But the power of mere suggestion - of imagination, as Franklin phrased it - is a more effective treatment than many modern skeptics might expect, causing real, measurable changes in the body and brain. No, there is not magnetic fluid coursing through our bodies. More than 200 years later, research in neuroscience is confirming at least parts of Mesmer’s outlandish theory.
“The practice … is the art of increasing the imagination by degrees.” “Not a shred of evidence exists for any fluid,” Franklin wrote. King Louis XVI pulled together a team of the world’s top scientists, including Benjamin Franklin, who tested mesmerism and found its capacity to “cure” was, essentially, a placebo effect. To get that fluid flowing, as science journalist Jo Marchant describes in her recent book, Cure, Mesmer “simply waved his hands to direct it through his patients’ bodies” - the origin of those melodramatic hand motions that stage hypnotists use today.”Īfter developing a substantial following - “mesmerism” became “the height of fashion” in late 1780s Paris, writes Marchant - Mesmer became the subject of what was essentially the world’s first clinical trial. Illness arises when this fluid becomes blocked, and can be cured if it can be coaxed to flow again, or so Mesmer’s thinking went. Mesmer developed a general theory of disease he called “animal magnetism,” which held that every living thing carries within it an internal magnetic force, in liquid form. The man typically credited with creating hypnosis, albeit in a rather primitive form, is Franz Mesmer, a doctor in 18th-century Vienna. Doctor Marie Elisabeth Faymonville performing hypnosis as an alternative to traditional anesthesiology.Ĭonsidering its origin story, it’s not so surprising that hypnosis and serious medical science have often seemed at odds.
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