Mesmer, unable to believe Gassner's hypothesis that patients were possessed by demons, believed that the metal crucifix held by the Father was responsible for magnetizing the patient and hence developed his ideas and explanation of the results into a theory of animal magnetism, which he first tested in 1774 by treating a 28 year old female, Franziska Osterlin. Mesmer was said to have watched a number of performances by Gassner in the early 1770's. Father Johann Gassner used hypnotic techniques to perform what he considered to be exorcisms. The modern history of hypnosis, however, begins not with a physician but with a clergyman, a catholic priest who lived at Klosters, Switzerland. Mead had argued that gravity produced «tides» in the atmosphere as well as in water and that the planets could therefore affect the fluidal balance of the human body. The immediate source of Mesmer’s fluid was Richard Mead’s (1673-1754) De imperio solis ac lunae in corpora humana et morbis inde oriundis (London, 1704), a work upon which Mesmer’s thesis drew heavily. This learned man was convinced that every body possesse a magnetic force which connects all human beings. It was a friend of his, the astronomist Maximilian Hell (1720-1792), a court astronomer and Jesuit priest, who used magnets in the treatment of disease, and influenced Mesmer to conduct his first attempts at healing with a steel magnet. While a medical student at the University of Vienna, Mesmer was impressed by the writings of the Renaissance mystic physician Paracelsus (Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim, 1493-1541) and attempted to rationalise a belief in astrological influences on human health as the result of planetary forces through a subtle, invisible fluid. On the contrary, it showed a common tendency to speculate about invisible fluids, which derived both from Cartesianism and from the later queries in Newton’s Opticks as well as from Newton’s remarks about the «most subtle spirit which pervades and lies hid in all gross bodies» in the last paragraph of his Principia.Ī year later he began practice as a member of the faculty of medicine in what was one of Europe’s most advanced medical centers for the Vienna school was then in its prime, owing to the patronage of Maria Theresia and the leadersship of Gerhard van Swieten and Jan Ingenhousz (1730-1799).īy the time he began to propound his theory of animal magnetism or mesmerism, Mesmer had risen through the educational systems of Bavaria and Austria and had advanced to a position of some prominence in Viennese society through his marriage to a wealthy widow, Maria Anna von Posch, on January 16, 1768. At the time of its defense, however, the thesis did not strike the Viennese authorities as a revolutionary new theory of medicine. He received his medical doctorate on with a dissertation on the influence of the planets on the human body: Dissertatio physico-medica de planetarum influxu. In 1759 Mesmer went to Vienna, first studying law, but then changed to medicine under Gerard van Swieten (1700-1772) and Anton de Haen (1704-1776). It is not known when and where he obtained his doctorate in philosophy. He continued his studies from 1753 at the University of Ingolstadt, where he soon abandoned theology. It was a large family, Franz Anton was the third of nine children, Catholic, and not particularly prosperous.Īfter preliminary studies in a local monastic school in Konstanz, Mesmer commenced the study of philosophy at the Jesuit university of Dillingen, Bavaria, changing in 1752 to theology, presumably as a scholarship student preparing for the priesthood. His father was a forester employed by the archbishop of Konstanz his mother the daughter of a locksmith. Franz Anton Mesmer was born and raised in the Swabian village of Iznang auf der Höri, near the Bodensee (Lake of Constance).
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