Report of the Commissioners on Animal Magnetism

of all the effects: one no longer finds that great power which astonishes in public treatment; Magnetism, lacking energy, appears stripped of all perceptible action.

They attended the treatment several days in a row and experienced nothing more.

The Commissioners, having initially gone to the baquet: a large wooden tub filled with water and iron rods, which Mesmer claimed concentrated "animal magnetic fluid" only every eight days, wanted to test if continuity might produce some result; they went there three days in a row, but their lack of sensitivity remained the same, and they obtained no effect. This experiment, conducted and repeated simultaneously on eight subjects, several of whom suffer from habitual ailments, is sufficient to conclude that Magnetism has little or no action in a state of health, or even in a state of slight infirmity. It was resolved to conduct trials on people who were truly ill, and they were chosen from the lower classes In the 18th century, "the people" (le peuple) referred to the laboring classes and the poor, who were often recruited for medical experiments..

Seven patients were gathered at Passy at the home of Mr. Franklin Benjamin Franklin was the head of the commission; due to his age and health, many experiments were conducted at his residence in Passy.; they were magnetized in his presence and before the other Commissioners by Mr. Deslon.
Second experiment: patients from the common classes, tested.

The widow Saint-Amand, asthmatic, with her abdomen, thighs, and legs swollen; and the woman Anseaume, who had a swelling on her thigh, felt nothing; little Claude Renard, a child of six years, scrofulous suffering from scrofula, a form of tuberculosis that causes swelling of the lymph nodes, almost emaciated, having a swollen knee, a bent leg, and a joint almost without movement—an engaging child and more sensible than his age would suggest—likewise felt nothing, as did Geneviève Leroux, aged nine, afflicted with convulsions and a disease quite similar to that which is called Saint Vitus' Dance original: "chorea sancti Vitii," a neurological disorder characterized by rapid, uncoordinated jerking movements.. François Grénet experienced some effects; his eyes are diseased,