Franz Anton Mesmer Animal Magnetism Mesmerism Hypnosis Lec

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Franz Mesmer and Hypnosis.

Franz Anton Mesmer, German physician whose system of therapeutics, known as mesmerism, was the forerunner of the modern practice of hypnotism . He theorised the existence of a natural energy transference occurring between all animated and inanimate objects; this he called \u201canimal magnetism\u201d, sometimes later referred to as mesmerism.

In February 1778 Mesmer moved to Paris.

In 1784, without Mesmer requesting it, King Louis XVI appointed four members of the Faculty of Medicine as commissioners to investigate animal magnetism as practiced by Charles d\u2019Eslon. At the request of these commissioners the King appointed five additional commissioners from the Royal Academy of Sciences. These included the chemist Antoine Lavoisier, the doctor Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly, and the American ambassador Benjamin Franklin. The commission conducted a series of experiments aimed not at determining whether Mesmer\u2019s treatment worked, but whether he had discovered a new physical fluid. The commission concluded that there was no evidence for such a fluid. Whatever benefit the treatment produced was attributed to \u201cimagination.\u201d But one of the commissioners, the botanist Antoine Laurent de Jussieu took exception to the official reports. He wrote a dissenting opinion that declared Franz Anton Mesmer\u2019s theory credible and worthy of further investigation.

Abbé Faria, an Indo-Portuguese monk who was one of the pioneers of the scientific study of hypnotism and a contemporary of Mesmer, claimed that \u201cnothing comes from the magnetizer; everything comes from the subject and takes place in his imagination, i.e. autosuggestion generated from within the mind.\u201d