whom Bailly (that unfortunate Bailly who was to perish on the scaffold some years later) was the reporter, to investigate them. Its conclusion was that the pretended magnetic fluid did not exist, and that the experiments and observations of Mesmer were based on nothing real. One of the members of the committee, the celebrated Laurent de Jussieu, declined to sign this report, and in a memorial, which had a considerable support of public opinion, admitted that there was a portion of truth in Mesmerism, which ought to be discovered and extracted from the juggleries, unworthy the attention of scientific men, in which it was buried.
Mesmer was not, in fact, the creator of the theory of animal magnetism. If the Marquis Armand de Puységur had not repeated his experiments, the art would not have existed, and the subjects of the baquet of Mesmer would have been put in the same class with the convulsionists of St. Médard. Puységur cured several sick at Poissons by touching them; then others, and still others. He gathered disciples, be wrote numerous papers, he indicated the processes that should be employed to put a subject to sleep, he described the phases of induced somnambulism, between 1785 and 1825. Experimentists, whose good faith, if not their good sense, could not be suspected, everywhere repeated his experiments; physicians and men of science occupied themselves with them and confirmed them in part. Petetin, Deleuze, Dupotet, Husson, Braid, and many other persons whose names are less familiar, developed and interpreted his ideas. Through their confused work the fact has been brought up into clear evidence, from among the absurd errors and hardly imaginable follies in which it was buried, that a nervous affection of a peculiar nature may be induced among subjects who are more or less predisposed to it. At present, all enlightened physicians recognize that somnambulism exists with symptoms which are always identical, and that it has a right to be recognized as a special form of disease. We shall try to tell in a few words what must be believed about it, remarking that we do not speak of it from hearsay, but according to facts which we have ourselves observed.
The processes by the aid of which somnambulism is induced are irregular and empirical. If the subjects are predisposed and habituated, by having had previous attacks, to be affected by that neurotic disorder, a slight disturbance of the nervous system, sometimes the most insignificant in the world, is enough. A subject who has been frequently put to sleep may be magnetized in less than half a minute. But, in dealing with a person who has never before been put under magnetic influence, the rules of the magnetizers must be followed, however ridiculous they may seem. The operator must set himself opposite the face of the subject, make a few passes with his hands before his forehead, and look at him fixedly. Very often no result will be obtained at the first sitting; but the operator will learn by
