It would be labour thrown away now to go to the dusty shelves of some special library, to hunt up hundreds of pamphlets, even the titles of which are now completely forgotten.  The impartial analysis of that ardent controversy does not call for such labour; I believe at least that I shall attain my aim, by concentrating my attention on two or three writings which, by the strength of the arguments, the merit of the style, or the reputation of their authors, have left some trace in men’s minds.

In the first rank of this category of works we must place the elegant pamphlet published by Servan, under the title of Doubts of a Provincial, proposed to the Gentlemen Medical Commissioners commanded by the King to examine into Animal Magnetism.

The appearance of this little work of Servan’s was saluted in the camp of the Mesmerists with cries of triumph and joy.  Undecided minds fell back into doubt and perplexity.  Grimm wrote in Nov. 1784:  “No cause is desperate.  That of magnetism seemed as if it must fall under the reiterated attacks of medicine, of philosophy, of experience and of good sense....  Well, M. Servan, formerly the Attorney-General at Grenoble, has been proving that with talent we may recover from any thing, even from ridicule.”

Servan’s pamphlet seemed at the time the anchor of salvation for the Mesmerists.  The adepts still borrow from it their principal arguments.  Let us see, then, whether it has really shaken Bailly’s report.

From the very commencing lines, the celebrated Attorney-General puts the question in terms deficient in exactness.  If we believe him, the commissioners were called to establish a parallel between magnetism and medicine; “they were to weigh on both sides the errors and the dangers; to indicate with wise discernment what it would be desirable to preserve, and what to retrench, in the two sciences.”  Thus, according to Servan, the sanative art altogether would have been questioned, and the impartiality of the physicians might appear suspicious.  The clever magistrate took care not to forget, on such an occasion, the eternal maxim, no one can be both judge and client.  Physicians, then, ought to have been excepted.

There then follows a legitimate homage to the non-graduated academicians, members of the commission:  “Before Franklin and Bailly,” says the author, “every knee must bend.  The one has invented much, the other has discovered much; Franklin belongs to the two worlds, and all ages seem to belong to Bailly.”  But arming himself afterwards with more cleverness than uprightness, with these words of the reporter, “The commissioners, especially the doctors, made an infinity of experiments,” he insinuates under every form that the commissioners accepted of a very passive line of conduct.  Thus, putting aside the most positive declarations, pretending even to forget the name, the titles of the reporter, Servan no longer sees before him but one class of adversaries,