Review: Report of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, and Other Commissioners, Charged by the King of France, with the Examination of the Animal Magnetism, as Now Practised at Paris.

Report of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, and Other Commissioners, Charged by the King of France, with the Examination of the Animal Magnetism, as Now Practised at Paris. by Benjamin Franklin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A fascinating historical document, for a few reasons.

Firstly, it's the report of a distinguished Royal Commission, including Benjamin Franklin (then US Ambassador to France), Lavoisier the chemist, and the prominent physician Guillotin, namesake (but not, as is widely believed, inventor) of the execution device which was to see so much use a few years later - including on Louis XVI, the commissioner of the study.

Second, it's an early example of experimental method, here applied to testing the claims of Mesmer about his practice of "animal magnetism". The commission concluded that there was no evidence that such a force existed, and that the effects being produced by Mesmer and his followers (one of whom cooperated closely with the commission, while Mesmer refused to do so) were the result of the physical pressure and manipulations done by the operators, alongside the power of "imagination" - in other words, what we now call the placebo effect or the mind-body connection. They established this in part by blind (but not double-blind) trials, including performing Mesmer's prescribed operations on people who were unaware of it, and not performing them while telling the subjects that they were performing them. The effects occurred when people believed the operations were being done, even though they were not, and did not occur when they were unaware that the operations were performed, confirming that it was the belief of the patient and not the actions of the operator that made the difference. It was a thorough investigation, and their conclusions are well supported.

Third, what is said about "animal magnetism" itself - Mesmer's theory and practice, and how the public sessions of "magnetisation" were done - is itself interesting in several ways. The description of the theory of "animal magnetism" - which the report shows, using an earlier study, was wholly derived from since-abandoned theories of physicians from a couple of centuries previously - bears a remarkable resemblance to eastern ideas of chi, a power underlying everything that can be circulated in the body, and for which specific points on the body are significant. I'd be interested to know whether Paracelsus and the other theorists mentioned had any contact with China and other civilizations where similar theories were held.

Further than that, the descriptions of faith healing - not only by Mesmer, but by other people at the time or in the then recent past - are classic, and sound exactly like modern faith healing, including the charismatic services I witnessed myself as a young man. Working a large group of people up into a specific state of mind by a long and elaborate ceremony; the way in which, once someone starts to have a dramatic response, others join in; the explanations for why it sometimes fails - all of these are part of a playbook which is still in use more than 250 years after the publication of this report, showing that debunking is a work that is never completed, and that people don't change that much.

The tone, of the early part of the report especially, at times has more in common with such aggressive debunkers as YouTube's Miniminuteman than with a dispassionate scientific approach, and it's clear that the writers of the report (and the introduction to the English translation) considered Mesmer to be perpetrating conscious fraud, though they don't outright accuse him of doing so. They certainly do say, strongly, that the precipitation of "crises" in which people experience pain, vomit, void their bowels, and sometimes cough up blood is harmful rather than helpful, especially when repeated and taken as the norm.

The medical terminology and beliefs of the time are old-fashioned now, of course; most of our current medical science dates from no earlier than the 19th century, and largely from the 20th. But the commissioners were able, even within their own framework of understanding, to distinguish clearly between a physical and a mental cause of the effects they observed, and that's the key point they were making.

If you're interested in the history of the scientific method, in faith healing, in the mind-body connection or in the process of debunking frauds, this relatively short book is well worth a read. You will have to navigate the 18th-century language, but it's mostly clear enough to a modern reader.

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