8/15/2023 0 Comments Franz mesmer and animal magnetismHe would initially dub this theory “animal gravitation.” Eventually, he would rename this concept as “animal magnetism.” ( 2) From the Museum of the French Revolution, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons Mesmer would suggest that the planets’ gravitational influence was affected upon a mysterious fluid energy running through the human body. Borrowing heavily from the works of Sir Isaac Newton and the physician Richard Mead, Mesmer’s thesis explored the hypothesis that the movements of the heavenly bodies have an effect on the physical health of living creatures. This thesis is where Franz Mesmer’s unique eccentricities began to show. After briefly pursuing a law degree, Mesmer submitted a doctoral thesis at the age of thirty-two. Instead, Mesmer began to turn his eye towards the medical field. He was educated in Latin at a young age and spent his adolescence in a series of Jesuit schools, presumably in preparation for Catholic priesthood. Franz Anton Mesmer was born in Southern Germany in 1734. Mesmerism derives from the name of an eighteenth century scientist. The bizarre saga through which the phrase “animal magnetism” was coined also originated the term “mesmerism,” which is synonymous today with hypnotism. For its advocates, animal magnetism seemed like the solution for a host of diseases, deficiencies, and sources of human suffering. There was a time, in fact, when it was thought, albeit by a small group of believers, that animal magnetism would completely change the human experience. However, animal magnetism once held a very different definition. Colloquially, this is what animal magnetism means. Just five years later, France would descend into the chaos of a violent revolution.The phrase “animal magnetism” evokes mental images of emanating sensuality, of raw primal attraction. Relatedly, there is an incredibly lucid discussion of mass psychogenic illness, and mass hysteria more generally, including in cases of war and political upheaval. The report also contains a detailed account of how self-directed attention can generate what are known today as psychosomatic symptoms. Other phenomena reminiscent of the modern-day notion of priming, and the role of expectations more generally, are pointed out throughout the document. That seems to be what propelled them to make the study placebo-controlled and single-blind. Just to mention a few further insights, the commissioners were patently aware of psychological phenomena like the experimenter effect, concerned as they were that some patients might report certain sensations because they thought that is what the eminent men of science wanted to hear. Stephen Jay Gould called the work “a masterpiece of the genre, an enduring testimony to the power and beauty of reason” that “should be rescued from its current obscurity, translated into all languages”. Whatever the moral case may be, the report paved the way for the modern empirical approach in more ways than one. The typical session would last for hours and culminate in a curative “crisis” of nervous hiccups, hysterical sobs, cries, coughs, spitting, fainting, and convulsing, thus restoring the normal harmonious flow of the fluid. It appears that these blockages, in the ladies in particular, are generally in the lower abdomen, thighs, and sometimes “the ovaria”. Meanwhile, a charming man in an elaborate lilac silk coat is circulating, touching various parts of the patients’ bodies where the magnetic fluid may be hindered or somehow stuck. Through the low-lit room - adorned with mirrors to reflect invisible forces - there wafts incense and strange music, the other-worldly sounds of the glass harmonica (invented by a certain Benjamin Franklin). A rope attached to the tub is loosely coiled about them, and they are holding hands to create a “circuit”. From its lid emerge a number of bent iron rods against which the patients expectantly press their afflicted areas. Patients, mostly women, are sitting around a large wooden tub filled with magnetic water, powdered glass, and iron filings.
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