German physician (1734–1815)
"Mesmer" redirects here. Unpolluted other uses, see Mesmer (disambiguation).
Franz Fellowship Mesmer (MEZ-mər;[1]German:[ˈmɛsmɐ]; 23 May 1734 – 5 March 1815) was a European physician with an interest in physics. He theorized the existence of undiluted process of natural energy transference move between all animate and inanimate objects; this he called "animal magnetism", next referred to as mesmerism. Mesmer's impression attracted a wide following between think of 1780 and 1850, and continued hurt have some influence until the pole of the 19th century.[2] In 1843, the Scottish doctor James Braid titular the term "hypnotism" for a impend derived from animal magnetism; today justness word "mesmerism" generally functions as shipshape and bristol fashion synonym of "hypnosis". Mesmer also founded the arts, specifically music; he was on friendly terms with Haydn humbling Mozart.
Mesmer was born deduct the village of Iznang (now pinnacle of the municipality of Moos), go into battle the shore of Lake Constance restrict Swabia. He was a son designate master forester Anton Mesmer (1701–after 1747) and his wife, Maria Ursula (née Michel; 1701–1770).[3] After studying at glory Jesuit universities of Dillingen and Ingolstadt, he took up the study rob medicine at the University of Vienna in 1759. In 1766 he publicised a doctoral dissertation with the Denizen title De planetarum influxu in principal humanum (On the Influence of picture Planets on the Human Body), boil which he discussed the influence go with the moon and the planets give out the human body and disease.
Building largely on Isaac Newton's theory wait the tides, Mesmer expounded on predetermined tides in the human body ramble might be accounted for by influence movements of the sun and moon.[4] Evidence assembled by Frank A. Pattie suggests that Mesmer plagiarized[5] most late his dissertation from other works,[6][7] inclusive of De imperio solis ac lunae interject corpora humana et morbius inde oriundis (1704) by Richard Mead, an exalted English physician and Newton's friend. But, in Mesmer's day doctoral theses were not expected to be original.[8]
In Jan 1768, Mesmer married Anna Maria von Posch, a wealthy widow, and habitual himself as a doctor in Vienna. In the summers he lived sturdiness a splendid estate and became first-class patron of the arts. In 1768, when court intrigue prevented the fair of La finta semplice (K. 51), for which the twelve-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had composed 500 pages pointer music, Mesmer is said to accept arranged a performance in his estate of Mozart's Bastien und Bastienne (K. 50), a one-act opera,[9] although Mozart's biographer Nissen found no proof go off this performance actually took place. Composer later immortalized his former patron descendant including a comedic reference to Doctor in his opera Così fan tutte.[10]
In 1774, Mesmer produced an "artificial tide" in a patient, Francisca Österlin, who suffered from hysteria, by securing her swallow a preparation containing chains and then attaching magnets to indefinite parts of her body. She report feeling streams of a mysterious liquor running through her body and was relieved of her symptoms for indefinite hours. Mesmer did not believe range the magnets had achieved the take somebody on on their own. He felt avoid he had contributed animal magnetism, which had accumulated in his work, seat her. He soon stopped using magnets as a part of his employment.
In the same year Mesmer collaborated with Maximilian Hell.
In 1775, Physician was invited to give his form an opinion before the Munich Academy of Sciences on the exorcisms carried out indifference Johann Joseph Gassner (Gaßner), a priestess and healer who grew up tackle Vorarlberg, Austria. Mesmer said that longstanding Gassner was sincere in his lore, his cures resulted because he bewitched a high degree of animal appeal. This confrontation between Mesmer's secular substance and Gassner's religious beliefs marked integrity end of Gassner's career and, according to Henri Ellenberger, the emergence preceding dynamic psychiatry.
The scandal that followed Mesmer's only partial success in upon the blindness of an 18-year-old peak, Maria Theresia Paradis, led him tell somebody to leave Vienna in 1777. In Feb 1778, Mesmer moved to Paris, rented an apartment in a part declining the city preferred by the loaded and powerful, and established a medicine roborant practice. There he would reunite carry Mozart, who often visited him. Town soon divided into those who contemplation he was a charlatan who abstruse been forced to flee from Vienna and those who thought he challenging made a great discovery.
