Franz Mesmer (1734-1815) believed that there was a magnetic force or “fluid” within the universe which influenced the health of the human body. He experimented with magnets to influence this field and so cause healing. By around 1774 he had concluded that the same effects could be created by passing the hands, at a distance, in front of the subject’s body, referred to as making “Mesmeric passes.” The word mesmerise originates from the name of Franz Mesmer; and was intentionally used to separate its users from the various “fluid” and “magnetic” theories embedded within the label “magnetist”.

In 1784, at the request of King Louis XVI, Mesmer’s theories were scrutinised by a series of French scientific committees, one of which included the American ambassador to France, Benjamin Franklin. They also investigated the practices of a disaffected student of Mesmer, one Charles d’Eslon (1750-1786), and on the basis of their examination of d’Eslon’s manner of working (not Mesmer’s), and despite the fact that they accepted that the results that were claimed by Mesmer were in fact veridical, their placebo controlled experiments of d’Eslon’s practices clearly demonstrate that the effects of Mesmerism were most likely due to belief and imagination rather than to any sort of invisible energy (”animal magnetism”) being transmitted from the body of the Mesmerist.

In other words, despite accepting that Mesmer’s practice seemed to have a certain efficacy, both committees totally rejected all of Mesmer’s theories.

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