tence, then, of the pretended
fluid, could be established only by its effects on animated beings.

Curative effects would have thrown the commission into an inextricable
daedalus, because nature alone, without any treatment, cures many
maladies. In this system of observations, they could not have hoped to
learn the exact part performed by magnetism, until after a great number
of cures, and after trials oftentimes repeated.

The commissioners, therefore, had to limit themselves to instantaneous
effects of the fluid on the animal organism.

They then submitted themselves to the experiments, but using an
important precaution. "There is no individual," says Bailly, "in the
best state of health, who, if he closely attended to himself, would not
feel within him an infinity of movements and variations, either of
exceedingly slight pain, or of heat, in the various parts of his
body.... These variations, which are continually taking place, are
independent of magnetism.... The first care required of the
commissioners was, not to be too attentive to what was passing within
them. If magnetism is a real and powerful cause, we have no need to
think about it to make it act and manifest itself; it must, so to say,
force the attention, and make itself perceived by even a purposely
distracted mind."

The commissioners, magnetized by Deslon, felt no effect. After the
healthy people, some ailing ones followed, taken of all ages, and from
various classes of society. Among these sick people, who amounted to
fourteen, five felt some effects. On the remaining nine, magnetism had
no effect whatever.

Notwithstanding the pompous announcements, magnetism already could no
longer be considered as a certain indicator of diseases.

Here the reporter made a capital remark: magnetism appeared to have no
effect on incredulous persons who had submitted to the trials, nor on
children. Was it not allowable to think, that the effects obtained in
the others proceeded from a previous persuasion as to the efficacy of
the means, and that they might be attributed to the influence of
imagination? Thence arose another system of experiments. It was
desirable to confirm or to destroy this suspicion; "it became therefore
requisite to ascertain to what degree imagination influences our
sensations, and to establish whether it could have been in part or
entirely the cause of the effects attributed to magnetism."

There could be nothing neater or more demonstrati