Franz Anton Mesmer was born in Iznang, Swabia, on May 23, 1734. At the age nine he entered a monastery school in his town Iznang. Initially he studied divinity and later was interested in medical practice. He received a scholarship at 15 and got transferred to the University of Ingolstadt, three years later. Mesmer was very fond of reading the original writings of Rene Descartes and Wolf. After careful study of Descartes and Wolf, Mesmer took to reading Paracelsus and his work. He also gave examinations on the thoughts of Paracelsus and his work, and won the degree of philosophy. Earlier, he studied law from the University of Vienna and gained a doctorate in law.
His love for the Paracelsus’s writings led him to take up medicine. Due to his poor condition, he completed his examinations in medicine at the age of 32. He won the degree of doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1766. He wrote a Paracelsist thesis entitled De Planetarium Influxu. Mesmer believed that the influence of the planets upon human body was certain. He suggested that the planets gave off emanations that flowed into and through all life by "Intensification and Remission." Mesmer’s work on Animal Magnetism was controversial and visionary, although his superior understanding of medical practice gained him his medical degree in 1766.
Love for Music
During his pleasant period in life, Mesmer frequently entertained and played music with the great Wolfgang Amadeus Leopold Mozart and Hayden. When Mozart offered his first opera for music performance at the age of 12, the director of the Imperial Opera refused to perform it on the grounds of his early age. Mesmer immediately arranged for the work to be performed in his own theatre. With respect and also in gratitude for the friendship with Mesmer, Mozart paid a permanent musical compliment to Mesmer in Cosi Fan Tutti.
Marriage
In 1768, Mesmer married a wealthy widow ten-years his senior. Mesmer constructed a palatial mansion on the Landstrasse, a Vienna neighborhood known for its Rosisorucian residents. The property included charming recoco gardens and a little theatre.
Visited by Comte de Saint Germain
In 1776, Mesmer was visited by the Comte de Saint Germain. The meeting was kept in strictest confidence by both men, though it appears that they discussed the highest aspects of magnetism and the need to sever completely animal magnetism from the magnet.
A Case of Miss Paradis :
In 1776, due to animal magnetism treatment applied to several patients, Mesmer’s house was now a convalescent hospital. By his treatment through the magnet therapy, there were so many poor people coming for treatment that he had to resort to methods, which could help many at once.
Herr Von Paradis, secretary to the Emperor and Empress of Austria, had daughter, Marie Therese, who had become blind inexplicably at the age of three. She was awarded a pension by the Empress and was known in the court also.
After years of fruitless attempt to alleviate her condition, the daughter Miss Marie-Therese (Miss Paradis) was given over to Mesmer’s cure. The stupendous effort to restore her sight took time and suffered several setbacks, but alternately her sight fully returned. Naturally, Herr Von Paradis published a complete description of Mesmer’s treatment and of the cure in newspapers. Marie also publicly expressed her gratitude to Mesmer. Some executives and officers from the faculty of medicine also witnessed the results of Mesmer’s treatment. Even Baron Von Stoerck apologized for having previously ignored Mesmer’s work on Animal Magnetism.
But, later the case of Miss Paradis took a new turn as several outraged physicians declared that the cure was fraudulent and an imposture because Miss Paradis could not recognize the name, objects she allegedly saw for the first time in her life.
Public opinion or talks and court intrigues argued that, since Miss Paradis could see, her pension be withdrawn. Moreover, Miss Paradis’ father was a part of a plot to deceive the medical profession.
Again Miss Paradis was taken out of Mesmer’s cure. Later, as a matter of great surprise Miss Paradis protested her forcible removal of her blindness and convulsions returned. Afterwards, Herr Von Paradis declared the cure a fraud and there was a demand against Mesmer for malpractice. His cure of Maria Theresa Paradis occurred when he was ill, but the repercussions of this affair made it necessary for him to move from Vienna to Paris, which was to be the scene of his greatest fame.
In other words, Mesmer was forced to leave Vienna for Paris in 1778, where his popularity swelled, but so did controversy.
Welcome by Paris faculty :
Mesmer arrived in February 1778 where he was treated kindly by the Paris faculty of medicine and given the patronage of Marie Antoinette. To prove his system and method of treatment, he accepted the most wretched patient suffering mental disorder, the faculty and hospitals could provide.
Supported by Dr. d’Eslon :
Mesmer, now was being visited by both French and Austrian nobility, and also supported by Dr. d’Eslon, physician to the Comte d’Artois, the Princess de Lemballe and Prince de Cond’e, the Due de Bourbon and Lafayette, Mesmer in their company found the security and interest in Paris, which Vienna had refused to give. Mesmer converted Hotel Bouillon into a hospital and treated patients without charge. Here, he established a lucrative practice in magnetic healing and completed his book on Mémoire sur la de’couverte du magnetisme animal. He was influenced by physical theories of gravitational force (Newton) and also by the work of Benjamin Franklin and others on electricity. Undoubtedly, he developed what was for the period a reasonable explanation of magnetic cure.
