Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism

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"). Each Commission took five months to complete its investigations. The "Franklin" Report was presented to the King on 11 August 1784 – and was immediately published and very widely circulated throughout France and neighbouring countries – and the "Society" Report was presented to the King five days later on 16 August 1784. The "Franklin Commission's" investigations are notable as a very early "classic" example of a systematic controlled trial, which not only applied "sham" and "genuine" procedures to patients with "sham" and "genuine" disorders, but, significantly, was the first to use the "blindfolding" of both the investigators and their subjects. "The report of the ["Franklin"] Royal Commission of 1784 . . . is a masterpiece of its genre, and enduring testimony to the power and beauty of reason. . . . Never in history has such an extraordinary and luminous group [as the "Franklin Commission"] been gathered together in the service of rational inquiry by the methods of experimental science. For this reason alone the [Report of the "Franklin Commission"] . . . is a key document in the history of human reason. It should be rescued from obscurity, translated into all languages, and reprinted by organizations dedicated to the unmasking of quackery and the defense of rational thought." – Stephen Jay Gould (1989).