FRANZ ANTON MESMER

Franz Anton Mesmer(born May 23, 1734, Iznang, Swabia[Germany]—died March 5, 1815, Meersburg, Swabia) was a German physician whose system of therapeutics, known as mesmerism, was the forerunner of the modern practice of hypnotism.

Mesmer’s dissertation at the University of Vienna(M.D., 1766), which borrowed heavily from the work of the British physician Richard Mead, suggested that the gravitational attraction of the planets affected human health by affecting an invisible fluid found in the human body and throughout nature. In 1775 Mesmer revised his theory of “animal gravitation” to one of “animal magnetism,” wherein the invisible fluid in the body acted according to the laws of magnetism. According to Mesmer, “animal magnetism” could be activated by any magnetized object and manipulated by any trained person. Diseasewas the result of “obstacles” in the fluid’s flow through the body, and these obstacles could be broken by “crises” (trance states often ending in delirium or convulsions) in order to restore the harmony of personal fluid flow. Mesmer devised various therapeutic treatments to achieve harmonious fluid flow, and in many of these treatments he was a forceful and rather dramatic personal participant.

Accused by Viennese physicians of fraud, Mesmer left Austria and settled in Paris in 1778. There he continued to enjoy a highly lucrative practice but again attracted the antagonism of the medical profession, and in 1784 King Louis XVI appointed a commission of scientists and physicians to investigate Mesmer’s methods; among the commission’s members were the American inventor and statesman Benjamin Franklin and the French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier. They reported that Mesmer was unable to support his scientific claims, and the mesmerist movement thereafter declined. Whatever may be said about his therapeutic system, Mesmer did often achieve a close rapport with his patients and seems to have actually alleviatedcertain nervous disorders in them. More importantly, the further investigation of the trance state by his followers eventually led to the development of legitimateapplications of hypnotism.

animal magnetism, a presumed intangible or mysterious force that is said to influence human beings. The term was used by the German physician Franz Anton Mesmer to explain the hypnotic procedurethat he used in the treatment of patients. (See hypnosis.) Mesmer believed that it was an occult force or invisible fluid emanating from his body and that, more generally, the force permeated the universe, deriving especially from the stars. The term is often used colloquially to mean sex appeal.

Hypnosis: special psychological state with certain physiological attributes, resembling sleep only superficially and marked by a functioning of the individual at a level of awareness other than the ordinary conscious state. This state is characterized by a degree of increased receptiveness and responsiveness in which inner experiential perceptions are given as much significance as is generally given only to external reality.

The hypnotic state: The hypnotized individual appears to heed only the communications of the hypnotist and typically responds in an uncritical, automatic fashion while ignoring all aspects of the environment other than those pointed out by the hypnotist. In a hypnotic state an individual tends to see, feel, smell, and otherwise perceive in accordance with the hypnotist’s suggestions, even though these suggestions may be in apparent contradiction to the actual stimuli present in the environment. The effects of hypnosis are not limited to sensory change; even the subject’s memory and awareness of self may be altered by suggestion, and the effects of the suggestions may be extended (posthypnotically) into the subject’s subsequent waking activity.

History and early research

The history of hypnosis is as ancient as that of sorcery, magic, and medicine; indeed, hypnosis has been used as a method in all three. Its scientific history began in the latter part of the 18th century with Franz Mesmer, a German physician who used hypnosis in the treatment of patients in Vienna and Paris. Because of his mistaken belief that hypnotism made use of an occult force (which he termed “animal magnetism”) that flowed through the hypnotist into the subject, Mesmer was soon discredited; but Mesmer’s method—named mesmerism after its creator—continued to interest medical practitioners. A number of clinicians made use of it without fully understanding its nature until the middle of the 19th century, when the English physician James Braid studied the phenomenon and coined the terms hypnotismand hypnosis, after the Greek god of sleep, Hypnos.

https://www.britannica.com/science/hypnosis