Mesmer’s tragedy
The final humiliation of Mesmer occurred in 1784, when King Louis XVI of France formed a commission to investigate the phenomenon. The faculty of medicine of the Academie des sciences appointed a committee of five, led by the American ambassador to France, Benjamin Franklin, Baille the astronomer, Lavoisier the chemist and Jussieu the botanist. Despite pressure from the academies of France, their commitment to observation in science prevented them from denying the efficacy of Mesmer’s cures. But their crude empirical and Aristotelian conceptions of man made it quite impossible for them to believe in a principal – animal magnetism which could not be perceived directly as well as physically. The committee gave their report on August 11, 1784. They dismissed the cures Mesmer effected as the consequences of unknown physiological causes. The committee affirmed the existence of remarkable cures, but held that since animal magnetism is not directly observable, it cannot exist, and therefore the cures must be due to the imagination of the patients themselves. Thus, on the basis of a principle which is not acceptable in science.
Mesmer was denounced as an impostor or charlatan. Mesmer found himself in the midst of social and political upheaval. In 1791, the French Revolution being there, was much ado in medical circles, and he took the city by storm. All these circumstances forced Mesmer to leave, then penniless, France.
Memoire of F.A.Mesmer :
In 1799, a thin volume appeared on Memoire of F.A.Mesmer. In this small volume Mesmer once again explained the fundamentals of his theory. Now he plunged to the very core of the magnetic operation.
Mesmer wrote in this volume :
"We possess an interior sense which is in connection with the whole of the Universe and which might be considered as an extension of sight. We possess the faculty of sensing in the Universal harmony the connection between events and beings with our own conservation. The communication of the will rests upon a kind of convention between two wills, which might be called being in rapport."
During 1812, the King of Prussia and German Academy offered him money and honor but Mesmer refused, because he wanted to devote his time to practice his method.
Mesmer’s Last Days :
During his last years of life he settled back near lake Constance where he was born. Here, Mesmer led a quiet and contented life, doing a little medical practice, playing his glass harmonica, and remaining detached from the outside world until his death on March 15, 1815, at the age of 85. For Mesmer, one thing was certain that he never changed his views on Animal Magnetism but did return to the Catholic Church, which he had avoided for most of his life.
Franz Anton Mesmer was an Austrian physician, who as a showman traveled Europe extensively and elicited an interest among the educated in his various doctrines, especially Animal Magnetism.
Mesmer’s methods were so controversial that King Louis XVI of France formed a commission to investigate them. The commission headed by none other than Benjamin Franklin concluded that animal magnetism was not involved as claimed by Mesmer, thus proving that all matter was result of psychological processes only.
The scientific development of hypnotism can be traced to the efforts of Dr Mesmer. His theories may have been discarded but hypnotism has to been accepted today as a remedy to treat certain disorders. Sadly, the true significance of Mesmerism, and its effectiveness was realized only about a century after his death.
May 23, 1734 Mesmer was born in Iznang, Swabia, near Lake Constance, Austria.
1743 He was admitted to a monastery school at the age of nine.
1766 He gained a medical degree.
1768 He married a widow 10 years his senior.
1776 He was visited by the Compte de Saint Germain. His first writings in his doctoral thesis.
1778 He left Austria and settled in Paris.
1779 He published A History of Discovery of Animal Magnetism.
1780 He was offered pension by the French Government.
1782 He joined Saint Martin, Saint Germain and Cagliostro at the Wilhelmsbad Masonic convention.
1784 King Louis XVI appointed a commission to investigate Mesmer’s methods.
1799 His last dissertation on his discoveries.
1812 The King of Prussia and the German Academy offered him money and Honors, but he refused.
1815 He died at the age of 85 on March 5, at Meersburg, Swabia.
ON ANIMAL MAGNETISM
• All bodies are, like the magnet, capable of communicating this magnetic principle, this fluid penetrates everything and can be stored up and concentrated, like the electric fluid, it acts at a distance, animal bodies are divided into two classes, one being susceptible to this magnetism and the other to an opposite quality which suppresses its action.
• It can be used with medicines, though it presupposes a new theory of disease. When mastered, however, it enables the physician to perfect his art so that he may treat without fear of doing harm and alleviate the sufferings of humanity.
ON NATURE
• Experience alone will scatter the clouds and shed light on his important truth, that nature affords a universal means of healing and preserving men.
• Nature has provided everything for the existence of the individual, including the provision of a means of preservation of life. He attributes this action of preservation to the General Agent, whose existence I recognize : it alone can re-establish harmony in the natural state.
ON INTENTION AND REMISSION
• this action, determining what I call the alternating ‘intention’ and ‘remission’ of characteristics of organic matter, animates and enlivens all that exists.
ON HUMORS
• Our humors are agitated in diverse ways in their duets, being perturbed, raised and carried far more conspicuously towards the head.
ON TRUTH
• Truth is nothing but a path traced between errors.
