Confidential Report of the Commissioners to the King on Animal Magnetism (Secret Report)
primary document · 1784
SUMMARY
A separate confidential report from the same 1784 royal commission, addressed to the King rather than to the public. The confidential report addressed safety concerns particular to female patients, arising from the intimate operator-patient physical contact required by the mesmeric procedure and the operator's role in inducing patient 'crises.' The document is one of the earliest formal medical-safety assessments to identify operator-patient power-asymmetry as a clinical concern. It is referenced extensively in subsequent medical-historical literature on the case.
NOTES
The 1784 confidential report is significant beyond its specific findings on mesmerism: it is one of the earliest formal medical-safety analyses to recognize operator-patient power-asymmetry, suggestion vulnerability, and gendered clinical risk as legitimate concerns. The report’s themes recur in the modern clinical literature on hypnosis, psychotherapy, and any clinical state mediated by suggestion. Modern reproductions and translations are widely available; Robert Darnton’s Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France (1968) is the principal scholarly reference.