An Introduction to the Study of Animal Magnetism

Paris; hence, the Académie Royale de Médecine (Royal Academy of Medicine), in the exercise of its royal prerogative of intolerance, issued the following law against it:

“No physician shall declare himself a partisan of animal magnetism, either by his practice or by his writings, under the penalty of being struck off the list of docteurs-régents.”A docteur-régent was a title held by distinguished physicians who at that time constituted the Academy of Medicine; they possessed the authority to summon other physicians before them and judge their professional conduct.

This intolerant decree was dated August 27, 1784. However, it was some consolation to the professors of the new science to remember that only a few years previously, in 1745, the same august body had proscribed the practice of inoculation as “murderous,” “criminal,” and “magical.” Furthermore, in 1636, after lengthy debates and expostulations, it prohibited the use of antimony. Shortly afterward, it issued another of its royal mandates against the introduction of quinquina, or Peruvian bark, which the sagacious ecclesiastical authorities alleged could possess no virtues save those derived from a pact that the Indian who discovered it must have made with the devil.

Hence, it would appear that if learned incorporated associations of science have the advantage of enjoying the collective wisdom of their members, they also have the disadvantage of being burdened with the collective weight of their prejudices. Accordingly, few discoveries have ever emanated from the bosom of Royal Societies which, in their anxiety to maintain the retrospective dignity of science, do not forget the intuitive progress of the human mind. It may be true that the terrors of the inquisition have been abolished and that the stake is no longer the symbol of their tyrannical power;