Important Names and Dates in Western Hypnosis (1)
Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815)
Through the Middle Ages the use of suggestions as a healing art was regarded as sacrilegious in estern Christian civilization.
Miracle cures were the result of religious faith and were often considered to be effected exclusively through sacred relics or statuary and shrines endowed with the special powers of healing.
Frantz Anton Mesmer was born in the small village of Iznang near lake Constance. The son of a poor forester, little did his parents know that in later years he was to formulate the theory which was to take him to the very height of fame and fortune, and that his name was to add a new word to the world of healing.
Young Mesmer was first being trained for the priesthood, but later changed his mind and was accepted at the University of Vienna as a student of law. Some time after this, however, he again changed course. He transferred to medicine and obtained his degree in 1766 at the age of thirty-two, rather late for the average doctor. But, he had the background of a sound and worldly training. He became a highly reputable physician and was ever interested in the search for newer and more effective methods of treating his patients.
During his studies he had become involved in discussions with a professor of astronomy and Jesuit ecclesiastic, Father Maximilian Hell (1720 -1792). This man had treated the sick by attaching specially shaped magnetized plates to the affected parts of the body, and had succeeded in relieving them of their ills.
Mesmer, with a broadness of vision and knowledge of the sciences as they were accepted at that time, combined the theories of astronomy with Newton’s recently pronounced laws of gravity to advance an idea of animal gravitation, which was the natural power known as animal magnetism.
As a result, in 1776, he wrote a dissertation on The Influence of the Planets on the Human Body. Subsequently, with the persisting ideas of an ethereal fluid, of animal magnetism and of the work of Father Hell, he maintained that these forces could be harnessed to restore the harmonious balance of body functions and for the relief of human suffering.
Mesmer had made his great discovery when he was treating a young lady named Fraulein Oesterline who for several years had been suffering from a “convulsive malady” together with “the most cruel toothache and earache followed by delirium, rage, vomiting and swooning.” He prescribed for her the continuous use of “chalybeates,” which were presumably some form of iron tonic. He prevailed upon Father Hell to have made for him by his craftsmen a number of magnetized pieces of iron which would fit to his patient’s stomach and legs. Miss Oesterline reported strange sensations running down her body and she was relieved of her ailments.
Mesmer’s Banquet
Mesmer deduced from this that it was essential to maintain an equilibrium between the natural magnetic fluid, which, it was asserted, filled all living things, and the magnetic fluid which was thought to fill the Universe. Thus in the thrilling days of the great discoveries in gravity, mathematics, electricity, and astronomy, the exploring mind of Franz Anton Mesmer offered his name to what he genuinely believed to be a scientific and logical explanation of the phenomenon he was able to produce, the phenomenon of animal magnetism.
From the very beginning it was evident in which way the ideas of Mesmer were to evolve. He treated patients by fitting magnets to various parts of the body and was able to effect many wonderful and dramatic cures. As a result, his reputation increased and he prospered greatly. He married the rich widow of a former officer in the Austrian army, one Anna von Bosch, and together they established a large circle of wealthy and famous acquaintances.
They owned an elegant house in Vienna in which they held lavish parties and gave musical soirées. The great Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote an opera called Bastien et Bastienne, the original performance of which took place in Mesmer’s garden theatre. Magnetism became a cult and Mesmer its high priest.
As a result of his spectacular fame his work was regarded by many more orthodox physicians with considerable cynicism. He reached the zenith of his glory, but was doomed to downfall. (As was the failing of many who followed him, and is even to this day.)
Mesmer, as well as his followers often failed to recognize the real nature of the illness he was treating.
His fate as a physician and magnetizer in Austria was sealed by the eventual outcome of his treatment of Marie-Terese Paradis, a pianist who had been blind (today recognized as hysterical blindness) since the age of four. Mesmer had restored her eyesight. Other physicians were envious of the results, and doubted the credibility of Mesmer’s treatment. Marie-Therese’s father, who was a secretary to the Emperor and Empress, was afraid that his daughter’s pension might be forfeited. As a result, a great furore arose. Mesmer was repudiated by the University of Vienna and left the country to settle in Paris in 1778.
In France, Mesmer’s most prominent supporter was Dr. Charles d’Eslon, physician to the Count d’Artois who was later to become Charles X. Mesmer soon became the rage of Paris. His clinic was lavishly furnished, thickly carpeted and heavily curtained. The great man himself is reputed to have worn a lilac cloak and to have held an iron rod in his hand. In the centre of his consulting room stood a large vat called a baquet, from which projected metal bars. Water and iron filings filled the baquet and his patients sat around it, each grasping one of the iron bars. Mirrors, and soft music were strategically placed around the room, which Mesmer said intensified the magnetism. In this mysterious and aweinspiring setting, Dr. Mesmer passed around the circle of patients, each in a high state of expectancy, and touched each one with the iron rod. Many of them fell on the floor in convulsive movements and described strange and bizarre sensations. After two or three sessions they proclaimed themselves cured of the affliction from which they were reputed to be suffering.
Once again, however, Mesmer’s great healing art caused much enmity amongst his contemporary physicians and in 1784 King Louis XVI set up a Royal Commission to investigate animal magnetism. Amongst its members was Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Joseph Gullotin (inventor of the beheading device) and Antoine Lavoisier (discoverer of oxygen). The great and important standing of these people alone was sufficient proof of the impact which magnetism or mesmerism had on the events of the time. The Commission concluded that the cures could be explained only by the imagination and imitation of the subject. Unfortunately no report was made of the positive results of Mesmer’s work.
Unfortunately too, the Commission also failed to comprehend that the cures were genuine enough even if there appeared to be no physical or organic origin to the illness. Mesmer stood condemned and soon afterwards, refusing to renounce his beliefs, he was forced to retire. He fled from Vienna through Europe, returned to Paris for a brief spell, and then moved to Meerburg on Lake Constance where he died on 5th March 1815.
One of Mesmer’s disciples was the Marquis Chastenet de Puységur. It was Puységur who discovered somnambulism, a new dimension of magnetism, a state in which subjects could open their eyes and talk, and obey instructions and yet remain “magnetized.” The somnambulistic subjects were thought to be endowed with particular powers of prophecy and of diagnosis.
The ideas of Mesmer and his contemporaries spread and in 1829, Richard Chenevix, a Fellow of the Royal Society, having learned his skills from a widely renowned priest, the Abbe di Faria, demonstrates his technique to a number of English physicians, amongst them one John Elliotson.
