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Mesmer believed that good physical and psychological health came from properly aligned magnetic forces; bad health, then, resulted from forces essentially being out of whack. He...
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Mesmerism, named after its chief theoretician and practitioner, Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), also known as Animal Magnetism, was one of the most popular medical theories of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Today mesmerism is considered a form of medical quackery, but it is also seen as a precursor to the use of hypnosis in tre...
In the eighteenth century medical practice was still attempting to differentiate itself from religious healing practices such as exorcism. In order to do so, medical practice needed to show that the object of its concern was different from that of religious practice by demonstrating, for example, that disease was the result of malfunctions within t...
The results of Mesmeric treatment were often spectacular, even if they did fail to cure physical disease. Since Mesmer believed that the cause of disease was a blockage in the flow of energy, a successful treatment would produce an "overcoming" of that blockage, with dramatic physical results. Patients under Mesmeric treatment would often report bu...
Darnton, Robert. Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France. Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1968. Mesmer, Franz Anton. Mesmerism, a Translation of the Original Scientific and Medical Writings of F. A. Mesmer. Translated by George J. Bloch. Los Altos, CA: W. Kaufmann, 1980. Pattie, Frank A. Mesmer and Animal Magnetism: A Chapter in th...
Apr 27, 2017 · Health was a result of the magnetic fluid being in balance, while illness was the result of blockages. Taking a page from Hell, Mesmer began working with patients by using magnets to...
Mar 5, 2019 · HISTORY MAGAZINE. Was this hypnotic health craze an elaborate hoax or a medical breakthrough? In 18th-century Vienna and Paris, mesmerism was all the rage —with Marie Antoinette among its...
Apr 9, 2018 · Mesmer's popularity and his claims of miracle cures also attracted the attention of the Royal Society of Medicine and the Royal Academy of Sciences. They demanded an investigation of Mesmer on...
We know about Mesmerism today largely as the forerunner of later movements – hypnotism, which became important in Victorian medicine, spiritualism, and not least, psycho-analysis, since in his early practice Freud used Mesmerism as his therapeutic medium. But who exactly was Mesmer, and what impact did his ideas have when they first came to ...
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Franz Anton Mesmer (/ ˈ m ɛ z m ər / MEZ-mər; [1] German:; 23 May 1734 – 5 March 1815) was a German physician with an interest in astronomy. He theorized the existence of a process of natural energy transference occurring between all animate and inanimate objects; this he called " animal magnetism ", later referred to as mesmerism .
