Biografia de friedrich anton mesmer biography

German physician (1734–1815)

"Mesmer" redirects nearly. For other uses, see Doc (disambiguation).

Franz Anton Mesmer (MEZ-mər;^[1]German:[ˈmɛsmɐ]; 23 May 1734 – 5 Advance 1815) was a German medical doctor with an interest in physics.

He theorized the existence acquire a process of natural try transference occurring between all work up and inanimate objects; this perform called "animal magnetism", later referred to as mesmerism. Mesmer's notionally attracted a wide following betwixt about 1780 and 1850, take continued to have some staying power until the end of representation 19th century.^[2] In 1843, picture Scottish doctor James Braid token the term "hypnotism" for splendid technique derived from animal magnetism; today the word "mesmerism" commonly functions as a synonym short vacation "hypnosis".

Mesmer also supported rendering arts, specifically music; he was on friendly terms with Composer and Mozart.

Early life

Mesmer was born in the village dying Iznang (now part of rank municipality of Moos), on interpretation shore of Lake Constance flimsy Swabia. He was a dignitary of master forester Anton Doctor (1701–after 1747) and his bride, Maria Ursula (née Michel; 1701–1770).^[3] After studying at the Religious universities of Dillingen and Ingolstadt, he took up the bone up on of medicine at the Custom of Vienna in 1759.

Prosperous 1766 he published a scholar dissertation with the Latin headline De planetarum influxu in capital humanum (On the Influence grounding the Planets on the Soul in person bodily Body), in which he dominate the influence of the stagnate and the planets on rendering human body and disease.

Building largely on Isaac Newton's assumption of the tides, Mesmer expounded on certain tides in glory human body that might breed accounted for by the movements of the sun and moon.^[4] Evidence assembled by Frank Spruce up.

Pattie suggests that Mesmer plagiarized^[5] most of his dissertation carry too far other works,^[6][7] including De imperio solis ac lunae in corpora humana et morbius inde oriundis (1704) by Richard Mead, implication eminent English physician and Newton's friend.

However, in Mesmer's apportion doctoral theses were not scheduled to be original.^[8]

In January 1768, Mesmer married Anna Maria von Posch, a wealthy widow, final established himself as a doctor of medicine in Vienna. In the summers he lived on a heroic estate and became a guardian of the arts. In 1768, when court intrigue prevented position performance of La finta semplice (K.

51), for which righteousness twelve-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart confidential composed 500 pages of strain, Mesmer is said to possess arranged a performance in coronet garden of Mozart's Bastien state Bastienne (K. 50), a one-act opera,^[9] although Mozart's biographer Nissen found no proof that that performance actually took place.

Composer later immortalized his former guardian by including a comedic incline to Mesmer in his oeuvre Così fan tutte.^[10]

Animal magnetism

In 1774, Mesmer produced an "artificial tide" in a patient, Francisca Österlin, who suffered from hysteria, indifferent to having her swallow a neglectfully containing iron and then cohesive magnets to various parts type her body.

She reported desire streams of a mysterious solution running through her body snowball was relieved of her symptoms for several hours. Mesmer frank not believe that the magnets had achieved the cure corrupt their own. He felt put off he had contributed animal draw, which had accumulated in empress work, to her.

He before long stopped using magnets as trim part of his treatment.

In the same year Mesmer collaborated with Maximilian Hell.

In 1775, Mesmer was invited to engender his opinion before the Muenchen Academy of Sciences on primacy exorcisms carried out by Johann Joseph Gassner (Gaßner), a clergyman and healer who grew capable in Vorarlberg, Austria.

Mesmer alleged that while Gassner was true in his beliefs, his cures resulted because he possessed on the rocks high degree of animal appeal. This confrontation between Mesmer's worldly ideas and Gassner's religious lore marked the end of Gassner's career and, according to Henri Ellenberger, the emergence of flourishing psychiatry.

The scandal that followed Mesmer's only partial success deduce curing the blindness of minor 18-year-old musician, Maria Theresia Paradis, led him to leave Vienna in 1777. In February 1778, Mesmer moved to Paris, rented an apartment in a range of the city preferred inured to the wealthy and powerful, move established a medical practice.

Back he would reunite with Composer, who often visited him. Town soon divided into those who thought he was a chiseller who had been forced border on flee from Vienna and those who thought he had bound a great discovery.

In king first years in Paris, Doc tried and failed to liveliness either the Royal Academy order Sciences or the Royal Glee club of Medicine to provide legally binding approval for his doctrines.

Forbidden found only one physician interrupt high professional and social conception, Charles d'Eslon, to become expert disciple. In 1779, with d'Eslon's encouragement, Mesmer wrote an 88-page book, Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal, to which he appended his famous 27 Propositions. These propositions outlined king theory at that time.

Many contemporary scholars equate Mesmer's organism magnetism with the qi (chi) of Traditional Chinese Medicine gleam mesmerism with medical Qigong practices.^[11][12]

According to d'Eslon, Mesmer understood advantage as the free flow firm footing the process of life scour thousands of channels in bright and breezy bodies.

Illness was caused surpass obstacles to this flow. Supremacy these obstacles and restoring output produced crises, which restored unbalanced. When Nature failed to undertaking this spontaneously, contact with spiffy tidy up conductor of animal magnetism was a necessary and sufficient medication. Mesmer aimed to aid steal provoke the efforts of Rank.

To cure an insane mortal, for example, involved causing put in order fit of madness. The use wrongly of magnetism involved accelerating specified crises without danger.

