f 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