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Updated: May 26, 2025
It is well to remind ourselves that as late as the middle of the eighteenth century Mesmer's thesis on "The Influence of the Stars on Human Constitutions" was accepted by the faculty of the University of Vienna as a satisfactory evidence not only of his knowledge of medicine, but of his power to reason about it.
In the corners stood porcelain shepherds and shepherdesses, dining-room clocks from the workshop of the celebrated Lefroy, bandboxes, roulettes, fans and the various playthings for the amusement of ladies that were in vogue at the end of the last century, when Montgolfier's balloons and Mesmer's magnetism were the rage. Hermann stepped behind the screen.
Mesmer's fame had reached the court, and the empress herself became interested in his extraordinary achievements. In vain Van Swieten and Stork besought her to silence the audacious quack, who was ruining a great profession. She shook her head, and would have nothing to do with the feud. "I shall wait and see," said she. "His system is harmless, and I shall not fetter him. One thing is certain.
Erudite works on theosophy, magic, the interpretation of dreams and demonology huddled together here. Not all of them were readable by my humble store of learning. There was a Latin copy of Artemidorus, Mesmer's "Shepherd," Mathew Paris, some volumes in Greek, and some I judged to be Arabian and Hebrew. At the end of the row stood a thin, dingy book whose title had passed out of legibility.
Mesmer was defeated by the doubtfulness of facts, by universal ignorance of the part played in nature by imponderable fluids then unobserved, and by his own inability to study on all sides a science possessing a triple front. Magnetism has many applications; in Mesmer's hands it was, in its relation to the future, merely what cause is to effect.
She groped about with her hands, to find a seat, for she could scarcely stand. The action attracted universal attention. A significant look passed between Von Paradies and Barth, while Mesmer's brow darkened, and his face flushed with disappointment. It was very unfortunate that faintness of Therese.
In all Paris, there was not a house so charmingly furnished as Monsieur Mesmer's. Richly-stained glass shed a dim religious light on his spacious saloons, which were almost covered with mirrors.
"It is impossible," says M. Dupotet, "to conceive the sensation which Mesmer's experiments created in Paris. No theological controversy, in the earlier ages of the Catholic Church, was ever conducted with greater bitterness." His adversaries denied the discovery; some calling him a quack, others a fool, and others, again, like the Abbe Fiard, a man who had sold himself to the devil!
Mesmer's discovery, so important, though as yet so little appreciated, was also embodied in a single section of this treatise, though Louis did not know the Swiss doctor's writings which are few and brief.
She sees!" cried the people. "Who can doubt it?" And now from the crowd arose a voice: "We have enough proof. The fact is self-evident, and we may all congratulate the fraulein upon the recovery of her sight. Let us have more of her delightful music." "I am sorry that I cannot agree with Doctor Mesmer's invisible patron," said Von Paradies.
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