In the years leading up to the French Revolution, mesmerism started to take on a significantly political dimension. The French Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of Medicine both repeatedly rebuffed or ignored Mesmer and his claims of a miraculous panacea. Mesmer hoped the medical and scientific communities would be swayed by his patients’ glowing testimonials. In the 18th century it was called mesmerism. The combination of soft lighting, soothing music, and Mesmer’s enthralling movements around the room produced what is now recognized as a form of hypnotism. Patients held hands around the magnetized vessel, their physical connection further facilitating the flow-and health-giving power-of animal magnetism. The baquet thus became his self-devised method of mass treatment and his sessions a form of group therapy. Establishing a practice in the luxurious Hôtel de Bouillon, the charismatic Mesmer soon found himself inundated with as many as 20 patients a day. The City of Light seemed willing to embrace Mesmer’s novel style of treatment. Escape to Parisĭiscredited and derided in Vienna, Mesmer left for Paris in January 1778. Mesmer’s attempt at accreditation had failed once more. But upon Maria’s return home, her family reported that she was still blind. Mesmer nonetheless continued the treatment and invited the public to witness her imminent recovery. Mesmer’s apparent success was followed by accusations from a triumvirate of detractors: a prominent physician, who declared Mesmer a charlatan Maria’s father, who feared audiences would lose interest if his daughter were cured and Maria herself, who was irritated by the constant testing and struggled with her musical performances. He claimed to have partially restored Maria’s eyesight, noting that she was “frightened on beholding the human face” and could imitate the expressions painted on small figurines. Blind since childhood, 18-year-old pianist Maria Theresa Paradis had been treated by leading Viennese physicians with blistering plasters, leeches, and electric shocks through her eyes, to no effect.
To redeem his reputation and demonstrate animal magnetism’s effectiveness, Mesmer took on a difficult case. (Read more about the 20th-century fake doctor and his odd method of curing impotence.)
After she failed to respond to them, Ingenhousz publicly denounced Mesmer as a fraud. Ingenhousz realized that Österlin only responded to objects that she believed were magnets or that were connected with Mesmer, but not other magnets he had hidden in the room. Mesmer then attempted to demonstrate the treatment’s success to physician Jan Ingenhousz. The one reply he received was dismissive. In 1775 Mesmer shared his discovery of animal magnetism with physicians and scientific academies, inviting their comments. The magnets in Father Hell’s therapy were superfluous, Mesmer argued, as Mesmer himself, or any object that he magnetized, could restore the flow. Health could be restored through contact with a conductor of animal magnetism. Disease resulted when the fluid’s flow became blocked. Mesmer began to base his medical practice on his belief that an invisible fluid ran through all living things. But after his encounter with Father Hell, Mesmer revised his “animal gravitation” theory to one of “animal magnetism.” This universal force was not external gravitation but rather an internal force. Mesmer asserted in his doctoral dissertation that the gravitational force of the planets, sun, and moon also affected the human body. Mesmer applied this same magnetic therapy to Österlin and pronounced her cured. Finding traditional tactics unsuccessful, Mesmer followed the suggestion of Jesuit priest and astronomer Maximilian Hell, who attached magnets to his patients to treat disease. For two years, he had applied the standard medical remedies of the 18th century, including blistering and bleeding, to a 28-year-old patient, Franziska Österlin, whose maladies ranged from earaches to melancholy. Mesmer’s unorthodox treatment style began in late 1774.
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