Treatment around the magnetized baquet apparatus, under the guidance of a trained operator, will cure or substantially relieve a broad range of clinical conditions in the recipient through the restoration of universal magnetic fluid flow.
The general-cure claim is the marketing-facing assertion of Mesmer’s Paris practice. It rests on patient self-report and operator observation across a wide range of conditions, with no controlled comparison or independent endpoint measurement. The 1784 royal commission’s blind and controlled examination refuted the claim by demonstrating that the observed clinical effects were independent of the proposed magnetic-fluid mechanism and attributable instead to imagination, expectation, and suggestion. The claim is the earliest documented full example of the general-cure pattern that recurs across subsequent cases in this archive.
Appears in
Sources
- Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal — Mesmer, Franz Anton. *Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal*. Geneva and Paris: Didot le Jeune, 1779. Reprinted multiple times in subsequent editions and in English translation as *Mesmerism: A Memoir on the Discovery of Animal Magnetism*.
- Rapport des commissaires chargés par le Roi de l'examen du magnétisme animal (Public Report) — Bailly, Jean-Sylvain; Franklin, Benjamin; Lavoisier, Antoine-Laurent; Guillotin, Joseph-Ignace; d'Arcet, Jean; Le Roy, Jean-Baptiste; Sallin, et al. *Rapport des commissaires chargés par le Roi de l'examen du magnétisme animal*. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, August 1784. English translation: 'Report of Dr. Benjamin Franklin and Other Commissioners, Charged by the King of France with the Examination of the Animal Magnetism, as now Practised at Paris,' London, 1785.