Word: mesmer
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...Mesmer & Magnetism. Hypnotism has been inspiring public interest and noisy argument ever since the days, in 18th Century Paris, when Franz Anton Mesmer developed his controversial technique. It was first called mesmerism and then hypnotism (from a Greek word meaning sleep). In Mesmer's day, "magnetism" was the scientific catchword that "atomic" is today. Mesmer had already been kicked out of his native Vienna for acting on his belief that people got sick when they ran short of "magnetic fluid." He was out to show Paris that he could relieve the shortage. The Mesmer clinics are described...
...Mesmer's method was to fill tubs with "magnetized water" (iron filings and pieces of glass). Hopeful sufferers sat around the tubs clutching at protruding iron rods while harmoniums, pianos and musical glasses tinkled and Mesmer and assistants in purple silk coats hovered about...
...scientific committee (which included Benjamin Franklin and that most gruesome of inventors, Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin) investigated Mesmer and declared that his theories were unscientific. But the experiments went on. A later Viennese physician, Sigmund Freud, experimented for a while with electricity and hypnotism, and then abandoned hypnotism for his own techniques of psychoanalysis. He reasoned that a patient under hypnosis is apt to say what the physician wants him to say instead of revealing his "unconscious" mind. Besides, Freud decided, hypnotism's effects are too ephemeral and not everybody can be hypnotized...
...Klein is reckoned a great man at a party around Philadelphia. To Hobby Lobbyists last week he looked like the late Dr. Mesmer's star successor...
...hypnotism and uses it every day on London's sane and insane, U. S. psychiatrists were professionally interested, regardless of what they thought of his divagations into yogism, perfect numbers, symbolism of colors. Dr. Cannon discusses not only his own methods but those of such pioneers as Mesmer and Charcot, of such well-known hypnotists as Bernheim, Binet, Féré, Liebeault, Lloyd Tuckey. It is generally agreed among psychiatrists that hypnotism is of value in treating stammering and certain hysterical neuroses. Dr. Cannon believes it is useful in treating tetanus, diabetes, prostatic enlargement, menstrual disorders...