I’ve used the word mesmerized from time to time. To be truthful, I’m not sure I always use it correctly. Sometimes I use it when I suppose I could have used fascinating, or sometimes in place of transfixed or astonished. Anyhow, that got me to thinking that maybe I didn’t really know how to use the term — after all, it is kind of a strange word. I wondered where it came from….
Checking the dictionary, I found that the word mesmerize comes from the last name of an 18th century German physician Franz Mesmer. Mesmer believed that all people and objects are pulled together by a strong magnetic force, that was later called mesmerism. The dictionary meaning is (1) attract strongly, as if with a magnet; (2) induce hypnosis in.
It turned out that my extensive research discovered that Franz Anton Mesmer was a pretty interesting character. He was a kind of astrological psychotherapist and faith healer all rolled into one. He was operating in Vienna when someone reported him to the Imperial Morality Police (that’s a real organization there.) Anyhow, apparently young girls were entering his house and not coming out for a long time — like days or even weeks. Mesmer claimed that the girls suffered from various nervous conditions and he’d moved them into his house for treatment. The cure that made him famous involved a blind girl who said she was cured after a few days where she was given massages. Well it turns out that in the 1760s, that sort of thing was looked on with some amount of suspicion and disapproval. The medical profession of Vienna ganged up on him and denounced his treatments as quackery — so, he packed up and headed for Paris.
Mesmer claimed that illness was caused by blockages in the body — and he was one of the few people who knew how to remove them. He believed that the whole universe was full of an invisible energy, which he called “animal magnetism,” and it was controlled by the movements of the stars and planets. By “magnetizing” his clients (apparently by massaging them) he could dislodge the blockage and — they would be cured.
Over time his popularity grew and more and more people wanted to see him, so he started magnetizing whole crowds at once. He invented aa contraption — a wooden tub of water with metal rods attached — so that a group could gather around it holding onto the metal rods and transfer their magnetism to the water. Then he would spray the water over the rest of the onlookers with a hose and tell them they were cured.
He also came up with the idea of magnetizing trees. Then he’d hang ropes from them and when his patients touched the ropes, the miracle energy would flow through them. Mesmer claimed that this channeling of energy also explained psychic phenomena like telepathy, clairvoyance, and the ability to see the future.
Mesmer became very popular in Paris and King Louis XVI was one of his biggest fans. The king offered Mesmer a pension for life — on one condition. He had to submit his work to scientific investigation. Not surprisingly, Mesmer said thanks, but no thanks. But the king appointed a royal commission to investigate Mesmer’s claims. The commission gathered the best scientists in Paris — among them, Benjamin Franklin, as an expert on electricity (Ben was, at the time, American ambassador to France.) The commission also included Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry and Dr. Joseph Guillotin, inventor of the guillotine. No big surprise, but the commission concluded that Mesmer was a fraud. The commission admitted that some people seemed to have been cured, but there was no truth in what Mesmer had to say about scientific astrology, trees, ropes, tubs of water, etc. “Animal magnetism” was nothing but a hoax.
Mesmer was smart enough to know he was beaten — he left France and the mesmerizing business for good and settled in Austria.
I thought this was a great story, but it didn’t answer the question as to why the dictionary would define mesmerize as “induce hypnosis in.” So — more extensive research….
In 1789, one of Mesmer’s disciples, Marquis de Puysgur was applying the Mesmer method of “animal magnetism” to a young boy, and discovered, to his surprise, that the boy was in a trance. He would stand, walk, and sit on command, and when he woke, he didn’t remember anything about it. So that may be the way mesmerize and hypnotism got linked.
Also, stage illusionists in both Europe and America, who were followers of Mesmer, added this new trick to their acts. So animal magnetism kind of faded away and mesmerism and hypnosis kind of became synonymous.
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