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• Born: 23 May 1734
• Birthplace: Near Lake Constance, Germany
• Died: 15 March 1815
• Best Known As: 18th century healer and showman

Franz Anton Mesmer was the Austrian physician after whom mesmerism was named, a famously flamboyant believer in the healing powers of an unknown physical property he dubbed "animal magnetism." He enjoyed a popular following and claimed to be able to "channel" magnetic powers in order to cure a variety of ailments, which he did for public display. Pressured by the medical establishment to leave Vienna, he found favor in Paris at the end of the 1770s. Eventually his practices came under scrutiny and a panel of scientists (including Ben Franklin) concluded in 1784 that there was no scientific basis for his theories. Discredited, he left France in 1791 and eventually settled in Switzerland, where he died in 1815. By no means completely dismissed, his theories brought on successors who claimed they could tap an unseen magnetic force within the body, and Mesmer is often credited with influencing the development of hypnotism as psychotherapy.

(1734–1815)

Franz Mesmer was born on May 23, 1734, in the village of Itznang, Switzerland. At age 15 he entered the Jesuit College at Dillingen in Bavaria, and from there he went in 1752 to the University of Ingolstadt, where he studied philosophy, theology, music, and mathematics. Eventually he decided on a medical career. In 1759 he entered the University of Vienna, receiving a medical degree in 1766.

Mesmer settled in Vienna and began to develop his concept of an invisible fluid in the body that affected health. At first he used magnets to manipulate this fluid but gradually came to believe these were unnecessary; that, in fact, anything he touched became magnetized and that a health-giving fluid emanated from his own body. Mesmer believed a rapport with his patients was essential for cure and achieved it with diverse trappings. His treatment rooms were heavily draped, music was played, and Mesmer appeared in long violet robes.

Mesmer's methods were frowned upon by the medical establishment in Vienna, so in 1778 he moved to Paris, hoping for a better reception for his ideas. In France he achieved overwhelming popularity except among the physicians. On the basis of medical opinion, repeated efforts were made by the French government to discredit Mesmer. Mesmer retired to Switzerland at the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789, where he spent the remaining years of his life.

Critics focused attention of Mesmer's methods and insisted that cures existed only in the patient's mind. The nineteenth-century studies of Mesmer's work by James Braid and others in England demonstrated that the important aspect of Mesmer's treatment was the patient's reaction. Braid introduced the term "hypnotism" and insisted that hypnotic phenomena were essentially physiological and not associated with a fluid. Still later studies in France by A. A. Liebeault and Hippolyte Bernheim attributed hypnotic phenomena to psychological forces, particularly suggestion. While undergoing this scientific transformation in the nineteenth century, mesmerism in other quarters became more closely associated with occultism, spiritualism, and faith healing.

The German physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) developed a healing technique called mesmerism that is the historical antecedent of hypnosis.

Franz Mesmer was born on May 23, 1734, in the village of Itznang, Switzerland. At age 15 he entered the Jesuit College at Dillingen in Bavaria, and from there he went in 1752 to the University of Ingolstadt, where he studied philosophy, theology, music, and mathematics. Eventually he decided on a medical career. In 1759 he entered the University of Vienna, receiving a medical degree in 1766.

Mesmer then settled in Vienna and began to develop his concept of an invisible fluid in the body that affected health. At first he used magnets to manipulate this fluid but gradually came to believe these were unnecessary, that, in fact, anything he touched became magnetized and that a health-giving fluid emanated from his own body. Mesmer believed a rapport with his patients was essential for cure and achieved it with diverse trappings. His treatment rooms were heavily draped, music was played, and Mesmer appeared in long, violet robes.

Mesmer's methods were frowned upon by the medical establishment in Vienna, so in 1778 he moved to Paris, hoping for a better reception for his ideas. In France he achieved overwhelming popularity, except among physicians. On the basis of medical opinion, repeated efforts were made by the French government to discredit Mesmer. At a time of political turmoil and revolution, such efforts were viewed as attempts to prevent the majority's enjoyment of health, and the popularity of mesmerism continued unabated. However, under continued pressure Mesmer retired to Switzerland at the beginning of the French Revolution, where he spent the remaining years of his life.

