Mesmerism is the name given to an early form of hypnotism developed in the late 18th century by Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), a German physician. Mesmer believed that an invisible force existed in nature and passed through all living things. His hypothesis, which seems somewhat kooky to our 21st century selves, was that “a fluid from the stars flowed into a northern pole of the human head and out of a southern one at the feet”.
For whatever reason he called it “animal magnetism”, and theorised that it could be harnessed to treat illness.
According to Mesmer, disease resulted from blockages or imbalances in this energy, and healing could be achieved by manipulating its flow. His earliest treatments involved the use of magnets, which he would place on or near a patient’s body. Later, he abandoned the physical magnets, claiming that his hands – and even his will – were sufficient to direct the force.
In 1778, Mesmer relocated to Paris, where he attracted both admiration and controversy. He established a therapeutic salon where patients sat around a communal tub (the baquet), filled with miscellaneous bits of glass, metal, and water, from which flexible iron rods protruded. Mesmer, dressed in a lilac taffeta gown, and with help from his assistants would conduct dramatic group sessions involving rhythmic gestures, music, dim lighting and theatrical “passes” over the body. Many participants experienced convulsions, fainting spells, or apparent trances – phenomena Mesmer interpreted as signs of therapeutic success.
Public interest soared, prompting the French king, Louis XVI, to commission a formal investigation in 1784. The commission, which included Benjamin Franklin, Antoine Lavoisier and Joseph-Ignace Guillotin [32], concluded that there was no evidence for the existence of animal magnetism. The observed effects, they said, could be explained by imagination, expectation and social contagion. The commission published over 20,000 copies of the report. Mesmer was outraged and offered to mesmerise a horse as irrefutable proof of his technique’s effectiveness.
Even so, the inquiry is now regarded as one of the first scientific studies of psychosomatic response and suggestion, and although Mesmer himself was discredited and died in obscurity in 1815, his methods continued to influence medical and psychological thinking. In the decades that followed, mesmerism was reinterpreted and reframed [Ed: less magnets]. In the 1840s, Scottish surgeon James Braid introduced the term “hypnotism”, rejecting Mesmer’s magnetic theory and proposing instead that the effects were due to a psychological state of focused attention and suggestibility.
The word “mesmerise” entered the language as a synonym for spellbinding attention, and the concept of mesmerism found a long afterlife in stage shows, popular literature and early psychology. While Mesmer’s ideas about invisible forces are now considered pseudoscience, his work helped shape early thinking about the connection between mind and body, the placebo effect and the mechanisms of belief and expectation.
For another good example of social contagion, see Dancing Mania [RR3:22].
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References
wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Mesmer
wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_magnetism
exhibits.stanford.edu/super-e/feature/franz-anton-mesmer
wellcomecollection.org/stories/the-rise-and-fall-of-a-medical-mesmerist
Images
1. Print of Franz Anton Mesmer at the Museum of the French Revolution in Vizille (Wellcome Collection); and Franz Mesmer conducting a therapy session with his patients positioned around a large baquet.
2. A mesmerist using animal magnetism on a seated female patient. Wood engraving, circa 1845
3. Advertisement poster from 1857
4. Book: Mesmerism: The Discovery of Animal Magnetism
5. “Dr Flint's Hypnotic Routine” circa 1897 with a stiffened Marina Flint
