Mesmerism

Mesmerism was a healing theory that attributed illness and recovery to an invisible fluid called animal magnetism, supposedly transmitted between bodies and redirected through treatment.

Animal magnetism: A supposed invisible fluid that Mesmer believed circulated through living bodies and could be redirected to restore health. This hypothetical fluid was the proposed cause of both illness and recovery.
Franz Mesmer: A German physician who developed and promoted animal magnetism as a method of healing. His theory and treatments gave mesmerism its name and public following.
Charles d'Eslon: A French physician and prominent advocate of animal magnetism who treated patients in Paris. His practice brought Mesmer’s methods into conflict with the Paris medical establishment.
Hypnotism: The study and practice of inducing focused attention and responsiveness to suggestion. Hypnotism developed partly through efforts to explain mesmeric effects without animal magnetism.
Mesmeric crisis: An intense reaction during a mesmeric treatment, sometimes involving convulsions, emotional release, or altered consciousness. Practitioners treated these episodes as signs that obstructed animal magnetism was being released.
Paracelsus: A sixteenth-century physician and alchemist who proposed that celestial influences affected human health. Mesmer drew on earlier ideas linking cosmic forces and bodily health.
John Elliotson: A British physician who promoted mesmerism in the nineteenth century and used it in medical practice. His advocacy brought mesmerism into debates about medicine and professional authority in Britain.
Stage hypnosis: A form of entertainment in which performers use suggestion to elicit apparently involuntary actions from volunteers. Mesmeric demonstrations helped establish public interest in altered states as spectacle.
Baquet: A tub-like apparatus used by Mesmer to treat groups of patients through magnetized objects, rods, and cords. The baquet made Mesmer’s claims of transmitting animal magnetism into a group treatment.
Maximilian Hell: A Jesuit astronomer who used magnets in medical treatments and influenced Mesmer’s early experiments. Mesmer adapted magnet-based treatment after encountering Hell’s medical practice.

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