Claim · 1784 · Magnetic somnambulism (artificial somnambulism)
Animal magnetism, applied through the induction of magnetic somnambulism, cures disease in the patient.
Puységur’s 1784 Détail des cures opérées à Buzancy presented the magnetic treatments as cures. As a causal claim about a magnetic fluid acting on disease, it is refuted: the 1784 royal commission demonstrated under blind and controlled conditions that the effects of the practice followed the patient’s imagination and expectation, not the presence or absence of any magnetic agent. Whatever symptomatic relief patients reported is consistent with suggestion and the natural course of illness, not with a fluid-mediated cure.
Appears in
Sources
- Détail des cures opérées à Buzancy, près Soissons, par le magnétisme animal — Chastenet de Puységur, Armand-Marie-Jacques de. *Détail des cures opérées à Buzancy, près Soissons, par le magnétisme animal*. A Soissons: [s.n.], 1784. Wellcome Collection.
- 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.