![]() From this point onward, magnetized subjects were no longer "convulsives," but "somnambulists," as in Puys égur's model. He referred to this as artificial or induced somnambulism. That same year Armand de Puys égur, a disciple of Mesmer, discovered (or rediscovered) that one can provoke calm crises that resemble the natural somnambulism of certain sleepers. In 1784 two committees appointed by the Acad émies Royales des Sciences et de M édecine (Royal Academies of Science and Medicine) drafted a report for the king on Mesmer's "discovery." The astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly, reporter of the first committee, concluded that the fluid likely did not exist, and he sketched out an explanation in terms of "imagination" and "imitation." In a secret report, released after the French Revolution, he noted the sexual nature of the convulsions, which he compared to orgasm. Mesmerism claimed to be a scientific discovery as well as a secret associated with initiation into a group of adepts. Faced with a crush of clients, he installed a "tub," a round device around which patients sat in a group, and that was designed to concentrate and redistribute the fluid, resulting in beneficial convulsions. In Paris, Mesmer enjoyed enormous success. He considered poor receptivity to the fluid to be pathogenic, and the cure consisted in transmission of the fluid. ![]() In M émoire sur la d écouverte du magn étisme animal (Propositions concerning animal magnetism 1779) he defined it as the "property of the animal body that makes it susceptible to the influence of celestial bodies and the reciprocal action of those around it, made manifest by its analogy with the magnet." He believed that a cosmic fluid attracted animate beings to one another. "Animal magnetism" is a term popularized by the Viennese doctor Franz Mesmer. ![]()
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