Abstract

Enlightenment science and medicine achieved different levels of accuracy and precision as both sought rationality, empiricism, and the spread of human happiness. Animal magnetism was a unique medical phenomenon of late Enlightenment Paris that established trust with the public and had a significant cultural impact. Yet this method was not reproducible, involved limited rule-following, and lacked a coherent theoretical framework. Lessons from this phenomenon have included the first use of the placebo and the first design and implementation of careful, controlled experimentation in the medical context. Another lesson can be the power of demonstration and spectacle in communicating medical innovations. In fact, the underpinnings of science – the reproducibility of a certain scientific experiment and the rules, know-hows, and theories it assures – can be so conveyed to the public.