wands. Really, all he needed was a pointy hat, and voilà! A wizard!
In 1774, Mesmer made what he called an “artificial tide” in a diseased woman, by making her swallow a preparation containing iron and then attaching magnets to strategic spots on her body. The patient said she felt streams of a mysterious fluid running through her body, and was relieved of her symptoms for several hours.
At no point in his studies did Mesmer believe that the magnets were acting on their own to effect cures. For Paracelsus and the Hermeticists, the healing was due to the presence of God acting through the healer; the magnets were only a tool. Mesmer, however, gave himself a more important role. Not only God, but Mesmer himself had some influence on the matter at hand, and no small one at that. Mesmer realized early on that the practitioner himself was key to the healing effects on the patient, and he was very vocal about this:
That man can act upon man at any time, and almost at will, by striking his imagination; that the simplest gestures and signs can have the most powerful effects; and that the action of man upon the imagination may be reduced to an art, and conducted with method, upon subjects who have faith.9
For Mesmer, it was the mind of the healer that did the work, not specifically the fluid. The fluid was the medium that carried thoughts through time and space from one person to the other. The practitioner made himself like a magnet, attracting a healing influence and passing it on to the patient.
The concept that we are magnets and can become attractors is entirely Hermetic, and it can be traced directly from Paracelsus to Ancient Egyptian beliefs:
Soul, then, is an eternal intellectual essence, having for purpose the reason of itself; and when it thinks with it, it doth attract unto itself the harmonies intention.10
It was due to this concept, that thoughts attract things in the world, that the New Thought movement developed the Law of Attraction and Prosperity Consciousness. The authors who most thoroughly developed the Law of Attraction within the New Thought philosophy, William Walker Atkinson11 and Quimby, drew upon the Hermetic materials for their inspiration.
We have the power to choose; it is within our power to choose the better, and in like way to choose the worse, according to our will. And if our choice clings to evil things it doth consort with the corporeal nature; and for this cause fate rules o’er him who makes this choice.12
Compared with:
The man or woman who is filled with love sees love on all sides and attracts the love of others. The man with hate in his heart gets all the hate he can stand.13
Although Mesmer met with resistance from the scientific community, it is important to note that he did in fact cure thousands of people. The high level of success in healing with the Mesmeric method was undeniable. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, Mesmerism was the most commonly used Western method of surgical pain-relief beyond drinking ethyl alcohol. Americans lapped up the Mesmeric cure eagerly, and Mesmerists touring the country helped cure many legitimately incurable diseases;
Evidently, Americans felt mesmerism treated the whole person rather than isolated complaints. They believed that the mesmerizing process helped them to reestablish inner harmony with the very source of physical and emotional well-being. While in their mesmeric state, they learned that disease and even moral confusion were but the unfortunate consequences of having fallen out of rapport with the invisible spiritual workings of the universe.14
The downfall of Mesmerism, in the eyes of the scientific community, was essentially twofold. Firstly, it was due to a woman, and secondly, it was due to large groups of women.
The first woman involved was Marie Antoinette. At the time of her acquaintance with Mesmer, Marie Antoinette was the wife of King Louis XVI. Marie became enraptured with Mesmer and took to visiting him incessantly for “healing” sessions. She helped fund his institute and provided him with salon audiences of the most prestigious sort in Paris. It wasn’t long before the king took offense to his wife’s growing interest in this powerfully magnetic individual, and he took actions against Mesmer and his theories. In 1784, King Louis XVI appointed commissioners to investigate animal magnetism. These included the chemist Antoine Lavoisier, the physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin,15 the astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly and the American ambassador Benjamin Franklin.16 The commission conducted a series of experiments aimed not at determining whether Mesmer’s treatment worked, but whether he had discovered a new physical fluid. The commission concluded that there was no evidence of such a fluid, even though in every case the treatments were effective. The committee also concluded that magnetic treatment was hazardous to women, since its effects might destroy their sexual inhibitions, a ruling which was most probably influenced by the involvement of Marie Antoinette in the matter. Mesmer was stigmatized as a deviant and accused of using his powers for the seduction of the fairer sex. He was forced to leave Paris and return to Vienna, lest Guillotin engage the use of his favorite device.
The second group of women who brought about the decline of Mesmerism were the spiritualists and mediums of America. Spiritualism, which tried to communicate with the spirit world through the use of mediums, was a popular movement in America from the 1840s through the 1930s. The spiritual mediums of the day found that once they were put into a Mesmeric trance, or hypnotized, their clairvoyant abilities increased considerably. Once word spread of this phenomenon, every medium adapted Mesmeric practices, claiming them for the spiritualist movement.
Due to the resulting quackery, doctors were forced to abandon the techniques. Before long, no self-respecting doctor in the country would go near a Mesmerist. This is a true tragedy because, at the time, Mesmerism was being studied extensively by the medical community for use as anesthesia during surgeries. Most Mesmerists ended up becoming spiritualists, as that was the fad at the time, and they followed the most plausible source of income.
When table-turning and spirit-rapping were introduced into this country from America, the Mesmerists soon identified the mysterious force which caused the phenomena with the mesmeric or neuro-vital fluid. A little later, when the trance and its manifestations were exploited in the interests of the new gospel of Spiritualism, many of the English Mesmerists, who had been prepared by the utterances of their own clairvoyants for some such development, proclaimed themselves adherents of the new faith.17
The last nail in the coffin of Mesmerism would come not from any of these ladies, but from an actual Mesmerist: Phineas Quimby was ultimately responsible for all but eradicating Mesmerism from America, by transforming it into his own brand of “Mind Cure.” There was a time when Quimby was considered the most famous and accomplished Mesmerist in America.18 When Quimby turned on Mesmerism, the American followers turned with him, investigating instead the Christian Science method of healing.
Phineas Quimby’s Mesmeric Adventures
Every phenomenon in the natural world has its origin in the spiritual world.
—Phineas Quimby
It was in 1838 that Quimby learned of Mesmerism by attending a lecture by a Dr. Collyer, and he shortly thereafter set about becoming a Mesmerist. Quimby went through spurts of success and failure with treating patients for many years, until finally he found one individual whom he could influence no matter the situation.
This patient was a young boy named Lucius
