History of Medicine

MESMER AND ANIMAL MAGNETISM

     In 1778 a German doctor, Franz Anton Mesmer, educated at the University of Vienna Medical School, left his practice in Vienna after being shunned by a hostile medical faculty. His work as a healer using a new therapy, animal magnetism, based on an invisible fluid that permeated the universe and whose passage through the body was 

F. Anton Mesmer (Wikipedia)

essential for good health, was considered chicanery by the academic community. Chased also by rumors of inappropriate sexual behavior, he moved to Paris and opened a new practice in a fashionable area. 

   Animal magnetism did not sound outlandish to many French Enlightenment Parisians. Writings by Voltaire on Isaac Newton’s gravity, describing it as the effects of an invisible “fluid”, pervading the universe, were popular. Similar was electricity, another 

Voltaire at work (Wellcome Library)

mysterious fluid with a variety of uses, including treatment of illness. Magnetic attraction resembled gravity, and phlogiston, an invisible substance responsible for heat, still permeated scientific thought. Balloons filled with “dephlogisticated air” (hydrogen) ascended to extraordinary heights. Theories of immaterial “vitalistic” forces abounded in medical writing. Mesmer’s technique of restoring patients to health by aiding the flow of magnetic fluid through the body sounded quite reasonable to many.    

     For official recognition of his method Mesmer appealed to the French Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of Medicine, and the Paris Faculty of Medicine. All refused to endorse him. Charles Deslon, however, a Paris Faculty member and physician to the brother of Louis VI (who later ruled France as Charles X), became a believer and adopted Mesmer’s techniques. 

         The demand for treatment was high, forcing Mesmer to conduct group therapy sessions. Patients were seated around a central tub, about a foot high, partly filled with glass and iron filings and covered in wood. Ropes around the patients’ waists transmitted the fluid from one to another, as did the linking of hands. Iron bars protruded from the barrel, angled to touch parts of the body to receive the magnetic fluid.  Attendants also touched various parts needing treatment with iron rods or pressed with their hands on the upper abdomen (and sometimes the lower part) to impart more fluid.

Patients around the barrel. No ropes in this image. Attendant on left pressing on abdomen. Notice mirrors.
(Wellcome Library)

     In individual sessions the therapist sat with his knees touching the patient’s as he pressed on various parts of the abdomen. The light was dimmed and a musical instrument, usually a glass armonica, invented by Benjamin Franklin, 

Glass harmonica. Rubbing the fingers on the edges of the
rotating wet glass discs produces the notes (Wikipedia)

produced soft, ethereal sounds. Mirrors around the room reflected back any escaping magnetic fluid. Before long subjects began trembling or shouting and progressed to seizures and other movements. Those with the most violent movements were moved to a room with padded walls. Inducing such a “crisis” was thought important to a cure. 

Another Version. The woman in the back is carried into the padded room (Wellcome Library)
(Click on image for enlargement)

     Mesmer formed a secret society, the Society of Harmony, to initiate new practitioners, for which he charged a substantial admission fee. But there were many detractors, ridiculing the methods. Especially noted was that most of the subjects experiencing crises were women.

    

Single patient (Wellcome Library)

 The controversy for and against mesmerism was so intense that King Louis XVI established a royal commission to investigate. It consisted of five members of the Academy of Sciences and four from the Faculty of Medicine. Prominent members included the chemist Lavoisier, Bailly (a famous astronomer), Dr. Guillotin (for whom the beheading instrument was named), and the famous botanist Laurent de Jussieu. Benjamin Franklin, the most famous of all, headed the commission. A second commission filing a secret report included five from the Royal Society of Medicine. 

Benjamin Franklin, by Joseph Duplessis
(Wikipedia)

     Mesmer refused to cooperate with the commission unless they considered long-term results, which they declined to do. Mesmer and his chief disciple, Deslon, however, had separated. Deslon, already magnetized, knew the technique and had established his own practice, so the commission turned to him to magnetize subjects. 

     The commissioners understood that “cures” could be spontaneous, unrelated to treatment, and focused their attention on establishing whether the “fluid” existed or could be detected by “sensitive” patients. Both commission members and patients were tested. The commissioners, when magnetized, felt nothing. Subjects, when blindfolded and asked to touch objects that might or might not be magnetized, failed to detect anything accurately. 

    After many trials, often at Benjamin Franklin’s residence in Passy, a Paris suburb, the commission concluded that the “cures” could only be attributed to patient suggestion and that there was no evidence of a mysterious “fluid”. The commission wrote “…that the imagination without the magnetism produces convulsions, and that the magnetism without the imagination produces nothing; they have concluded…that the existence of the fluid is absolutely destitute of proof, that the fluid having no existence can consequently have no use…” The second, “secret”, report for the King’s eyes, by the Royal Academy of Medicine, suggested that the various touchings during the process may have awakened sexual desires in the mostly female subjects, and indicated that women were more susceptible to suggestion. Definitely a male point of view. 

   After the report Mesmer’s influence waned. As the revolution approached, he traveled to Switzerland and Germany, partly to visit family, and ended his days in obscurity.

Antoine Lavoisier and his wife
(Wikipedia)

  The ensuing revolution in 1789 changed France and French medicine forever. Both Lavoisier and Bailly  perished under the guillotine. Dr. Guillotin was imprisoned but eventually released. The Marquis de Lafayette, another devotee, tried to introduce mesmerism to the U.S. but Thomas Jefferson opposed it and it never grew deep roots. The term “mesmerized” took on a milder connotation. Mesmer’s work, however, was a step toward the eventual recognition of the subconscious.

  

  SOURCES:

Darnton, Robert. Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France. 1968; Harvard Univ Press. 

Buranelli, Vincent. The Wizard from Vienna. 1975; Coward, McCann & Geoghegan.

Animal Magnetism: Report of Dr. Franklin and Other Commissioners (English Translation) 1837; H. Perkins, Philadelphia.

Huth, E J. “Benjamin Franklin’s Place in the History of Medicine”. 2006; James Lind Library Bulletin, available at: https://www.jameslindlibrary.org/articles/benjamin-franklins-1706-1790-place-in-the-history-of-medicine/

The International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, v 50 (4), 2002, devoted the entire issue to Franklin and Mesmer.

Lopez, C. “Franklin and Mesmer: An Encounter”. 1993; Yale J Biol Med 66: 325-31.