The only factor that seemed to have an impact was what the patients believed. Or there would be no outcome despite ample applications of the prescribed manoeuvres directed toward the patient. Patients were just as likely to improve from water that had not been “magnetized”. No magnetismĪ variety of blind tests – examinations where patients don’t know what treatment they are receiving – demonstrated that the effect of Mesmer’s treatment in no way could be linked to magnetism. In other words, they did a scientific blind test. Their inquiry turned out to make medical history.įranklin and his fellow investigators decided that the best way to test whether animal magnetism existed, was by blindfolding the patients, so they could no longer see the hands of those who were treating them. Its leader was none other than Benjamin Franklin, the prodigious inventor, founding father and USA’s Ambassador to France at the time. The group consisted of some of the most renowned scientists of the day. Louis got a commission to look into the matter. Whether out of the spirit of the Enlightenment, or suspicion that some of Mesmer’s cult of followers could have been revolutionaries, or both, the monarch queried: Does animal magnetism really exist? In Versailles, King Louis XVI got word of the astounding results achieved by Mesmer. They would moan, tremble and faint.Īll while the assistant played supernatural resonating music on a glass harp. A word cropped up for the phenomenon – they were mesmerized. The patients – often female, upper bourgeois or aristocratic – exhibited strong reactions. Mesmer strolled from one patient to the next, passing his hands along their bodies, guiding the animal magnetism to the right places. Now patients could sit around the barrel, each in contact with the magnetism via their own metal rod. Mesmer now designed a special barrel for soaking metal rods in “magnetized” water.
He could wave his hands over water and magnetize it.
The overbooked German had to hire assistants and soon he made another timely discovery: (Wellcome Collection, made available by Wikimedia Commons.) Mesmerized
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