Modernity’s Spell

Mesmerism is the brainchild of Franz Mesmer, a German doctor born in 1734 who practiced medicine in Vienna and Paris, and who believed in the influence of magnetic fluids and astronomical movements on human physiology. Precisely because the debunking had attributed the marvelous effects of mesmerism to unruly imagination, the second crop of mesmerists proposes the practice as a way to harness and manage human belief in the supernatural and the outlandish. Either the suggestibility of patients to performed technique produced the effects, or their pre-existing beliefs in magical thrall made them receptive to the hypnosis or clairvoyance that magnetic fluid could really induce.

Source: www.thenewatlantis.com