Few names have entered everyday language like that of Franz Anton Mesmer: in English to mesmerise still means to fascinate or hypnotise. Yet Mesmer did not see himself as a magician, but as a scientist who had discovered a natural force. His story is an important chapter in the history of both medicine and esotericism, because it shows how a rejected scientific hypothesis can turn into a spiritual current.
From Iznang to Vienna
Mesmer was born in 1734 at Iznang, on the shores of Lake Constance. He studied philosophy and theology with the Jesuits, then law and finally medicine in Vienna, where he graduated in 1766 with a dissertation on the influence of the planets on the human body. In it he argued that the heavenly bodies act on living beings through a subtle fluid filling the universe.
He married a wealthy widow and his Viennese house became a meeting place for high society and musicians: according to a widely repeated tradition, an early opera by Mozart, Bastien und Bastienne, was performed there.
From the magnet to animal magnetism
Around 1774 Mesmer began using magnets in his treatments, following the ideas of the Jesuit Maximilian Hell. He soon became convinced that the effect did not depend on the magnetised iron but on a force present in the physician's own body, which he called animal magnetism (from anima, the vital principle, not in the sense of "animal-like").
In Vienna his work aroused suspicion. The case of the young blind pianist Maria Theresia von Paradis, whom Mesmer claimed to have helped and whose family withdrew her from his care, caused a scandal. In 1778 Mesmer left Vienna for Paris.
Paris and the baquet
In Paris he published in 1779 the Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal, with twenty-seven propositions summing up his doctrine:
- there exists a universal, extremely subtle fluid that penetrates all bodies;
- this fluid is the medium of a mutual influence between heavenly bodies, the Earth and living beings;
- illnesses arise from a disturbance of its circulation in the body;
- the physician can restore balance by directing the fluid with his hands or with special instruments.
The most famous instrument was the baquet, a large wooden tub containing water, glass and iron filings, from which metal rods protruded that the patients, seated in a circle and linked by a cord, pressed against their bodies. The sessions took place in carefully furnished rooms, with background music and soft lighting; many participants fell into what were called "crises", with convulsions, tears or laughter.
The craze for mesmerism swept Paris. Its supporters founded the Société de l'Harmonie, which spread the doctrine in many French cities, often combining magnetism with philosophical and Masonic ideas.
The commission of 1784
In 1784 Louis XVI set up a commission of inquiry made up of members of the Academy of Sciences and the Faculty of Medicine. Its members included Benjamin Franklin, Antoine Lavoisier, Jean Sylvain Bailly and Joseph-Ignace Guillotin.
The commissioners carried out ingenious experiments: for example, they led subjects to believe they were being magnetised when they were not, and vice versa. The reactions appeared when the subjects believed they were receiving the treatment, not when they actually received it without knowing. The conclusion was clear: the fluid did not exist and the observed effects were due to imagination, imitation and touch. It is considered one of the first examples of a "blind" experiment in the history of science.
Puységur and somnambulism
That same year a pupil of Mesmer, the Marquis de Puységur, observed a new phenomenon on his estate at Buzancy: instead of convulsive crises, some subjects fell into a calm, sleep-like state in which they spoke, answered and seemed more lucid than usual. He called it magnetic somnambulism.
From here the story divides into two paths:
| Direction | Development |
|---|---|
| Medicine and psychology | In the nineteenth century James Braid reinterpreted these states as "hypnosis", studying them as a psychological phenomenon |
| Esotericism | Magnetisers and somnambulists became central figures of nineteenth-century spiritualism and occultism |
The last years
Mesmer left Paris on the eve of the Revolution and spent his last decades in relative obscurity between Switzerland and Germany. He died at Meersburg, on Lake Constance, in 1815, not far from where he was born.
How to read Mesmer today
Mesmer is not an esoteric master in the strict sense: his theory was meant as physics. But the universal fluid, the idea of a harmony between heaven, Earth and body, and the discovery of altered states of consciousness had an enormous influence on authors such as Éliphas Lévi, who spoke of the "astral light", and on all later occultism. At the same time, the 1784 commission reminds us how important it is to distinguish what one experiences from what one can demonstrate.
In short
- Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) theorised a universal fluid he called animal magnetism.
- In Paris his sessions with the baquet became a fashion and gave rise to the Société de l'Harmonie.
- In 1784 a royal commission including Franklin and Lavoisier attributed the effects to imagination.
- Puységur's magnetic somnambulism gave rise both to hypnosis and to many ideas of nineteenth-century occultism.