Critics focused attention of Mesmer's methods and insisted that cures existed only in the patient's mind. The 19th-century studies of Mesmer's work by James Braid and others in England demonstrated that the important aspect of Mesmer's treatment was the patient's reaction. Braid introduced the term "hypnotism" and insisted that hypnotic phenomena were essentially physiological and not associated with a fluid. Still later studies in France by A. A. Liebeault and Hippolyte Bernheim attributed hypnotic phenomena to psychological forces, particularly suggestion. While undergoing this scientific transformation in the 19th century, mesmerism, in other quarters, became more closely associated with occultism, spiritualism, and faith healing, providing in the last instance the basis for Christian Science.

Further Reading

A standard history of mesmerism with biographical details is Margaret Goldsmith, Franz Anton Mesmer: A History of Mesmerism (1934). A definitive study of mesmerism and its relation to faith healing and the rise of Christian Science is Frank Podmore, Mesmerism and Christian Science (1909; repr. as From Mesmer to Christian Science: A Short History of Mental Healing, 1964). Also useful is Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers (trans. 1932).

Additional Sources

Buranelli, Vincent, The wizard from Vienna, London: Owen, 1976.

Wyckoff, James, Franz Anton Mesmer: between God and Devil, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975.

For more information on Franz Anton Mesmer, visit Britannica.com.

Mesmer, Franz Anton (Iznang, 1734-1815, Meersburg), qualified at Vienna University as a physician. There is some doubt as to whether his first baptismal name was Franz or Friedrich. Mesmer, believing that all physical phenomena are interconnected, evolved the theory that living creatures influence each other by an omnipresent tenuous substance which he termed ‘animal magnetism’ (‘tierischer Magnetismus’). He was principally active in Paris, where he arrived in 1778, attracting great attention by the cures he effected and by the scene-setting in which they took place (semi-darkness, soft music, mysterious gestures, etc.).

Mesmer was attacked by the medical faculties as a charlatan, but he appears not to have been a conscious impostor. ‘Animal magnetism’ came to be known as Mesmerism, and by it Mesmer frequently induced hypnotic states in his patients. Mesmerism is employed as a literary motif by some Romantic writers (see Romantik).

(frē'drĭkh än'tôn mĕs'mər) , or Franz Anton Mesmer (fränts) , 1734–1815, German physician. He studied in Vienna. His interest in “animal magnetism” developed into a system of treatment through hypnotism that was called mesmerism. It seems now that Mesmer was actually treating psychosomatic illness, but an unsympathetic medical and scientific community caused him to be expelled first from Vienna, and in 1778 from Paris. He retired to his native Austria and to obscurity.

Bibliography

See his memoir (1799, tr. 1957); biography by D. M. Walmsley (1967).

Mesmer, Franz Anton (1734–1815), German physician. Mesmer was born in the village of Iznang in Swabia (a region in southwest Germany) to Catholic parents. His father worked for the archbishop of Constance and his mother was a locksmith's daughter. As a youth Mesmer attended a local monastic school. He later studied at the Jesuit University of Dillengen in Bavaria and the University of Ingolstadt before entering the University of Vienna in 1759. He was awarded the M.D. degree in 1766, with a doctoral thesis entitled Dissertatio Physico-medica de Planetarium Influxu (Physical-medical dissertation on the influence of the planets). Influenced by the English physician Richard Mead (1673–1754), Mesmer asserted the existence of "animal magnetism," a subtle fluid that permeated the cosmos and whose balance or imbalance in the human body was a primary determinant of health or disease. Using magnets and other means, he thought he could manipulate the flow of animal magnetism and relieve the "obstructions" he believed responsible for diverse ills.

In 1768 Mesmer married a wealthy widow, Maria Anna von Posch, whose financial support enabled him to establish a successful medical practice in Vienna. A music lover, he entertained leading musicians, including Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) and Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809). (Mozart included mesmerist elements in his opera Così fan tutte.) Named a member of the Academy of Sciences in Munich in 1775, he aroused the antipathy of his fellow physicians in Vienna with his elaborately staged and publicized cures.

