At that time I had paid not much attention to Mesmerism. I had heard of Mesmer indeed, of his extraordinary pretensions, and the wonderful phenomena which he professed to produce by his rod and tub; but I had supposed that the matter had been put at rest for all sensible persons by the famous report of the French Academy in 1784, signed, among others, by Bailly the astronomer, and our own Franklin. I supposed that every scientific man acquiesced in the conclusion of that report, that the extraordinary phenomena exhibited by magnetism were to be ascribed to the imagination, and that from the date of that report magnetism had ceased to occupy the attention of the scientific. I was therefore surprised, nay, scandalized, to find a man of real science, and, as I wished to believe, of real worth, professing faith in what I had been led to regard as an exploded humbug, and which, at the very best, could have no practical utility beyond illustrating the deceptive power of the imagination, and the sad consequences which might result to those weak-minded people who become dupes to their own disordered fancy. Dr. P—— assured me that I was mistaken both as to the bearing and as to the effect of the famous report of the French Academy. That report, he said, concedes the reality of the mesmeric phenomena, and only declares that the assertion of Mesmer, that they are produced by means of a subtle fluid analogous to electricity or magnetism, was not proven or demonstrated by the experiments the commission witnessed; which gives no uneasiness to any animal magnetist in our day, because now no one pretends to explain those phenomena by means of such a fluid. It is true, he said, the commission, in their published report, assert that the phenomena are to be explained by the imagination; but in a private report, addressed to the king, they say, that “it is impossible not to recognize in them a _great power_ which agitates and subjects the patients, and of which the magnetizer appears to be the depositary.” This, contended Dr. P——, is by no means compatible with the theory which ascribes them to the imagination, for that theory supposes the cause that produces them to be in the magnetized, since it is to their imagination, not to that of the magnetizer, that they are to be ascribed; but in this secret report, the power which produces them is assumed to be in the magnetizer, “of which,” it says, “he who magnetizes seems to be the depositary.” For these, as well as other reasons, he said, the report of the Academy was not regarded by magnetists as any authority against Animal Magnetism as understood and practised at the present time.