Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism  

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"If the effects of magnetism . . . can be as well explained by the effects of an excited or exalted imagination, all the efforts of the Commissioners must be directed to distinguishing in "magnetism" . . . [per medium of] a single conclusive experiment [viz., une seule expérience concluante] . . . those things that are related to physical causes [viz., causes physiques] from those that are related to [psychological] causes [viz., causes morales], [that is,] the effects of a real agent [viz, les effets d'un agent réel] from those due to the imagination. . . .
By magnetising people without their knowledge and by persuading them that they are being magnetised when they are not . . . one will obtain separately the effects of magnetism and those of the imagination and, from this, one will be able to conclude what should be attributed to the one and what to the other." – Antoine Lavoisier (1784).

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The Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism involved two entirely separate and independent French Royal Commissions, each appointed by Louis XVI in 1784, that were conducted simultaneously by a committee composed of four physicians from the Paris Faculty of Medicine (Faculté de médecine de Paris) and five scientists from the Royal Academy of Sciences (Académie des sciences) (i.e., the "Franklin Commission", named for Benjamin Franklin), and a second committee composed of five physicians from the Royal Society of Medicine (Société Royale de Médecine) (i.e., the "Society Commission").



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