On 23 May, 1734, at Iznang, in the parish of Weiler, in the bailiwick of Rudolfzell, on Lake Constance in Germany, there was born a man who was destined to give his name to this power and be the first to make the attempt to investigate it scientifically. Franciscus Antonius Mesmer, commonly known as Franz Anton Mesmer, was at first intended for the Church. With this intention, he received his early education in a monastery, and at the age of fifteen he entered a Jesuit college in Dillingen.

Becoming interested in physics, mathematics and astronomy, Mesmer decided to give up the Church in favour of medicine, and entered the medical school of the University of Vienna.

By writing a thesis, ‘De Planatarium In flux’, he obtained his medical degree in 1765. In this thesis Mesmer expounded his belief in a mysterious ‘magnetic fluid’ which came from the stars and filled the whole universe. He further believed that any upset in the proper balance of this fluid in the body could cause disease.

Nowadays it is the fashion for many doctors and scientists to dismiss Mesmer as a ‘quack’ and consider his theories as the ravings of a madman. Nevertheless, these same learned men talk blithely of the ‘ether’, which pervades all matter and transmits radio waves, but about the true nature of which they know no more than Mesmer. Further, their attention has been focused lately on the mysterious ‘cosmic rays’ by which the earth is apparently being constantly bombarded, so that, considering the time at which he lived, Mesmer’s theories cannot be regarded as so fantastic after all.

Certainly, at the time, his thesis was well received, and it aroused the interest of Father Hehl (usually spelt Hell), a Jesuit priest who was Professor of Astronomy at the University of Vienna and one of the court astrologers to Maria Theresa.

Father HehI believed that magnets had curative powers, and he had them made to special shapes representing the organs which they were intended to cure.

In return for some essays on the subject which Mesmer lent him, he sent Mesmer some magnets to try on his patients.

A spectacular success with the very first patient confirmed Mesmer’s belief in his theory, and he became convinced that the magnet could cause an ebb and flow of this ‘vital fluid’ in and out of the patient’s body.

An essential part of the treatment was the ‘crisis’ or ‘convulsion’ which seized the patients, after which they were cured.

As the result of observation and experience, Mesmer soon found that he could produce all these effects with non-magnetic objects, and even by making ‘passes’ with his hands.

He therefore modified his theories, and concluded that the effects were due to a sort of ‘human magnetism’. Everything he touched seemed to become charged with this force, even the chairs in his consulting-room, so that patients no sooner sat in them than they had a convulsion and were cured.

Some patients, however, were unaffected, and Mesmer concluded that patients had to have the will to be cured in order to allow the mysterious fluid to flow. In our own day many people believe, quite erroneously, that hypnotism is brought about by ‘will-power’. By 1775 ‘Mesmerism’ (as this new treatment was called) had become the rage of Vienna and Mesmer had more patients than he was able to treat separately. In order to treat a number of patients at once, he invented the ‘baquet’ which was simply a large circular tub filled with glass and iron filings, out of which protruded a number of iron rods. The patients, to the number of thirty or more, sat around the tub and held the iron rods. The iron filings and glass had previously been ‘magnetized’ by a touch from Mesmer and sitting for a time in a darkened room listening to soft music, the patients would go into convulsions.

Naturally, the orthodox doctors of Vienna were jealous of his spectacular successes. Mesmer is often represented as a charlatan and an impostor, but the true facts do not show him in this light.

Until he took up magnetism, he was well liked as a general practitioner.

Having little need of money, owing to a wealthy marriage, Mesmer never denied treatment to the poor, for nothing. He was as much interested in music as in medicine, and would spend hours playing on his musical glasses. His home was always open to the leading musicians of his day, and because he was sorry for Mozart he commissioned him to write the opera Bastien and Bastienne.

In 1777 Maria Theresa Paradis, an infant prodigy and blind pianist, recovered her sight after treatment by Mesmer, in spite of the fact that she had been under the care of Dr. Von Stoerk, the best occulist in Europe, for over ten years without improvement.

Jealous doctors persuaded the child’s parents to take her away before the cure was complete, saying that the Empress would withdraw her allowance if the child recovered her sight. In an emotional scene the mother struck the child across the face because she did not want to leave Mesmer, and the hysterical blindness reasserted itself. Mesmer was disgusted at the treatment he received, and left Vienna for France.

On arrival in Paris he endeavoured. to avoid arousing the jealousy of the medical profession, and requested the medical faculty to try his methods for themselves. However, neither the Academy of Sciences nor the Royal Society of Medicine would agree to give his methods a trial.

This did not stop the people of Paris from flocking to Mesmer’s clinic, and, as in Vienna, he soon became the most popular doctor in the city.

Once more his enemies, those self-same doctors he wished to assist by teaching them his methods, endeavoured to discredit him. One doctor even pretended to be ill, faked certain symptoms, and begged Mesmer to help him. He then published an account of this and labelled Mesmer a charlatan.

Mesmer’s only friend at this time was Dr. D’Eslon, a Court physician, who endeavoured, without success, to influence the leading scientists in his favour. Thoroughly discouraged, Mesmer left Paris for Spa, Belgium, in 1781.

However, so numerous and so spectacular had been his cures in Paris that a group of his supporters, headed by a lawyer named Bergasse, collected funds and set up ‘Magnetic’ clubs throughout France.

Mesmer was persuaded to return to Paris and to assume leadership, with D’Eslon, of the Society of Harmony, the headquarters of which were situated in a hotel bought by Mesmer and specially converted for the purpose.

In spite of his spectacular successes—or, rather, because of them - Mesmer’s enemies persuaded Louis XVI in 1784 to appoint a Commission to investigate Mesmer’s treatment:

As the Commissioners refused to allow Mesmer to demonstrate his system himself, and confined their experiments to such ‘magnetism’ as they could produce themselves, it is not surprising that their report was unfavourable.

Incidentally, Louis XVI, who appointed the Commission which condemned Mesmer, was a great believer in the Royal Touch, although the fact that he cured no more than five people out of 2,000 at his coronation, must have shaken popular belief in the efficiency of the procedure.

Disappointment at the result of the Commission, and the gathering clouds of the French Revolution, decided Mesmer to leave Paris for Switzerland. The last years of his life were spent at Meersburg, where he devoted himself to the treatment of the poor. The King of Prussia sent the famous physician Wolfart to study under Mesmer when the latter refused to go to Berlin.

Back in Berlin, Wolfart was appointed Professor of Mesmerism in the Academy of Berlin and placed in charge of a magnetic hospital of 300 beds.

The Swedish, Russian and Austrian Governments all sent their leading physicians to study Mesmerism.

Mesmer died on March 5th, 1815, and was buried at Meersburg and a monument was erected to his memory by his admirers and disciples in Berlin. Thus passed a great man who had suffered much at the hands of his professional colleagues. His only ‘crime’ was that he endeavoured to place a mysterious power on a scientific basis for the benefit of humanity.

After Mesmer’s death, ‘Mesmerism’ or ‘Animal Magnetism’ was kept alive in France by his disciples, one of the most important being the Marquis de Puysegur. Until now mesmerism had always produced ‘crises’ or ‘convulsions’ in patients but, while experimenting with a simple peasant boy, the Marquis produced the ‘sleeping stage’ quite by accident. He further discovered that, while in this stage, the subject could think and talk more intelligently than when awake. In time he found that this artificial state of somnambulism could be produced by making passes.