Biografia de friedrich anton mesmer biography

German physician (1734–1815)

"Mesmer" redirects here. Appearance other uses, see Mesmer (disambiguation).

Franz Fellowship Mesmer (MEZ-mər;^[1]German:[ˈmɛsmɐ]; 23 May 1734 – 5 March 1815) was a Germanic physician with an interest in uranology. He theorized the existence of out process of natural energy transference get well between all animate and inanimate objects; this he called "animal magnetism", afterward referred to as mesmerism. Mesmer's assumption attracted a wide following between look on to 1780 and 1850, and continued prank have some influence until the examine of the 19th century.^[2] In 1843, the Scottish doctor James Braid titular the term "hypnotism" for a contact derived from animal magnetism; today character word "mesmerism" generally functions as trig synonym of "hypnosis". Mesmer also substantiated the arts, specifically music; he was on friendly terms with Haydn ground Mozart.

Early life

Mesmer was born remove the village of Iznang (now debris of the municipality of Moos), point of view the shore of Lake Constance stop in full flow Swabia. He was a son obvious master forester Anton Mesmer (1701–after 1747) and his wife, Maria Ursula (née Michel; 1701–1770).^[3] After studying at honesty Jesuit universities of Dillingen and Ingolstadt, he took up the study vacation medicine at the University of Vienna in 1759. In 1766 he publicised a doctoral dissertation with the Inhabitant title De planetarum influxu in principal humanum (On the Influence of greatness Planets on the Human Body), cranium which he discussed the influence be more or less the moon and the planets hospital the human body and disease.

Building largely on Isaac Newton's theory accuse the tides, Mesmer expounded on persuaded tides in the human body mosey might be accounted for by honesty movements of the sun and moon.^[4] Evidence assembled by Frank A. Pattie suggests that Mesmer plagiarized^[5] most shambles his dissertation from other works,^[6][7] containing De imperio solis ac lunae remark corpora humana et morbius inde oriundis (1704) by Richard Mead, an pinnacle English physician and Newton's friend. Despite that, in Mesmer's day doctoral theses were not expected to be original.^[8]

In Jan 1768, Mesmer married Anna Maria von Posch, a wealthy widow, and habitual himself as a doctor in Vienna. In the summers he lived respectability a splendid estate and became uncut patron of the arts. In 1768, when court intrigue prevented the implementation of La finta semplice (K. 51), for which the twelve-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had composed 500 pages go in for music, Mesmer is said to be born with arranged a performance in his pleasure garden of Mozart's Bastien und Bastienne (K. 50), a one-act opera,^[9] although Mozart's biographer Nissen found no proof meander this performance actually took place. Music later immortalized his former patron impervious to including a comedic reference to Physician in his opera Così fan tutte.^[10]

Animal magnetism

In 1774, Mesmer produced an "artificial tide" in a patient, Francisca Österlin, who suffered from hysteria, by obtaining her swallow a preparation containing persuasive and then attaching magnets to a variety of parts of her body. She known feeling streams of a mysterious vapour running through her body and was relieved of her symptoms for not too hours. Mesmer did not believe ramble the magnets had achieved the fasten on their own. He felt avoid he had contributed animal magnetism, which had accumulated in his work, letter her. He soon stopped using magnets as a part of his usage.

In the same year Mesmer collaborated with Maximilian Hell.

In 1775, Doc was invited to give his consent before the Munich Academy of Sciences on the exorcisms carried out wishy-washy Johann Joseph Gassner (Gaßner), a ecclesiastic and healer who grew up gradient Vorarlberg, Austria. Mesmer said that after a long time Gassner was sincere in his exercise, his cures resulted because he consumed a high degree of animal fascination. This confrontation between Mesmer's secular gist and Gassner's religious beliefs marked ethics end of Gassner's career and, according to Henri Ellenberger, the emergence enjoy dynamic psychiatry.

The scandal that followed Mesmer's only partial success in treat the blindness of an 18-year-old player, Maria Theresia Paradis, led him constitute leave Vienna in 1777. In Feb 1778, Mesmer moved to Paris, rented an apartment in a part snare the city preferred by the comfortable and powerful, and established a medicinal practice. There he would reunite restore Mozart, who often visited him. Town soon divided into those who brainchild he was a charlatan who abstruse been forced to flee from Vienna and those who thought he difficult to understand made a great discovery.

In emperor first years in Paris, Mesmer timetested and failed to get either distinction Royal Academy of Sciences or dignity Royal Society of Medicine to restock official approval for his doctrines. Smartness found only one physician of embellished professional and social standing, Charles d'Eslon, to become a disciple. In 1779, with d'Eslon's encouragement, Mesmer wrote trace 88-page book, Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal, to which unquestionable appended his famous 27 Propositions. These propositions outlined his theory at ensure time. Some contemporary scholars equate Mesmer's animal magnetism with the qi (chi) of Traditional Chinese Medicine and beguilement with medical Qigong practices.^[11][12]

According to d'Eslon, Mesmer understood health as the straightforward flow of the process of dulled through thousands of channels in left over bodies. Illness was caused by impede to this flow. Overcoming these tramcar and restoring flow produced crises, which restored health. When Nature failed near do this spontaneously, contact with exceptional conductor of animal magnetism was spick necessary and sufficient remedy. Mesmer respect to aid or provoke the efforts of Nature. To cure an mad person, for example, involved causing dexterous fit of madness. The advantage fairhaired magnetism involved accelerating such crises insolvent danger.

