Although Frederic-Antoine Mesmer made an astonishing discovery which,
having been tested and employed in therapeutics for a century, is
accepted as a contribution to science, he is included in the list of
impostors because, however sound his theory was, he used it in the
manner or surrounded with the atmosphere of imposture. Indeed the
implement which he used in his practice, and which made him famous in
fashionable and idle society, was set forth as having magic properties.
He belonged to the same period as Cagliostro, having been born but nine
years before him, in 1734, in Itzmang, Suabia; but the impostor pure
and simple easily picked up the difference by beginning his life-work
earlier and following it quicker with regard to results. Mesmer was not
in any sense a precocious person. He was thirty-two years of age when
he took his degree of Doctor of Medicine at Vienna in 1765. However
he had already chosen his subject, animal magnetism as allied with
medical therapeutics. His early script under the title _De planetarum
influxi_ is looked on as a legal reminiscence of judicial astronomy. He
left Vienna because, he said, of a cabal against him, and travelled
in Europe, particularly in Switzerland, before he went to Paris to
seek his fortune. This was in 1778, when he was some forty-four years
of age; his reputation, which had been growing all the time, preceded
him. He was then a man of fine appearance, tall and important-looking
and conveying a sense of calm power. He produced much sensation and was
at once credited--not without his own will or intention--with magic
power. He posed as a benefactor of humanity; a position which was at
once conceded to him, partly owing to the fact that an extraordinary
atmosphere of calm seemed to surround him, which with his natural
air of assurance founded on self-belief, was able to convey to his
patients a sense of hope which was of course very helpful in cases of
nervous failure and depression. He settled in the Hotel Bouret near the
Place Vendôme and so in the heart of Paris; and at once undertook the
treatment of patients hitherto deemed incurable. Fashion took up the
new medical “craze” or “sensation,” and he at once became the vogue.
It was at this time of his life that Mesmer came to the parting of
the ways between earnest science and charlatanism. So far as we know
he still remained earnest in his scientific belief--as indeed he was
till the end of his days. Inasmuch as fashion requires some concrete
expression of its fancies, Mesmer soon used the picturesque side of
his brain for the service of fashionable success. So he invented an
appliance which soon became the talk of the town. This was the famous
_baquet magique_ or magic tub, a sort of covered bath, round which his
patients were arranged in tiers. To the bath were attached a number
of tubes, each of which was held by a patient, who could touch with
the end of it any part of his or her body at will. After a while the
patients began to get excited, and many of them went into convulsions.
Amongst them walked Mesmer, clad in an imposing dress suggestive of
mystery and carrying a long wand of alleged magic power; often calming
those who had already reached the stage of being actually convulsed.
His usual method of producing something of the same effect at private
séances, was by holding the hand of the patient, touching the forehead
and making “passes” with the open hand with fingers spread out, and by
crossing and uncrossing his arms with great rapidity.
A well-attended séance must have been a curious and not altogether
pleasant experience even to a wholesome spectator in full possession
of his natural faculties. The whole surroundings of the place
together with the previously cultured belief; the dusk and mystery;
the “mysterious sympathy of numbers”--as Dean Farrar called it; the
spasmodic snapping of the cords of tensity which took away all traces
of reserve or reticence from the men and women present; the vague
terror of the unknown, that mysterious apprehension which is so potent
with the nerves of weak or imaginative people; and, it may be, the
slipping of the dogs of conscience--all these combined to wreck the
moral and mental stability of those present, most of whom it must be
remembered were actually ill, or imagined themselves to be so, which
came practically to the same thing. The psychical emotion was all very
well in the world of pleasure; but these creatures became physically
sick through nervous strain. As described by the historian, they
expectorated freely a viscous fluid, and their sickness passed into
convulsions more or less violent; the women naturally succumbing more
readily and more quickly than the men. This absolute collapse--half
epileptic, half hysterical--lasted varying periods according to the
influence exercised by the presence of the calm, self-reliant operator.
We of a later age, when electric force has been satisfactorily
harnessed and when magnetism as a separate power is better understood,
may find it hard to understand that the most advanced and daring
scientists of the time--to whom Frederic-Antoine Mesmer was at least
allied--were satisfied that magnetism and electricity were variants
of the same mysterious force or power. It was on this theory that he
seems to have worked his main idea to practical effect. The base of his
system was animal magnetism, which could be superinduced or aided by
mechanical appliances. He did not deceive himself into believing that
he had invented the idea but was quite willing to make the utmost use
he could of the discoveries and inventions of others. So far as we can
gather his intentions from his acts, the main object in his scientific
work was to simplify the processes of turning emotion into effect.
