Lot n° 31
Estimation :
250 - 300
EUR
Result without fees
Result
: 350EUR
[MESMERISM]. Recueil de pièces sur le magnétisme animal. Par - Lot 31
[MESMERISM]. Recueil de pièces sur le magnétisme animal. Paris, 1784. 7 pieces in an in-4 volume (25 x 20 cm), half-brown basane, smooth spine, speckled edges (period binding). Believed to have belonged to a "valet de chambre of King Louis XVI", according to a handwritten note. Modern collector's stamp on the second flyleaf. Provenance: owned by a Luxembourg amateur who amassed a multitude of objets d'art over five decades. INTERESTING AND RARE COLLECTION RELATING TO ANIMAL MAGNETISM and the official inquiry into Mesmer's doctrine conducted by the Académie des Sciences and the Société Royale de Médecine in 1784. This inquiry, commissioned by Louis XVI, brought together some of the greatest scientists of the time, including astronomer Jean-Sylvain Bailly, physicians Joseph-Ignace Guillotin and Jean d'Arcet, chemist Antoine de Lavoisier, physicists Benjamin Franklin and Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, and botanist Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu. At the end of the investigation, the scientists, with the exception of Jussieu, rejected all of Mesmer's theories, which paradoxically contributed to their notoriety. CONTENTS: 1. BAILLY (Jean-Sylvain). Exposé des expériences qui ont été faites pour l'examen du magnétisme animal. Lu à l'Académie des sciences, par M. Bailly, en son nom & au nom de Mrs Franklin, Le Roy, de Bory & Lavoisier, le 4 septembre 1784. Paris, Imprimerie royale, 1784. 15 pp. FIRST EDITION. Mesmerism is, according to the authors of this official report, "one more fact to be recorded in the history of the errors of the human mind" (p. 15). 2 [BAILLY (Jean-Sylvain)]. Rapport des commissaires chargés par le roi, de l'examen du magnétisme animal. Paris, Imprimerie royale, 1784. [1] f., 66 pp. ORIGINAL EDITION of the report by the Académie des sciences. 3. POISSONNIER (Pierre-Isaac) et al. Rapport des commissaires de la Société royale de médecine, nommés par le roi pour faire l'examen du magnétisme animal. Paris, Imprimerie royale, 1784. [1] f., 39 pp. ORIGINAL EDITION of the report of the Royal Society of Medicine. 4. DESLON (Charles). Observations sur les deux rapports de MM. les commissaires nommés par Sa Majesté, pour l'examen du magnétisme animal. Philadelphia and Paris, Clousier, 1784. [1] f., 31 pp. ORIGINAL EDITION of this defense of mesmerism by physician Charles Deslon (1750-1786), one of its leading proponents in France, whose theories and practice were at the center of the investigation ordered by Louis XVI. 5. JUSSIEU (Antoine-Laurent de). Rapport de l'un des commissaires chargés par le roi, de l'examen du magnétisme animal. Paris, Hérissant et Barrois, 1784. 51 pp. FIRST EDITION. Alone among the commissioners, Jussieu issued an opinion favorable to mesmerism, which he published in a report separate from those of his colleagues. 6. MESMER (Franz Anton). Letter to M. le Comte de C***. S.l.n.d. [Paris, 1784]. 11 pp. ORIGINAL EDITION of this letter from Mesmer, containing a copy of his petition to the Parlement de Paris "to obtain that [his] doctrine, so indignantly prostituted by M. Deslon, undergo a more impartial examination than the one whose result has just been published" (p. 1). 7. FOURNIER-MICHEL. Lettre à Monsieur Mesmer, et autres pièces concernant la maladie de la Dlle Berlancourt de Beauvais. Beauvais, P. Desjardins,1781. 15 pp. printed on bluish paper. RARE PIECE PUBLISHED IN BEAUVAIS on a cure attributed to Mesmer's magnetic treatment. Copy enriched with a handwritten table of contents, a portrait of Mesmer engraved by Jules Porreau in 1849 and a press article on the History of animal magnetism published in Le Siècle in 1847. Clumsy restorations to spine, worn binding, occasional small foxing, small scratch to corner of engraved portrait.
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