---
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
chunk: 3/17
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"
---

=== Scientific issues ===
In a prevailing atmosphere of "[an overall] redefinition of frontiers in the legitimacy of knowledge" – and, in relation to Mesmer's claims, a redefinition "which did not necessarily match the public popularity that they attracted" (Zanetti, 2018), p. 59) – the issue of the existence (or not) of a substantial "magnetic fluid" and/or "animal magnetism" required resolution.

=== Medical issues ===
At a time when, in relation to "healers and healing", the conglomerate of "physicians, empirics, surgeons, apothecaries, folk healers, and religious personalities all vied with each other (as well as worked together) for medical legitimacy and patients" (Broomhall, 2004, p. 5), Mesmer was not only a "foreign national", but also one that had no affiliation of any kind with any known professional medical association within France (or elsewhere in Europe); and, as a consequence, his professional conduct, his medical practice, his medico-commercial enterprises, and his therapeutic endeavours were not regulated in any way.
Moreover, the efficacy of Mesmer's interventions had never been objectively tested, neither the agency nor the (pre- and post-intervention) veracity of his supposed "cures" had ever been objectively verified, and, finally, in relation to the presenting conditions of those with (supposedly) 'real' ailments, the question of whether the pre-intervention conditions of each case were of "organic" or "psychogenic" origins had never been objectively determined.

=== Religious issues ===
As discussed at considerable length by Spanos and Gottlieb (1979) there were not only a wide range of controversial secular and religious issues relating to the similarities and differences between the induction, manifestations, and immediate and long-term consequences of the "crises" that were (sporadically) produced by the 'magnetic' interventions, and the exorcisms of the Roman Catholic Church, but, also, of greater significance, to the occasional (apparently veridical) reports of post-magnetic "clairvoyance" – a condition that was one of the classic indications for an exorcism whenever it was considered to be "demonically inspired" (as distinct from those cases in which it was considered to be "divinely inspired" (Spanos and Gottlieb, 1979, p. 538)).

== The two Commissions ==

The Commissions were appointed in early 1784 by the Baron de Breteuil, Secretary of State for the King's Household and Minister of the Department of Paris at the command of King Louis XVI.

At length [the matter of Animal Magnetism] was thought to deserve the attention of government, and a committee, partly physicians, and partly members of the royal academy of Sciences, with doctor Benjamin Franklin at their head, were appointed to examine it. M. Mesmer refused to have any communication with these gentlemen; but M. Deslon, the most considerable of his pupils, consented to disclose to them his principles, and assist them in their enquiries.

=== "Franklin Commission" ===

The first of the two Royal Commissions, usually referred to as the "Franklin Commission", was appointed on 12 March 1784. It was composed of four physicians from the Paris Faculty of Medicine – the physician and chemist Jean d'Arcet, the physician and close friend of Franklin, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738–1814), the Hôtel-Dieu physician, Michel-Joseph Majault (1714–1790), and the Professor (of physiology and pathology) Charles Louis Sallin – and, at the request of those four physicians, five scientists from the Royal Academy of Sciences – the astronomer (and first mayor of Paris) Jean Sylvain Bailly (1736–1793), the geographer, cartographer, and former governor of St. Domingue, Gabriel de Bory de Saint-Vincent (1720–1801), Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), the chemist and biologist Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794), and the physicist (and expert on things electrical), Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, the Director of the Academy of Sciences.

If the effects of magnetism ... can be as well explained by the effects of an excited or exalted imagination, all the efforts of the Commissioners must be directed to distinguishing in "magnetism" ... [per medium of] a single conclusive experiment [une seule expérience concluante] ... those things that are related to physical causes [causes physiques] from those that are related to [psychological] causes [causes morales], [that is,] the effects of a real agent [les effets d'un agent réel] from those due to the imagination ...By magnetising people without their knowledge and by persuading them that they are being magnetised when they are not ... one will obtain separately the effects of magnetism and those of the imagination and, from this, one will be able to conclude what should be attributed to the one and what to the other.
It is important to note that, despite the contemporary and modern salience given to Benjamin Franklin – who, as the most eminent of the commission's eleven members, was recognized as its titular head – it is a matter of record that Franklin, then aged 78, and otherwise engaged in his duties as the U.S. Ambassador to France, had little involvement in any of the commission's investigations. In particular, this was because his own ill-health prevented him from leaving his residence in Passy and participating in the Paris-centred investigations – although the commission's Report does note that several experiments were conducted at Franklin's Passy residence in Franklin's presence.
In addition to his general scientific interests in electricity and (terrestrial) magnetism, "Franklin had known Mesmer for some years prior to the investigation and was familiar with the practice of animal magnetism", and, on occasion, he and Mesmer had even "dined together" – and, also there was "no doubt [that] Franklin's curiosity was aroused by the mere connotation of the term animal magnetism, for it implied something in connexion with electricity, and [Franklin] himself had already made [25 years earlier] a number of experiments on the effect of electric discharges on paralytics, epileptics, etc." (Duveen & Klickstein, 1955, p. 287).

=== "Society Commission" ===