---
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
chunk: 10/17
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"
---

it was [their] duty ... to confine themselves to arguments purely physical, that is, to the momentaneous [sic] effects of the fluid upon the animal frame, excluding from these effects all the illusions which might mix with them, and assuring themselves that they could proceed from no other cause than the animal magnetism."

=== Problems with objectively determining the precise therapeutic action of any supposed "efficacious remedy" ===
In support of its decision, the "Franklin Commission" produced a cogent, extended argument, consistent with the medical knowledge of the day, that is equally relevant to similar investigations in the present day:

   The majority of diseases have their seat in the interior part of our frame. The collective experience of a great number of centuries has made us acquainted with the symptoms, which indicate and discriminate them; the same experience has taught the method in which they are to be treated.   What is the object of the efforts of the physician in this method? It is not to oppose and to subdue nature, it is to assist her in her operations. Nature, says the father of the medical science [viz., Hippocrates], cures the diseased; but sometimes she encounters obstacles, which constrain her in her course, and uselessly consume her strength.   The physician is the minister of nature; an attentive observer, he studies the method in which she proceeds. If that method be firm, strong, regular and well directed, the physician looks on in silence, and [is careful of not] disturbing it by remedies which would at least be useless; if the method be [hindered], he facilitates it; if it be too slow or too rapid, he accelerates or retards it.   Sometimes, to accomplish his object, he confines himself to the regulation of the diet: sometimes he employs medicines.   The action of a medicine, introduced into the human body, is a new force, combined with the principal force by which our life is maintained: if the remedy follow the same route, which this force has already opened for the expulsion of diseases, it is useful, it is salutary [viz., conducive to health]; if it tend to open different routes, and to turn aside this interior action, it is pernicious.   In the mean time it must be confessed that this salutary or pernicious influence, real as it is, may frequently escape common observation.   The natural history of man presents us in this respect with very singular phenomena.   It may be there seen that regimens the most opposite, have not prevented the attainment of an advanced old age. We may there see men, attacked according to all appearance with the same disease, recovering in the pursuit of opposite regimens, and in the use of remedies totally different from each other; nature is in these instances sufficiently powerful to maintain the vital principle le fluide magnétique in spite of the improper regimen, and to triumph at once over [both] the distemper and the remedy.   If it ["the vital principle"] have this power of resisting the action of medicine, by a still stronger reason it must have the power of operating without medicine.   The experience of the efficacy of remedies is always therefore attended with some uncertainty; in the case of the magnetism the uncertainty has this addition, the uncertainty of its existence.   How then can we decide upon the action of an agent, whose existence is contested, from the treatment of diseases; when the effect of medicines is doubtful, whose existence is not at all problematical?

=== Other highly significant but unassociated "causative" factors ===
In addition to reflecting the position of the "Franklin Commission" in these matters, the "Society Commission" also noted that there were other equally significant causative factors, concomitant with, but unassociated with, the treatment delivered, in relation to the circumstances of the patients themselves; namely,

the hope [of being cured] that they conceived, the exercise that they took every day, [and especially, whilst under the "magnetic" treatment] the suspension of the remedies they were previously using – the quantity of which is often so harmful in such cases – these are, in themselves, multiple and sufficient causes for the results that have been said to have been observed in similar circumstances

=== Common misrepresentation of fact ===
The preceding facts expose the error – a classic example of equivocation due to lexical ambiguity – in the commonly expressed (in modern literature) and extremely misleading misrepresentation of affairs; namely, the (historically incorrect, and mistaken) implication that, rather than simply having, for convenience, accepted Mesmer's assertions at face value (and left it at that), both Commissions had objectively verified that:

Consequently,

Although it is entirely correct to assert that both sets of Commissioners accepted [in a manner of speaking] that Mesmer's "cures" were, indeed, "cures", it is completely wrong to suggest that any of the Commissioners accepted that any of those "cured" individuals had been "cured" by Mesmer.

== Procedures ==

The "Franklin Commission's" investigations were conducted at a number of different locations, including d'Eslon's clinic (which they visited once a week), Lavoisier's home, and the gardens of Franklin's Passy residence. The intricate structure and detailed procedures of the investigations were designed by Lavoisier; and great care was taken to eliminate what James Braid would later identify as "sources of fallacy".
In the process of examining d'Eslon's claims, the "Franklin Commissioners" not only tested the influence of a wide range of situations, circumstances, variables, but also, from time to time, individually presented themselves as experimental subjects, because, they reported, "they were very curious to experience through their own senses the reported effects of this agent".
When they visited d'Eslon's establishment, the Commissioners discovered that not only did d'Eslon's standard therapeutics involve (his version of) Mesmer's baquet, but also a musical (and, from time to time, vocal) accompaniment as a standard part of his treatment: