Mesmerism

mez'mer-ism, the theory that one person by means of animal magnetism can act upon the nervous system and will of another so as to control his sensibilities and to some extent his actions. The process was brought first to public attention by a German physician named Mesmer. He was a native of Constance, and was educated for medicine. He experimented with magnets in the curing of disease, and came to believe that he and others possessed an occult power or force which he called animal magnetism. In 1778 he went to Paris and created quite a stir. The French academy appointed a committee of which our Franklin was a member, to investigate the claims of Mesmer. This committee reported that Mesmer undoubtedly possessed a peculiar power of getting people under his influence, and of causing them to sink into apparent slumber, in which condition they followed his suggestions and did many acts of which they were more or less unconscious. Franklin considered the cause, however, to be entirely physiological. The word hypnotism has, at present, almost entirely superseded that of mesmerism. While the two are theoretically different, the practical results of hypotism and mesmerism are the same. See Hypnotism