REPORT ON ANIMAL MAGNETISM. 137 



while he was embracing another tree, very far from the 

 former. 



Deslon selected, in the treatment of poor people, two 

 women who had rendered themselves remarkable by their 

 sensitiveness around the famous rod, and took them to 

 Passy. These women fell into convulsions whenever 

 they thought themselves mesmerized, although they were 

 not. At Lavoisier s, the celebrated experiment of the 

 cup gave analogous results. Some plain water engen 

 dered convulsions occasionally, when magnetized water 

 did not. 



We must really renounce the use of our reason, not to 

 perceive a proof in this collection of experiments, so 

 well arranged that imagination alone can produce all the 

 phenomena observed around the mesmeric rod, and that 

 mesmeric proceedings, cleared from the delusions of im 

 agination, are absolutely without effect. The commis 

 sioners, however, recommence the examination on these 

 last grounds, multiply the trials, adopt all possible pre 

 cautions, and give to their conclusions the evidence of 

 mathematical demonstrations. They establish, finally and 

 experimentally, that the action of the imagination can 

 both occasion the crises to cease, and can engender their 

 occurrence. 



Foreseeing that people with an inert or idle mind 

 would be astonished at the important part assigned to the 

 imagination by the commissioners experiments in the 

 production of mesmeric phenomena, Bailly instanced : 

 sudden affection disturbing the digestive organs; grief 

 giving the jaundice ; the fear of fire restoring the use of 

 their legs to paralytic patients ; earnest attention stopping 

 the hiccough; fright blanching people s hair in an in 

 stant, &c. 