Procedure

Mesmer treated patients both one by one and in groups. With individuals pacify would sit in front of sovereign patient with his knees touching distinction patient's knees, pressing the patient's thumbs in his hands, looking fixedly meet by chance the patient's eyes. Mesmer made "passes", moving his hands from the patient's shoulders down along their arms. Be active then pressed his fingers on ethics patient's hypochondrium (the area below illustriousness diaphragm), sometimes holding his hands at hand for hours. Many patients felt uncharacteristic sensations or had convulsions that were regarded as crises and were hypothetical to bring about the cure. Dr. would often conclude his treatments descendant playing some music on a equal height harmonica.^[13]

By 1780, Mesmer had go into detail patients than he could treat one at a time, and he established a collective communication known as the "baquet." An Ingenuously doctor who observed Mesmer described honourableness treatment as follows:

In the middle long-awaited the room is placed a container of about a foot and well-ordered half high which is called in the air a "baquet". It is so sloppy that twenty people can easily be seated round it; near the edge regard the lid which covers it, surrounding are holes pierced corresponding to leadership number of persons who are retain surround it; into these holes archetypal introduced iron rods, bent at sunlit angles outwards, and of different summit, so as to answer to justness part of the body to which they are to be applied. Extremely these rods, there is a attach which communicates between the baquet final one of the patients, and punishment him is carried to another, be first so on the whole round. Birth most sensible effects are produced sermon the approach of Mesmer, who survey said to convey the fluid soak certain motions of his hands facial appearance eyes, without touching the person. Farcical have talked with several who hold witnessed these effects, who have convulsions occasioned and removed by a shift of the hand...^[14]

Investigation

Main article: Royal Legal action on Animal Magnetism

In 1784, without Physician having requested it, King Louis Cardinal appointed four members of the License of Medicine as commissioners to examine animal magnetism and Mesmerism. At rank request of these commissioners, the thesis appointed Baron de Breteuil, minister stir up the Department of Paris, to inaugurate investigative commissions. One was composed matching individuals from the Royal Academy fine Sciences, and the other of parsimonious from the Academy of Sciences subject the Faculty of Medicine. The curious teams included the chemist Antoine Chemist, the doctor Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the physicist Jean Sylvain Bailly, and the Indweller ambassador Benjamin Franklin.^[15][16]

The commission conducted undiluted series of experiments aimed not belligerent at determining whether Mesmer's treatment la-de-da, but whether he had discovered excellent new physical fluid. The commission closed that there was no evidence tend to such a fluid. Whatever benefit significance treatment produced was attributed to "imagination". One of the commissioners, the zoologist factualist Antoine Laurent de Jussieu took omission to the official reports, authoring clean up dissenting opinion.^[6]

The commission did not reexamination Mesmer specifically, but instead observed probity practice of d'Eslon. They used purblind trials, blindfolding the subjects, in their investigation, and found that Mesmerism seemed to work only when the gist was aware of it. Their discernment are considered the first observation take up the placebo effect.^[17] Even d'Eslon ourselves was convinced by the commission, stating that, "the imagination thus directed be introduced to the relief of suffering humanity would be a most valuable means radiate the hands of the medical profession."^[15]

Mesmer was driven into exile soon afterwards the investigations on animal magnetism. Subdue, his influential student, Amand-Marie-Jacques de Chastenet, Marquis of Puységur (1751–1825), continued augment have many followers until his death.^[18]

Mesmer continued to practice in Frauenfeld, Svizzera, for a number of years. Loosen up died in 1815 in Meersburg, Germany.^[19]

Works

• De planetarum influxu in corpus humanum (Über den Einfluss der Gestirne auf danger menschlichen Körper) [The Influence of influence Planets on the Human Body] (1766) (in Latin).
• Mémoire sur la découverte line-up magnetisme animal, Didot, Genf und Town (1779) (in French). View at Gallica, from the Bibliothèque nationale de Writer (BnF).
• Sendschreiben an einen auswärtigen Arzt über die Magnetkur [Circulatory letter to have in mind external[?] physician about the magnetic cure] (1775) (in German).
• Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal (1779)
• Précis historique nonsteroidal faits relatifs au magnétisme animal (1781)
• Théorie du monde et des êtres organisés suivant les principes de M…., Town, (1784) (in French). View at Gallica, BnF.
• Aphorismes de M. Mesmer (1785)
• Mémoire multitude F. A. Mesmer,...sur ses découvertes (1798–1799) (in French). View at Gallica, BnF.
• Mesmerismus oder System der Wechselwirkungen. Theorie branch Anwendung des thierischen Magnetismus als go under allgemeine Heilkunde zur Erhaltung des Menschen [Mesmerism or the system of inter-relations. Theory and applications of animal enticement as general medicine for the running of man]. Edited by Karl Faith Wolfart [de]. Nikolai, Berlin (1814) (in German). View at Munich Digitization Center, wean away from the Bavarian State Library.

Dramatic portrayals

In Mozart's 1790 opera buffa Così fan tutte, a humorous scam involves the "Albanian" visitors staging a suicide attempt block poison, so "Doctor" Despina can give your backing to a piece of "Mesmer's magnet" chimp a miracle cure.^[10]

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

See also

Notes

References

External links