Deslon was then called upon to renounce animal magnetism, but instead, invited investigation. In 1784 the government appointed a commission to inquire into magnetism, consisting of members from the Faculty of Medicine and the Academy of Sciences. Franklin, Lavoisier, and Bailly were members, the last named being chosen reporter. Another commission, composed of members of the Royal Society of Medicine, was charged to make a distinct report on the same subject. After experimenting for five months the first commission presented two reports, one public and the other secret, neither of which was favorable. The Royal Society of Medicine presented its report a few days later, and agreed with the first commission with the exception of one member, Laurent de Jussieu, who dissented and published a separate report of a more favorable nature. The gist of the commissions' reports was that imagination, not magnetism, accounted for the results.
Soon after the commissions started their investigations, Mesmer returned to Paris at the invitation of his friends, who proposed to open a subscription for him for 10,000 louis. Immediately it was over-subscribed by over 140,000 francs. He came with the understanding that he was to give lectures and to reveal the secret of animal magnetism. The lectures and secrets were not satisfactory. After the commission reported he left Paris and returned to his own country where he was little heard of during the remainder of his life which ended in 1815.
Whatever may be said of Mesmer, there seems to be no doubt about the honesty of his most famous pupil, the Marquis de Puységur, and to him we are indebted for a forward step. When Mesmer left Paris, the marquis retired to his estate near Soissons, and employed his leisure in magnetizing peasants. He magnetized his gardener, a young man named Victor, and after experimenting upon him claimed that during the state Victor exhibited marvellous telepathic and clairvoyant phenomena. Unable to attend all the patients who applied to him, he followed Mesmer's plan of magnetizing a tree. An elm on the village green was chosen, and round this patients gathered on stone benches as around Mesmer's baquet.
Following Mesmer's theories very closely, the contribution he made was in the recognition of the likeness between the magnetized state and that of somnambulism, so that he designated this state "artificial somnambulism." He also modified the conditions of inducing this state, and simple contact or spoken orders were substituted for the use of the baquet. The effect was therefore milder, and instead of hysteria and violent crises accompanied by sobs, cries, and contractions, there was peaceful slumber. He recognized the rapport between operator and subject, and amnesia on awaking, and other phenomena now well known, but he still held to the Mesmeric theory of the existence of a universal fluid which saturated all bodies, especially the human body. It was electric in nature, and man could display and diffuse this electric fluid at will.
While the Marquis de Puységur was using the elm tree near Soissons, the Chevalier de Barbarin was successfully magnetizing people without paraphernalia. He sat by the bedside of the sick and prayed that they might be magnetized; his efforts were successful. He maintained that the effect of animal magnetism was produced by the mere effort of one human soul acting upon another; and when the connection had once been established the magnetizer could communicate his influence to the subject regardless of the distance which separated them. Numerous persons adopted this view, calling themselves Barbarinists after their leader. In Sweden and Germany they were called spiritualists, to distinguish them from the followers of de Puységur, who were called experimentalists.
About the same time a doctor of Lyons, Pététin, experimented with magnetism. After his death a paper written by him was published describing catalepsy and sense transference. Numerous magnetic societies were founded in the principal cities of France. In Strasburg, the Society of Harmony, consisting of more than one hundred and fifty members, published for years the result of their work. The disturbance incident to the Revolution and the wars of the Empire which followed repressed the investigations of magnetism in France for several years.
In England the advent of magnetism seems to have taken place about 1788. In that year one Dr. Mainandus, who had been a pupil first of Mesmer and later of Deslon, arrived in Bristol and gave public lectures on the subject. People of rank and fortune soon came from different cities to be magnetized or to place themselves under his tuition. He afterward established himself in London where he was equally successful in attracting and curing people. So much curiosity was excited by the subject that, about the same time, a man named Holloway gave a course of lectures on animal magnetism in London. Large crowds gathered to hear him at the rate of five guineas for each pupil.
Loutherbourg, the painter, and his wife entered upon a similar work. "Such was the infatuation of the people to be witnesses of their strange manipulations," says Mackay, "that at times upwards of three thousand persons crowded round their house at Hammersmith, unable to gain admission. The tickets sold at prices ranging from one to three guineas." Loutherbourg later became a divine healer. From 1789 to 1798 magnetism attracted little or no attention in England. At the latter date a Connecticut Yankee, Benjamin Douglas Perkins, invented "metallic tractors." The Society of Friends built a hospital called the "Perkinean Institute" where all comers might be magnetized free of cost.
About 1786 animal magnetism appeared in two different places in Germany—on the upper Rhine and in Bremen. At this time Lavater paid a visit to Bremen and exhibited the magnetizing process to several doctors. Bremen was for a long time a focus of the new doctrine, and thereby was brought into bad repute. About the same time the doctrine spread from Strasburg over the Rhine provinces. Among those active in experiments were Böckmann of Carlsruhe, Gmelin of Heilbronn, and Pezold of Dresden. Soon it spread all over Germany. In 1789 Selle of Berlin brought forward a series of experiments made at the Charité (Hospital), in which he confirmed some of the alleged phenomena but excluded the supernormal.
Notwithstanding the early dislike, animal magnetism flourished in Germany during the first twenty years of the nineteenth century. In 1812 the Prussian government sent Wolfart to Mesmer at Frauenfeld, to acquaint himself with the subject. He returned to Berlin an ardent adherent of Mesmer and introduced magnetism into the hospital treatment. From this magnetism flourished so much in Berlin that, as Wurm relates, the Berlin physicians placed a monument on the grave of Mesmer at Mörsburg, and theological candidates received instruction in physiology, pathology, and the treatment of sickness by vital magnetism. The well-known physician Koreff was interested in magnetism and often made use of it for healing purposes. Magnetism was introduced everywhere, especially in Russia and Denmark. In Switzerland and Italy it was at first received with less sympathy, and in 1815 the exercise of magnetism was forbidden in the whole of Austria.