Mesmer, Franz Anton (1734-1815)
An Austrian physician who believed the human nervous system to be magnetized just as the Earth is, a universal life force which he called 'animal magnetism'.
Practicing in Paris, Mesmer developed a therapeutic regime using iron magnets, which he believed helped to restore the magnetic balance in the life-force of sick patients. His methods included laying on of hands, staring fixedly into a subject's eyes, and slowly waving his hands or a magnetic wand in front of a patient. He attracted a large following who believed that animal magnetism — or mesmerism, as it was popularly called — was a cure for all manner of physical and mental ailments.
Although often accused by contemporaries of being a magician and charlatan, 'mesmerism', in the form of modern hypnosis, has now become an accepted psychotherapeutic technique.
Mesmeric theory was based upon two ideas that had been in circulation for centuries. The first was that there were invisible, naturally occurring forces, such as the force of gravity that keeps planets in their orbits, that can also be held responsible for the animation of living bodies, such as animals and humans. The other idea was that the application of magnets could prove beneficial in the treatment of disease. In the case of mesmerism, what was new was the explanation put forth for the relationship between the forces of magnetism and the forces of life and by extension, disease.
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Sources: (1) Dictionary of the Occult, Caxton Publishing; (2) The Encyclopaedia Britannica Eleventh Edition Handy Volume Edition, Oxford University Press; (3) Gochenour P., Mesmerism: a Theory of the Soul, Gale Group; (4) Spence, Lewis, An Encyclopedia of Occultism, Carol Publishing Group; (5) Steiger, Brad and Sherry H., The Gale Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained, Thomson Gale.
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