Report of the Commissioners on Animal Magnetism

...powerful; it does not need them to think about it in order to act and manifest itself; it must, so to speak, force and fix their attention, and make itself perceived even by a mind that is intentionally distracted.

But in deciding to conduct experiments upon themselves, the Commissioners unanimously resolved to perform them among themselves, without admitting any other outsider than M. Deslon Charles d'Eslon, a prominent French physician and the most famous disciple of Franz Mesmer. to magnetize them, or persons chosen by them; they also promised one another not to be magnetized at the public treatment session, in order to be able to discuss their observations freely, and to be, in all cases, the only, or at least the first, judges of what they had observed.

Experiment conducted upon themselves once each week.

Consequently, a separate room and a private baquet: a wooden tub filled with water and glass, often with iron rods protruding, intended to "concentrate" the magnetic fluid were set aside for them at M. Deslon's house, and the Commissioners went to place themselves there once each week; they remained there for up to two and a half hours at a time, the iron rod resting on the left hypochondre: the upper lateral region of the abdomen, just below the ribs, surrounded by the communication cord, and from time to time forming the "chain of thumbs" A technique where participants touched thumbs to create a circuit for the supposed magnetic fluid to flow through the group.. They were magnetized either by M. Deslon or by one of his disciples sent in his place—some for longer and more frequently, specifically those Commissioners who seemed likely to be the most sensitive; they were magnetized sometimes with the finger and the iron wand original: "baguette de fer" presented and moved over different parts of the body, and sometimes by the application of the hands and the pressure of the fingers, either on the hypochondria or on the pit of the stomach.

None of them felt anything, or at least nothing