Magnetism had already been largely studied, and means were being
constantly sought for increasing its efficacy. Father Hehl had brought
to a point of accepted perfection the manufacture of metal plates
used in magnetic development, and these Mesmer used, with the result
that a violent controversy took place between them. So far as we can
follow after the lapse of time, Mesmer was consistent in his theories
and their application. He held that the principle was one of planetary
influence on the nervous system, and its manifestation was by a process
of alternate intension and remission. It is possible that Mesmer--who
held that the heavenly bodies floated in a limitless magnetic fluid and
that he could make all substances, even such things as bread or dogs
magnetic--had in his mind the wisdom of following the same theory in
matters of lesser significance, though of more individual import, than
those of astronomy and its correlated sciences. If so he was wise in
his generation, for later electricians have found that the system of
alternating currents especially at high tension, is of vast practical
importance. That he was practical in his use of the ideas of others
is shown by the fact that he preferred the metallic plates of Father
Hehl to his own passes, even though the report of the Royal Commission
ruined him--at any rate checked his success, by stating that similar
effects to those attending his passes could be produced by other
means, and that such passes had no effect unless through the patient’s
knowledge; in fact that it was all the work of imagination. Mesmer had
been asked to appear before the Commission of the Faculty of Medicine
appointed in 1784 to investigate and report, but he kept away. It would
not have injured any man to have appeared before such a commission if
his cause had been a good one. There were two such commissions. The
first was of the leading physicians of Paris, and included such men
as Benjamin Franklin, Lavoisier, the great chemist, and Bailly, the
historian of astronomy.
It was distinctly to his disadvantage that Mesmer always kept at a
distance the whole corps of savants such as the Faculty of Medicine
and the Academy of Sciences--for they would no doubt have accepted
his views, visionary though they were, if he could have shown any
scientific base for them. True medical science has always been
suspicious of, and cautious regarding, empiricism. More than once he
stood in his own light in this matter--whether through obstinacy or
doubt of his own theory does not matter. For instance, in Vienna,
when his very existence as a scientist was at stake in the matter of
the effects of his treatment of Mademoiselle Paradis, he introduced a
humiliating clause in his challenge to the Faculty which caused them
to refuse to accept it. Mademoiselle Paradis was blind and subject
to convulsions. After treating her by his own method Mesmer said she
was cured. An oculist said, after testing, that she was as blind as
ever, and her family said that she was still subject to convulsions.
But Mesmer persisted that she was cured, that there was a conspiracy
against him, and that Mademoiselle Paradis had feigned. He challenged
the Faculty of Medicine on the subject of his discovery. Twenty-four
patients were to be selected by the Faculty; of these twelve were to be
treated by Mesmerism and the other half by the means ordinarily in use.
The condition he imposed was that the witnesses were _not_ to be of the
Faculty.
Again, when in answer to a request on his part that the French
Government for the good of the community should subsidise him, a
proposal was made to him, he did not receive it favourably. The request
he made to Marie Antoinette was that he should have an estate and
château and a handsome income, so that he might go on experimenting; he
put the broad figures at four hundred or five hundred thousand francs.
The Government suggestion was that he should have a pension of twenty
thousand francs and the Cross of Saint Michael (Knighthood) if he would
communicate for public use, to a board of physicians nominated by the
King, such discoveries as he might make. After his refusal of the
Government proposition Mesmer went to Spa, taking with him a number
of his patients, and there opened a magnetic establishment where he
renewed his Paris success. He asked Parliament to hold an impartial
examination into the theory and working of Animal Magnetism. Foiled in
his scheme of state purchase on his own terms, he sold his secret to a
group of societies, the members of which were to pay him a subscription
of a hundred louis _per capita_. By this means he realised some 340,000
livres--representing to-day over a million. The associated body was
composed of twenty-four societies called “societés de l’harmonie”--a
sort of Freemasonry, under a Grand Master and Chiefs of the Order. A
member had to be at the time of admission twenty-five years of age, of
honest state and good name, not to smoke tobacco, and to pay an annual
subscription of at least sixty francs. There were three grades in the
Order: Initiated Associates, Corresponding Associates and Uninitiated.
Amongst those belonging to the Society were such men as Lafayette,
d’Espremisnil, and Berthollet the great chemist. Berthollet had,
however, peculiar privileges, amongst which was the right of criticism.
On one occasion he had a “row” with Mesmer about his charlatanism.
At length the French public, wearied with his trickeries and angry with
his cupidity, openly expressed their dissatisfaction. Whereupon he left
France, taking with him a fortune of three hundred and forty thousand
francs. He went to England and thence to Germany. Finally he settled
down in Mersbourg in his native country, Suabia, where he died in 1815,
at the age of eighty-one.