrates the bottom of the vat and the other is directed, by means of a curve, over the pit of the stomach of the patient or other affected parts of the body.
Mesmer specifically stressed the primary importance of the patients' hand-holding as a factor in the "augmentation" of the force/quality of the power of the "animal magnetism".
Moreover, and significantly, Mesmer (separately) acknowledged that, if it was ever to come to pass that he had a suitable "establishment" – i.e., one with sufficient space available for all the assembled patients to hold hands – he would "abolish the use of baquets" (je supprimerois les baquets) and, as well, also significantly remarking that, "In general, I only use these little devices [baquets] when I am forced to do so" (En general, je n'use des petits moyens que lorsque j'y suis forcé).

== The "magnetic crisis" ==
One feature of Mesmer's methods ... was the "mesmeric crisis". Some patients, especially those suffering from more serious symptoms, experienced nervous trembling, nausea, occasionally delirium or convulsions. Mesmer regarded these as an inevitable accompaniment of the process of normalization of the flow of animal magnetism, and had special padded "crisis rooms" [salle de crises] in which patients could throw themselves about without hurting themselves, while Mesmer or his assistants gave them individual attention. The depth of the crisis naturally varied from case to case, but Mesmer insisted that some degree of crisis, no matter how slight or transient, would always be found if it was looked for carefully enough.
Given Mesmer's regular (analogical) references throughout his works to the efficient grinding activities of smoothly functioning mills – speaking of how the windmills are driven by the wind, and watermills by the flow of water. – he usefully extended those analogies to explain the circumstances in which "crises" occur, especially in relation to the magnitude of the "crises": i.e., the dramatic circumstances of the sudden restoration of the lost function of a watermill installation – a direct consequence of the magnitude of the force of the flow of water that has been applied (through the currently stationary waterwheel) to the milling mechanism, which is, in and of itself, directly related to the extent to which the (now-operative) milling mechanism was formerly stationary, out of order, or, even, jammed:

Mesmer states that magnetism is to the bodily organs as the wind is to the windmill ... If the wind ceases to blow, the milling process comes to a halt, and should the cessation continue for long enough, the windmill may fall into disrepair or even ruin. The salvation of the miller comes when the wind begins to blow again, making the machinery of the windmill work again. ... [A] greater effort is required to start a windmill after it has stopped than to keep it going, especially if disrepair has set in. ... [In a similar fashion,] when animal magnetism ceases to course freely through the nervous system, the organs begin to malfunction and the whole physiology slows down. Fluids become stagnant and viscous and begin to block the blood vessels and other canals of the body. ... The symptoms become worse because the organs grow weaker as the obstructions grow larger and larger and vice versa. Mesmer thought the organs then must be galvanized into a greater effort than ever before to push the fluids through the natural channels, and it is animal magnetism that galvinizes them.

=== The Commissions' observations and description of d'Eslon's "magnetic crises" ===

=== The Commissions' remarks on d'Eslon's "magnetic crises" ===
Noting that some of those who were "magnetized" by d'Eslon over an extended time "fell into the convulsive movements that have been called Crises" – and noting that these "convulsive movements" (mouvemens convulsifs) were "viewed [by d'Eslon] as evidence of the particular agent to whom they are attributed" – the "Society" Commissioners' Report, in its discussion of the "Crises", identified a number of common characteristics among the majority of those who displayed these "convulsive movements":

=== The Commissions' remarks on the perceived dangers of the "magnetic crises" ===
In the last section of its Report, the "Franklin" Commission, in addition to its remarks on the impact of the phenomena associated with a "crisis", made a number of significant observations on the perceived dangers of experiencing, or simply observing, a "crisis" in a number of domains, including:

a. the immediate and long-term physiological and psychological consequences of experiencing a "crisis" upon the "animal economy" of an already seriously ill person,b.the immediate and long-term physiological and psychological consequences of experiencing a "crisis" upon the "animal economy" of an otherwise completely healthy person,c.(given the considerable impact of the onlooker-consequences of issues such as behavioral contagion, Vicarious trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder. etc.), the immediate and long-term physiological and psychological consequences of observing another individual manifest a "crisis" upon the "animal economy" of an individual observer (regardless of whether the observer in question was healthy or not), and, on, a larger scale,d.the detrimental effects of the "crises" on society as a whole.

=== Observations of the frequency of "crises" ===
One interesting aspect of a number of the pro-d'Eslon and pro-Mesmer responses to the Commissions' Reports, collectively, was that they provided figures on the level to which the author in question had observed individual patients manifest full-blown "magnetic crises" as a consequence of their exposure to an extended sequence of standard "magnetic" treatments.