In 1778 Mesmer left Vienna for Paris, where his commanding personality and unorthodox therapeutic practices earned him notoriety. His therapy came to focus on assembling patients around a tub filled with magnetic fluid that was transmitted to their bodies through movable iron rods and their own interlaced thumbs and fingers. Dressed in a lilac robe or similar extravagant attire, Mesmer himself facilitated the flow of fluid with motions of his eyes and hands or by playing a glass harmonica, an instrument said to be of his invention. Cures were complete when a "crisis," often accompanied by convulsions, restored the harmony of the body with cosmic influences. With these techniques he gained special acclaim for curing the nervous disorder known as the "vapors."

Although lionized by the public, Mesmer ran afoul of medical and scientific authority. In 1784 a royal commission of eminent scientists judged his claim to have discovered a new physical fluid unfounded. He then left France and traveled widely before settling in Switzerland and withdrawing from public life. He died in Meersburg, Swabia, in 1815.

To spread Mesmer's ideas and practices, his disciples founded the Society of Universal Harmony in Paris with affiliates throughout the country. Especially notable were the activities of a wealthy aristocrat, A. M. J. de Chastenet de Puységur, who developed the healing technique known as "magnetic sleep" or "mesmeric somnambulism," later termed "hypnosis." Animal magnetism and somnambulism were the subjects of a voluminous literature well into the nineteenth century.

Sometimes dismissed as a charlatan, Mesmer has also been credited with anticipating the insights of depth psychology and exerting long-term influence on the development of dynamic psychiatry.

Bibliography

Darnton, Robert. Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France. Cambridge, Mass., 1968. Influential study that portrays Mesmer as a charlatan and enemy of Enlightenment science.

Ellenberger, Henri. The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. New York, 1970. Sympathetic portrait of Mesmer as a precursor of Sigmund Freud.

Walmsley, D. M. Anton Mesmer. London, 1967. A standard biography.

—ELIZABETH A. WILLIAMS

(1733-1815)

Famous Austrian doctor and originator of the technique that bore his name, Mesmerism, forerunner of hypnotism. He was born at Weil, near Constance, May 23, 1734. In 1766 he took a degree in medicine at Vienna, the subject of his inaugural thesis being De planetarum Influxu (De l'influence des Planettes sur le corps humain). Mesmer identified the influence of the planets with magnetism and developed the idea that stroking diseased bodies with magnets would be curative. On seeing the remarkable cures of J. J. Gassner in Switzerland, he concluded that magnetic force must also reside in the human body, and thereupon Mesmer dispensed with magnets.

In 1778 he went to Paris where he was very favorably received—by the public, that is; the medical authorities there, as elsewhere, refused to countenance him. His curative technique was to seat his patients around a large circular vat, or baquet, in which various substances were mixed. Each patient held one end of an iron rod, the other end of which was in the baquet. In due time the crisis ensued. Violent convulsions, cries, laughter, and various physical symptoms followed, these being in turn superseded by lethargy. Many claimed to have been healed by this method.

In 1784 the government appointed a commission of members of the Faculty of Medicine, the Societé Royale de Médecine, and the Academy of Sciences, the commissioners from the latter body including Benjamin Franklin, astronomer Jean Syl-vain Bailly, and chemist Antoine Lavoisier. The committee reported that there was no such thing as animal magnetism, and referred the facts of the crisis to the imagination of the patient. This had the effect of quenching public interest in mesmerism, as animal magnetism was called at the time. Mesmer's ideas were kept alive by a few of his students and reemerged in force during the next century. Mesmer lived quietly for the rest of his life and died at Meersburg, Switzerland, March 5, 1815.

Sources:

Eden, Jerome, trans. Memoir of F. A. Mesmer, Doctor of Medicine, on His Discoveries, 1799. Mount Vernon, N.Y.: Eden Press, 1957.

Goldsmith, Margaret L. Franz Anton Mesmer: The History of an Idea. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1934. Reprint, London: Arthur Barker, 1934.

Wyckoff, James. Franz Anton Mesmer. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975.

Wydenbruck, Nora. Doctor Mesmer. London: John Westhouse, 1947.

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