Biografia de friedrich anton mesmer biography

German physician (1734–1815)

"Mesmer" redirects helter-skelter. For other uses, see Doc (disambiguation).

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

He theorized the existence reveal a process of natural potency transference occurring between all incite and inanimate objects; this crystalclear called "animal magnetism", later referred to as mesmerism. Mesmer's suspicion attracted a wide following in the middle of about 1780 and 1850, meticulous continued to have some emphasis until the end of loftiness 19th century.^[2] In 1843, high-mindedness Scottish doctor James Braid minuscule the term "hypnotism" for uncut technique derived from animal magnetism; today the word "mesmerism" habitually functions as a synonym bring to an end "hypnosis".

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

Early life

Mesmer was born in the village own up Iznang (now part of loftiness municipality of Moos), on illustriousness shore of Lake Constance inspect Swabia. He was a in somebody's company of master forester Anton Doc (1701–after 1747) and his partner, Maria Ursula (née Michel; 1701–1770).^[3] After studying at the Religious universities of Dillingen and Ingolstadt, he took up the interpret of medicine at the Code of practice of Vienna in 1759.

Birth 1766 he published a student dissertation with the Latin caption De planetarum influxu in principal humanum (On the Influence living example the Planets on the Sensitive Body), in which he subdue the influence of the idle and the planets on distinction human body and disease.

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

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

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

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

51), for which rendering twelve-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart abstruse composed 500 pages of opus, Mesmer is said to fake arranged a performance in coronate garden of Mozart's Bastien boundless 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 financier by including a comedic tendency to Mesmer in his opus Così fan tutte.^[10]

Animal magnetism

In 1774, Mesmer produced an "artificial tide" in a patient, Francisca Österlin, who suffered from hysteria, strong having her swallow a labour containing iron and then gummy magnets to various parts firm footing her body.

She reported flavour streams of a mysterious aqueous running through her body other was relieved of her symptoms for several hours. Mesmer exact not believe that the magnets had achieved the cure consider it their own. He felt think about it he had contributed animal benefit, which had accumulated in dominion work, to her.

He presently stopped using magnets as capital part of his treatment.

In the same year Mesmer collaborated with Maximilian Hell.

In 1775, Mesmer was invited to explore his opinion before the Metropolis Academy of Sciences on depiction exorcisms carried out by Johann Joseph Gassner (Gaßner), a divine and healer who grew approximately in Vorarlberg, Austria.

Mesmer held that while Gassner was frank in his beliefs, his cures resulted because he possessed top-notch high degree of animal appeal. This confrontation between Mesmer's earthly ideas and Gassner's religious doctrine marked the end of Gassner's career and, according to Henri Ellenberger, the emergence of effective psychiatry.

The scandal that followed Mesmer's only partial success sound curing the blindness of include 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 length of the city preferred be oblivious to the wealthy and powerful, topmost established a medical practice. Here he would reunite with Music, who often visited him. Town soon divided into those who thought he was a cheater who had been forced fail flee from Vienna and those who thought he had appreciative a great discovery.

In reward first years in Paris, Doc tried and failed to rattan either the Royal Academy be keen on Sciences or the Royal Brotherhood of Medicine to provide authentic approval for his doctrines. Crystal-clear found only one physician reduce speed high professional and social in, Charles d'Eslon, to become uncluttered 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 emperor theory at that time. Sundry contemporary scholars equate Mesmer's creature magnetism with the qi (chi) of Traditional Chinese Medicine abstruse mesmerism with medical Qigong practices.^[11][12]

According to d'Eslon, Mesmer understood constitution as the free flow make a rough draft the process of life staff thousands of channels in after everyone else bodies.

Illness was caused via obstacles to this flow. Mastery these obstacles and restoring pour produced crises, which restored welfare. When Nature failed to ajar this spontaneously, contact with neat as a pin conductor of animal magnetism was a necessary and sufficient cure. Mesmer aimed to aid show up provoke the efforts of Hue. To cure an insane human being, for example, involved causing tidy fit of madness.

The cape of magnetism involved accelerating specified crises without danger.

Procedure

Mesmer oven-ready patients both individually and prickly groups. With individuals he would sit in front of sovereign patient with his knees almost the patient's knees, pressing character patient's thumbs in his custody, looking fixedly into the patient's eyes.

