REPORT ON ANIMAL MAGNETISM. 135 
_ The commissioners, magnetized by Deslon, felt no 
effect. After the healthy people, some ailing ones fol- 
lowed, taken of all ages, and from various classes of 
society. Among these sick people, who amounted to 
fourteen, five felt some effects. On the remaining nine, 
magnetism had no effect whatever. 
Notwithstanding the pompous announcements, mag- 
netism already could no longer be considered as a cer- 
tain indicator of diseases. 
Here the reporter made a capital remark: magnetism 
appeared to have no effect on incredulous persons who 
had submitted to the trials, nor on children. Was it 
not allowable to think, that the effects obtained in the 
others proceeded from a previous persuasion as to the 
efficacy of the means, and that they might be attributed 
to the influence of imagination? ‘Thence arose another 
system of experiments. It was desirable to confirm or 
to destroy this suspicion ; “it became therefore requisite 
to ascertain to what degree imagination influences our 
sensations, and to establish whether it could have been 
in part or entirely the cause of the effects attributed to 
magnetism.” 
There could be nothing neater or more demonstrative 
than this portion of the work of the commissioners. 
They go first to Dr. Jumelin, who, let it be observed, 
obtains the same effects, the same crises as Deslon and 
Mesmer, by magnetizing according to an entirely differ- 
ent method, and not restricting himself to any distinction 
of poles; they select persons who seem to feel the mag- 
netic action most forcibly, and put their imagination at 
fault by now and then bandaging their eyes. 
What happens then? 
When the patients see, the seat of the sensations is 
