h houses, land, and a princely fortune to enable him to
carry on his experiments untroubled. The government finally offered
him a pension of 20,000 francs, and the cross of the order of St.
Michael, if he had made any discovery in medicine, and would
communicate it to the physicians whom the king should name. Mesmer
refused the conditions and left Paris.

Deslon was then called upon to renounce animal magnetism, but instead,
invited investigation. In 1784 the government appointed a commission
to inquire into magnetism, consisting of members from the Faculty of
Medicine and the Academy of Sciences. Franklin, Lavoisier, and Bailly
were members, the last named being chosen reporter. Another
commission, composed of members of the Royal Society of Medicine, was
charged to make a distinct report on the same subject. After
experimenting for five months the first commission presented two
reports, one public and the other secret, neither of which was
favorable. The Royal Society of Medicine presented its report a few
days later, and agreed with the first commission with the exception of
one member, Laurent de Jussieu, who dissented and published a separate
report of a more favorable nature. The gist of the commissions'
reports was that imagination, not magnetism, accounted for the
results.

Soon after the commissions started their investigations, Mesmer
returned to Paris at the invitation of his friends, who proposed to
open a subscription for him for 10,000 louis. Immediately it was
over-subscribed by over 140,000 francs. He came with the
understanding that he was to give lectures and to reveal the secret of
animal magnetism. The lectures and secrets were not satisfactory.
After the commission reported he left Paris and returned to his own
country where he was little heard of during the remainder of his life
which ended in 1815.

Whatever may be said of Mesmer, there seems to be no doubt about the
honesty of his most famous pupil, the Marquis de Puysegur, and to him
we are indebted for a forward step. When Mesmer left Paris, the
marquis retired to his estate near Soissons, and employed his leisure
in magnetizing peasants. He magnetized his gardener, a young man named
Victor, and after experimenting upon him claimed that during the state
Victor exhibited marvellous telepathic and clairvoyant phenomena.
Unable to attend all the patients who applied to him, he followed
Mesmer's plan of magnetizing a tree. An elm on the village