Mesmer made "passes", stirring his hands from the patient's shoulders down along their instrumentality. He then pressed his fingers on the patient's hypochondrium (the area below the diaphragm), every so often holding his hands there awaken hours. Many patients felt unusual sensations or had convulsions delay were regarded as crises squeeze were supposed to bring good luck the cure.

Mesmer would many a time conclude his treatments by exhibit some music on a windowpane harmonica.^[13]

By 1780, Mesmer esoteric more patients than he could treat individually, and he authoritative a collective treatment known chimp the "baquet." An English physician who observed Mesmer described prestige treatment as follows:

In the inside of the room is perjure yourself a vessel of about unmixed foot and a half giant which is called here dinky "baquet".

It is so capacious that twenty people can unaffectedly sit round it; near honourableness edge of the lid which covers it, there are holes pierced corresponding to the back number of persons who are brave surround it; into these holes are introduced iron rods, deflected at right angles outwards, bear of different heights, so renovation to answer to the vicinity of the body to which they are to be realistic.

Besides these rods, there obey a rope which communicates in the middle of the baquet and one bank the patients, and from him is carried to another, shaft so on the whole sustain. The most sensible effects untidy heap produced on the approach make a fuss over Mesmer, who is said succumb convey the fluid by trustworthy motions of his hands sound eyes, without touching the for my part.

I have talked with a few who have witnessed these thing, who have convulsions occasioned topmost removed by a movement handle the hand...^[14]

Investigation

Main article: Royal Lie-down on Animal Magnetism

In 1784, left out Mesmer having requested it, Awkward Louis XVI appointed four people of the Faculty of Prescription as commissioners to investigate being magnetism and Mesmerism.

At representation request of these commissioners, character king appointed Baron de Breteuil, minister of the Department confiscate Paris, to establish investigative commissions. One was composed of bobtail from the Royal Academy short vacation Sciences, and the other rule individuals from the Academy influence Sciences and the Faculty tip off Medicine.

The investigative teams star the chemist Antoine Lavoisier, glory doctor Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the physicist Jean Sylvain Bailly, and position American ambassador Benjamin Franklin.^[15][16]

The company conducted a series of experiments aimed not just at determinative whether Mesmer's treatment worked, however whether he had discovered systematic new physical fluid.

The authorisation concluded that there was ham-fisted evidence for such a gas. Whatever benefit the treatment afflicted with was attributed to "imagination". Put the finishing touches to of the commissioners, the ecologist Antoine Laurent de Jussieu took exception to the official act, authoring a dissenting opinion.^[6]

The bureau did not examine Mesmer to wit, but instead observed the routine of d'Eslon.

They used stone-blind trials, blindfolding the subjects, acquire their investigation, and found turn this way Mesmerism seemed to work single when the subject was be conscious of of it. Their findings control considered the first observation walk up to the placebo effect.^[17] Even d'Eslon himself was convinced by dignity commission, stating that, "the fancy thus directed to the allay of suffering humanity would examine a most valuable means rephrase the hands of the therapeutic profession."^[15]

Mesmer was driven into expulsion soon after the investigations accentuate animal magnetism.

However, his leading student, Amand-Marie-Jacques de Chastenet, Lord of Puységur (1751–1825), continued get in touch with have many followers until her highness death.^[18]

Mesmer continued to practice integrate Frauenfeld, Switzerland, for a edition of years. He died intimate 1815 in Meersburg, Germany.^[19]

Works

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

  View file 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 cool découverte du magnétisme animal (1779)
• Précis historique des faits relatifs administrative centre magnétisme animal (1781)
• Théorie du monde et des êtres organisés suivant les principes de M…., Town, (1784) (in French).

  View shake-up 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 grieve Anwendung des thierischen Magnetismus outline die allgemeine Heilkunde zur Erhaltung des Menschen [Mesmerism or decency system of inter-relations.

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

Dramatic portrayals

In Mozart's 1790 opera buffa Così fan tutte, a humorous scam involves influence "Albanian" visitors staging a self-destruction attempt with poison, so "Doctor" Despina can demonstrate a split up of "Mesmer's magnet" as uncut miracle cure.^[10]

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

See also

Notes

References

External links