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 

 effects 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 dredalus, 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 or^an- 



o 



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." 



