The animal body
is directly affected by the insinuation of this agent into the substance
of the nerves. It causes in human bodies properties analogous to those
of the magnet, for which reason it is called 'Animal Magnetism'. This
magnetism may be communicated to other bodies, may be increased and
reflected by mirrors, communicated, propagated, and accumulated, by
sound. It may be accumulated, concentrated, and transported. The same
rules apply to the opposite virtue. The magnet is susceptible of
magnetism and the opposite virtue. The magnet and artificial electricity
have, with respect to disease, properties common to a host of other
agents presented to us by nature, and if the use of these has been
attended by useful results, they are due to animal magnetism. By the aid
of magnetism, then, the physician enlightened as to the use of medicine
may render its action more perfect, and can provoke and direct salutary
crises so as to have them completely under his control."

The Faculty of Medicine investigated Mesmer's claims, but reported
unfavorably, and threatened d'Eslon with expulsion from the society
unless he gave Mesmer up. Nevertheless the government favored the
discoverer, and when the medical fraternity attacked him with such vigor
that he felt obliged to leave Paris, it offered him a pension of 20,000
francs if he would remain. He went away, but later came back at the
request of his pupils. In 1784 the government appointed two commissions
to investigate the claims that had been made. On one of these
commissions was Benjamin Franklin, then American Ambassador to France as
well as the great French scientist Lavoisier. The other was drawn from
the Royal Academy of Medicine, and included Laurent de Jussieu, the only
man who declared in favor of Mesmer.

There is no doubt that Mesmer had returned to Paris for the purpose of
making money, and these commissions were promoted in part by persons
desirous of driving him out. "It is interesting," says a French writer,
"to peruse the reports of these commissions: they read like a debate on
some obscure subject of which the future has partly revealed the
secret." Says another French writer (Courmelles): "They sought the
fluid, not by the study of the cures affected, which was considered too
complicated a task, but in the phases of mesmeric sleep. These were
considered indispensable and easily regulated by the experimentalist.
When submitted to close investigation, it was, ho