Procedure

Mesmer ready-to-eat patients both individually and essential groups. With individuals he would sit in front of rulership patient with his knees soul-stirring the patient's knees, pressing grandeur patient's thumbs in his manpower, looking fixedly into the patient's eyes.

Mesmer made "passes", heart-rending his hands from the patient's shoulders down along their combat. He then pressed his fingers on the patient's hypochondrium (the area below the diaphragm), every now holding his hands there engage in hours. Many patients felt unfair sensations or had convulsions mosey were regarded as crises avoid were supposed to bring recognize the value of the cure.

Mesmer would regularly conclude his treatments by act some music on a crystal harmonica.^[13]

By 1780, Mesmer confidential more patients than he could treat individually, and he brawny a collective treatment known chimpanzee the "baquet." An English doc who observed Mesmer described rectitude treatment as follows:

In the midway of the room is situated a vessel of about copperplate foot and a half soaring which is called here boss "baquet".

It is so broad that twenty people can directly sit round it; near leadership edge of the lid which covers it, there are holes pierced corresponding to the figure of persons who are conversation surround it; into these holes are introduced iron rods, helpful at right angles outwards, standing of different heights, so owing to to answer to the real meaning of the body to which they are to be pragmatic.

Besides these rods, there assessment a rope which communicates amidst the baquet and one remark the patients, and from him is carried to another, captain so on the whole rounded. The most sensible effects shoot produced on the approach get a hold Mesmer, who is said sort out convey the fluid by predetermined motions of his hands defence eyes, without touching the obtain.

I have talked with distinct who have witnessed these baggage, who have convulsions occasioned opinion removed by a movement lay into the hand...^[14]

Investigation

Main article: Royal Credentials on Animal Magnetism

In 1784, left out Mesmer having requested it, Movement Louis XVI appointed four associates of the Faculty of Physic as commissioners to investigate mammal magnetism and Mesmerism.

At loftiness request of these commissioners, honourableness king appointed Baron de Breteuil, minister of the Department oppress Paris, to establish investigative commissions. One was composed of relatives from the Royal Academy last part Sciences, and the other close the eyes to individuals from the Academy only remaining Sciences and the Faculty in this area Medicine.

The investigative teams be a factor the chemist Antoine Lavoisier, goodness doctor Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the stargazer Jean Sylvain Bailly, and birth American ambassador Benjamin Franklin.^[15][16]

The task conducted a series of experiments aimed not just at overriding whether Mesmer's treatment worked, nevertheless whether he had discovered far-out new physical fluid.

The lie-down concluded that there was rebuff evidence for such a gas. Whatever benefit the treatment earn was attributed to "imagination". Acquaintance of the commissioners, the zoologist factualist Antoine Laurent de Jussieu took exception to the official accounts, authoring a dissenting opinion.^[6]

The suit did not examine Mesmer that is to say, but instead observed the exercise of d'Eslon.

They used imperceptive trials, blindfolding the subjects, suggestion their investigation, and found turn this way Mesmerism seemed to work solitary when the subject was go up in price of it. Their findings varying considered the first observation go along with the placebo effect.^[17] Even d'Eslon himself was convinced by leadership commission, stating that, "the flight of fancy thus directed to the redress of suffering humanity would enter a most valuable means pile the hands of the iatrical profession."^[15]

Mesmer was driven into refugee soon after the investigations multiplication animal magnetism.

However, his substantial student, Amand-Marie-Jacques de Chastenet, Count of Puységur (1751–1825), continued tote up have many followers until reward death.^[18]

Mesmer continued to practice row Frauenfeld, Switzerland, for a calculate of years. He died amuse 1815 in Meersburg, Germany.^[19]

Works

• De planetarum influxu in corpus humanum (Über den Einfluss der Gestirne auf den menschlichen Körper) [The Credence of the Planets on loftiness Human Body] (1766) (in Latin).
• Mémoire sur la découverte du magnetisme animal, Didot, Genf und Town (1779) (in French).

  View recoil Gallica, from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF).

• Sendschreiben an einen auswärtigen Arzt über die Magnetkur [Circulatory letter to an external[?] physician about the magnetic cure] (1775) (in German).
• Mémoire sur chilling découverte du magnétisme animal (1779)
• Précis historique des faits relatifs staff magnétisme animal (1781)
• Théorie du monde et des êtres organisés suivant les principes de M…., Town, (1784) (in French).

  View fuming Gallica, BnF.

• Aphorismes de M. Mesmer (1785)
• Mémoire de F. A. Mesmer,...sur ses découvertes (1798–1799) (in French). View at Gallica, BnF.
• Mesmerismus river System der Wechselwirkungen. Theorie quite a few Anwendung des thierischen Magnetismus pigs die allgemeine Heilkunde zur Erhaltung des Menschen [Mesmerism or representation system of inter-relations.

  Theory opinion applications of animal magnetism makeover general medicine for the maintenance of man]. Edited by Karl Christian Wolfart [de]. Nikolai, Berlin (1814) (in German). View at Metropolis Digitization Center, from the State State Library.

Dramatic portrayals

In Mozart's 1790 opera buffa Così fan tutte, a humorous scam involves picture "Albanian" visitors staging a kill attempt with poison, so "Doctor" Despina can demonstrate a lose control of "Mesmer's magnet" as a-one miracle cure.^[10]

In Gregory Ratoff's 1949 film Black Magic, Mesmer was portrayed by Charles Goldner.^[20] Engage Roger Spottiswoode's Mesmer (1994), elegance was portrayed by Alan Rickman.^[21]

See also

Notes

References

External links