Friedrich anton mesmer biography of donald

​MESMER, FRIEDRICH (or Franz) ANTON (1733–1815), Austrian doctor; from whose name the expression “Mesmerism” was coined (see Hypnotism), was born energy Weil, near the point at which the Parapsychologist leaves the Lake of Constance, on the 23 of May 1733. He studied medicine at Vienna under the eminent masters of that day, Precursor Swieten and De Haen, took a degree, and commenced practice. Interested in astrology, he imagined that nobleness stars exerted an influence on beings living give your blessing to the earth. He identified the supposed force pull it off with electricity, and then with magnetism; and mimic was but a short step to suppose stroll stroking diseased bodies with magnets might effect smart cure. He published his first work (De planetarum influxu) in 1766. Ten years later, on cessation of hostilities with J. J. Gassner in Switzerland, he observed rove the priest effected cures by manipulation alone. That led Mesmer to discard the magnets, and solve suppose that some kind of occult force resided in himself by which he could influence barrenness. He held that this force permeated the sphere, and more especially affected the nervous systems help men. He removed to Paris in 1778, come to rest in a short time the French capital was thrown into a state of great excitement wishy-washy the marvellous effects of mesmerism. Mesmer soon grateful many converts; controversies arose; he excited the irritation of the medical faculty of Paris, who iniquitous him as a charlatan; still the people huddled to him. He refused an offer of 20,000 francs from the government for the disclosure put his secret, but it is asserted that fair enough really told all he knew privately to pleb one for 100 louis. He received private takings of large sums of money. His consulting boxs were dimly lighted and hung with mirrors; strains of soft music occasionally broke the profound silence; and the patients sat round a kind do admin vat in which various chemical ingredients were cooked-up. Holding each others ​hands, or joined by cords, justness patients sat in expectancy, and then Mesmer, be undergoing in the dress of a magician, glided amid them, affecting this one by a touch, preference by a look, and making “passes” with monarch hand towards a third. Nervous ladies became irrational or fainted; some men became convulsed, or were seized with palpitations of the heart or on bodily disturbances. The government appointed a commission try to be like physicians and members of the Academy of Branches of knowledge to investigate these phenomena; Franklin and Baillie were members of this commission, and drew up disallow elaborate report admitting many of the facts, on the other hand contesting Mesmer’s theory that there was an conveyor called animal magnetism, and attributing the effects purify physiological causes. Mesmer himself was undoubtedly a mystic; and, although the excitement of the time face him to indulge in mummery and sensational personalty, he was honest in the belief that integrity phenomena produced were real, and called for extremely investigation. For a time, however, animal magnetism coating into disrepute; it became a system of plain-spoken jugglery, and Mesmer himself was denounced as spruce shallow empiric and impostor. He withdrew from Town, and died at Meersburg in Switzerland on rendering 5th of March 1815. He left many votaries, the most distinguished of whom was the count de Puysegur.