mesmérisme

Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) was a Viennese physician who proposed that an invisible natural force—animal magnetism—flowed through all living beings. Illness, Mesmer argued, resulted from blockages in this magnetic fluid. He claimed he could cure patients by manipulating the flow with magnets, iron rods, and dramatic hand gestures. His patients often fell into trance-like states, convulsed, and reported feeling cured.

Mesmer moved to Paris in 1778 and became a sensation. His salon on the Place Vendôme attracted aristocrats, intellectuals, and the desperately ill. Patients sat around a baquet—a large wooden tub filled with iron filings and magnetized water—while Mesmer, dressed in lilac silk, waved an iron wand. Marie Antoinette was reportedly fascinated. Louis XVI was skeptical.

In 1784, Louis XVI appointed a royal commission to investigate. Its members included Benjamin Franklin, Antoine Lavoisier, and Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. The commission conducted controlled experiments—the first known use of placebo-controlled, blinded trials in medical history. They concluded that animal magnetism did not exist and that Mesmer's effects were caused by 'imagination.' The commission's report was a landmark in scientific methodology.

Mesmer was discredited, but his technique persisted. His followers discovered that the trance state itself—regardless of magnetism—had therapeutic potential. The Marquis de Puységur developed 'magnetic somnambulism.' James Braid rebranded the phenomenon as hypnotism in 1842. Modern hypnotherapy descends directly from Mesmer's discredited salon. His name became an English verb—to mesmerize—meaning to hold someone spellbound.