Early term for hypnosis. Named after German physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815).
Associated with theories of “animal magnetism” that were formulated by Anton Mesmer hypnosis.
Hypnosis based on the ideas of the 18th-century physician Franz Mesmer, sometimes employing magnets and a variety of other equipment.
Originally Mesmer’s theory of animal magnetism, mesmerism now means therapeutics employing hypnotism or hypnotic suggestion.
A medical treatment the precursor of hypnotism exploiting a universal magnetic fluid that 18th-century Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer claimed to have discovered. Attacked by physicians for practicing magic, Mesmer left Austria and set up in Paris where the therapy became a craze for a few years in the early 1780s. Mesmer claimed to be able to produce convulsions in the afflicted parts of his patients by drawing magnetic fluid through them, either with magnets or with several passes of his hands. The technique quickly developed further, including in 1784 the production by the Marquis de Puysegur of a state of artificial sleep somnambulism.
However, Mesmer again attracted hostility from the medical profession, and in 1784 King Louis XVI appointed a commission of inquiry, among its members Ben Franklin and Antoine Lavoisier, to examine and report on mesmerism. The commission could find no trace of the magnetic fluid and concluded that the effects were produced by what the patient imagined had happened.