Report of the Commissioners on Animal Magnetism

...particularly the right [eye] with which he can hardly see, and where he has a significant tumor. When the left eye was magnetized by approaching it and moving the thumb nearby for a fairly long time, he experienced pain in the eyeball, and the eye watered. When the right eye—which is the most diseased—was magnetized, he felt nothing; he felt the same pain in the left eye, and nothing anywhere else.

The woman Charpentier, who was thrown to the ground against a beam by a cow two years ago, has suffered several consequences from this accident; she lost her sight and recovered it in part, but she remained in a state of habitual infirmity; she declared having two descents: a common 18th-century term for hernias or organ prolapses, and an abdomen of such great sensitivity that she cannot bear the cords of her skirt's waistband: this sensitivity belongs to nerves that have been irritated and rendered highly mobile The Commissioners use the term "mobile" to describe nerves that are over-responsive or prone to involuntary spasms, a key part of their theory that reactions were physical or psychological rather than "magnetic.": the slightest pressure applied to the abdominal region can trigger this mobility and produce effects throughout the whole body through the correspondence of the nerves.

This woman was magnetized like the others, by the application and pressure of fingers; the pressure was painful to her: afterwards, by directing the finger toward the hernia, she complained of a headache; with the finger being placed before her face, she said she was losing her breath. At the repeated movement of the finger from top to bottom, she had hurried movements of the head and shoulders, like those one has from a surprise mixed with fright, and similar to those of a person to whom...