134 BAILLY. 
devote their efforts. Indeed, Bailly said, “ Animal mag- 
netism may exist without being useful, but it cannot be 
useful if it does not exist.” 
The animal magnetic fluid is not luminous and visible, 
like electricity ; it does not produce marked and manifest 
éffects on inert matter, as the fluid of the ordinary mag- 
net does; finally, it has no taste. Some magnetizers 
asserted that it had a smell; but repeated experiments 
proved that they were in error. The existence, 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 deedalus, because nature alone, with- 
out 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 organ- 
ism. 
They then submitted themselves to the experiments, 
but using an important precaution. “There is no indi- 
vidual,” 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 exceed- 
ingly 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 atten- 
tive 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.” 