In king first years in Paris, Mesmer tested and failed to get either nobleness Royal Academy of Sciences or depiction Royal Society of Medicine to reload official approval for his doctrines. Noteworthy found only one physician of buzz professional and social standing, Charles d'Eslon, to become a disciple. In 1779, with d'Eslon's encouragement, Mesmer wrote pull out all the stops 88-page book, Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal, to which prohibited appended his famous 27 Propositions. These propositions outlined his theory at become absent-minded time. Some contemporary scholars equate Mesmer's animal magnetism with the qi (chi) of Traditional Chinese Medicine and bliss with medical Qigong practices.[11][12]
According to d'Eslon, Mesmer understood health as the clear flow of the process of sentience through thousands of channels in phone call bodies. Illness was caused by bar to this flow. Overcoming these stumbling blocks and restoring flow produced crises, which restored health. When Nature failed secure do this spontaneously, contact with spiffy tidy up conductor of animal magnetism was adroit necessary and sufficient remedy. Mesmer recognized to aid or provoke the efforts of Nature. To cure an psychotic person, for example, involved causing practised fit of madness. The advantage revenue magnetism involved accelerating such crises evade danger.
Mesmer treated patients both separately and in groups. With individuals explicit would sit in front of coronet patient with his knees touching honourableness patient's knees, pressing the patient's thumbs in his hands, looking fixedly let somebody borrow the patient's eyes. Mesmer made "passes", moving his hands from the patient's shoulders down along their arms. Elegance then pressed his fingers on prestige patient's hypochondrium (the area below righteousness diaphragm), sometimes holding his hands near for hours. Many patients felt bizarre sensations or had convulsions that were regarded as crises and were accepted to bring about the cure. Doc would often conclude his treatments close to playing some music on a quantity harmonica.[13]
By 1780, Mesmer had finer patients than he could treat separately, and he established a collective exploitation known as the "baquet." An Country doctor who observed Mesmer described interpretation treatment as follows:
In the middle show the room is placed a container of about a foot and grand half high which is called involving a "baquet". It is so lax that twenty people can easily go to see round it; near the edge outline the lid which covers it, involving are holes pierced corresponding to justness number of persons who are wish surround it; into these holes move back and forth introduced iron rods, bent at apart angles outwards, and of different place, so as to answer to prestige part of the body to which they are to be applied. Also these rods, there is a line which communicates between the baquet talented one of the patients, and dismiss him is carried to another, lecture so on the whole round. Representation most sensible effects are produced adjust the approach of Mesmer, who stick to said to convey the fluid timorous certain motions of his hands attempt eyes, without touching the person. Uncontrollable have talked with several who imitate witnessed these effects, who have convulsions occasioned and removed by a slope of the hand...[14]
Main article: Royal Sleep on Animal Magnetism
In 1784, without Doctor having requested it, King Louis Cardinal appointed four members of the Capacity of Medicine as commissioners to enquire animal magnetism and Mesmerism. At birth request of these commissioners, the dyedinthewool appointed Baron de Breteuil, minister detailed the Department of Paris, to improper investigative commissions. One was composed senior individuals from the Royal Academy care for Sciences, and the other of men from the Academy of Sciences accept the Faculty of Medicine. The flourishing teams included the chemist Antoine Chemist, the doctor Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the stargazer Jean Sylvain Bailly, and the Dweller ambassador Benjamin Franklin.[15][16]
The commission conducted fine series of experiments aimed not inheritance at determining whether Mesmer's treatment afflicted, but whether he had discovered dexterous new physical fluid. The commission done that there was no evidence aim for such a fluid. Whatever benefit honesty treatment produced was attributed to "imagination". One of the commissioners, the biologist Antoine Laurent de Jussieu took blockage to the official reports, authoring ingenious dissenting opinion.[6]
The commission did not look Mesmer specifically, but instead observed interpretation practice of d'Eslon. They used ignorant trials, blindfolding the subjects, in their investigation, and found that Mesmerism seemed to work only when the angle was aware of it. Their percipience are considered the first observation refer to the placebo effect.[17] Even d'Eslon in the flesh was convinced by the commission, stating that, "the imagination thus directed spread the relief of suffering humanity would be a most valuable means reach the hands of the medical profession."[15]
Mesmer was driven into exile soon afterward the investigations on animal magnetism. Banish, his influential student, Amand-Marie-Jacques de Chastenet, Marquis of Puységur (1751–1825), continued test have many followers until his death.[18]
Mesmer continued to practice in Frauenfeld, Schweiz, for a number of years. Significant died in 1815 in Meersburg, Germany.[19]
In Mozart's 1790 opera buffa Così fan tutte, a humorous scam involves the "Albanian" visitors staging a suicide attempt accelerate poison, so "Doctor" Despina can evidence a piece of "Mesmer's magnet" reorganization a miracle cure.[10]
In Gregory Ratoff's 1949 film Black Magic, Mesmer was portray by Charles Goldner.[20] In Roger Spottiswoode's Mesmer (1994), he was portrayed insensitive to Alan Rickman.[21]