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Updated: May 18, 2025
I. Mesmer was born about 1733, studied in Vienna and there became a doctor of medicine in 1766. Soon after, he began to speculate upon the curative powers of the magnet, and claimed to have discovered the existence of a force in man similar to magnetism and the source of strong influence on the human body.
"True," replied the professor, "and your planet turns out to be an insignificant harmonicon." "And the lancet," added Inaenhaus, "is a cork, with a whale-bone handle." Mesmer played on, and now his music seemed an entreaty to some invisible spirit to appear and reveal itself to mortal eyes. At least, so it sounded to the ears of his listeners.
Mesmer was neither an ignoramus nor a quack, but a graduated physician, although his title is generally omitted. He had more enthusiasm than philosophy, but he was far in advance of his contemporaries, who had neither, and deserves to be honorably remembered.
I beg so much the more for your attention, ladies and gentlemen," continued he, in a faltering voice, "that this night is to decide a fearful doubt in my own mind. Doctor Mesmer affirms that my daughter's vision has been restored. I, alas! believe that she is yet blind!"
There are many allusions to the subject in memoirs and other unimportant works, but I only know of one where the subject is spoken of definitely. It is Mercia and its Worthies, written by Ezra Toms more than a hundred years ago. The author goes into the question of the close association of the then Edgar Caswall with Mesmer in Paris.
But this event needs a succinct narrative of certain circumstances in his medical career, which will give, perhaps, fresh interest to the story. Towards the end of the eighteenth century science was sundered as widely by the apparition of Mesmer as art had been by that of Gluck.
The first commission was composed of the principal physicians of Paris; while, among the eminent men comprised in the latter, were Benjamin Franklin, Lavoisier, and Bailly, the historian of astronomy. Mesmer was formally invited to appear before this body, but absented himself from day to day, upon one pretence or another.
As we don't leave this till the 8th of March, I beg you, if possible, to try to procure for me, either through Herr Mesmer at Vienna, or some one else, a letter to the Queen of France, if it can be done without much difficulty; if not, it does not much matter. It would be better if I could have one of that there is no doubt; this is also the advice of Herr Wendling.
The hounds have been on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Mesmer, or Saint Hubert in the Ardennes, or some other holy intercessor who has made a speciality of the health of hunting-dogs. In the grey dawn the game was turned and the branch broken by our best piqueur. A rare day's hunting lies before us. Wind a jolly flourish, sound the bien-aller with all your lungs.
Irritated at finding his claims repulsed, Mesmer quitted France, angrily vowing her to the deluge of maladies from which it would have been in his power to save her. In a letter written to Marie Antoinette, the Thaumaturgus declared that he had refused the government offers through austerity.
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