142 BAILLY. 



Servan's pamphlet seemed at the time the anchor of 

 salvation for the Mesmerists. The adepts still borrow 

 from it their principal arguments. Let us see, then, 

 whether it has really shaken Bailly's report. 



From the very commencing lines, the celebrated Attor- 

 ney-General puts the question in terms deficient in exact- 

 ness. If we believe him, the commissioners were called 

 to establish a parallel between magnetism and medicine ; 

 " they were to weigh on both sides the errors and the 

 dangers ; to indicate with wise discernment what it would 

 be desirable to preserve, and what to retrench, in the two 

 sciences." Thus, according to Servan, the sanative art 

 altogether would have been questioned, and the impar- 

 tiality of the physicians might appear suspicious. The 

 clever magistrate took care not to forget, on such an 

 occasion, the eternal maxim, no one can be both judge 

 and client. Physicians, then, ought to have been ex- 

 cepted. 



There then follows a legitimate homage to the non- 

 graduated academicians, members of the commission : 

 " Before Franklin and Bailly," says the author, " every 

 knee must bend. The one has invented much, the other 

 has discovered much ; Franklin belongs to the two 

 worlds, and all ages seem to belong to Bailly." But 

 arming himself afterwards with more cleverness than 

 uprightness, with these words of the reporter, " The 

 commissioners, especially the doctors, made an infinity of 

 experiments," he insinuates under every form that the 

 commissioners accepted of a very passive line of conduct. 

 Thus, putting aside the most positive declarations, pre- 

 tending even to forget the name, the titles of the reporter, 

 Servan no longer sees before him but one class of adver- 

 saries, regent doctors of the Faculty of Paris, and then 



