THE day has long gone by when it was worthwhile asking the question: Was Mesmer a charlatan? We know enough now of hypnotic and mesmeric phenomena to be able to consider impartially the curious developments which resulted from his treatment.
If Mesmer is to be regarded as a " quack" then the term must in justice be bestowed on every doctor, no matter what his diplomas, who has ever practised. The epithet was applied to Mesmer because he was dealing with forces that are imperfectly understood. But orthodox medical men, who rely on drugs, are also dealing with forces that are imperfectly understood.
Mesmerism, it was said (and the same objection is frequently raised by the ignorant today), is dangerous. If there are dangers, then Mesmer was extraordinarily fortunate in his practice, for there is no evidence that he ever caused injury to a single patient through
the use of magnetism. If surgeons and medical practitioners could substantiate a similar claim on behalf of drugs and the knife they might consider themselves fortunate indeed.
Hostile critics sneered at Mesmer because he was simple enough to believe in the baquet; because he made use of an iron rod which they wittily referred to as a "wand"; and because he wore a silk garment when treating his patients. No doubt the baquet was an amazingly simple contrivance, but the phenomena which resulted from its application were simply amazing. The iron rod likewise was amply justified by its use in Mesmer's hands, and, as for the clothes most suitable for him to wear—that, surely, was a problem for himself to decide.
Mesmer was undoubtedly unfortunate in his age. It was a time of tumult and of violent change. The good seed which he sowed was trampled underfoot in the French Revolution. The scientific method of research was hardly understood, and the prejudices of medievalism were only beginning to melt away in the light of more exact knowledge.
In challenging the Royal Society of Medicine of Paris, the most important scientific corporation of his day, Mesmer may have been over
bold. But it is hard to see how else he could have focussed the attention of Europe, for a brief space, on the strange phenomena of Animal Magnetism.
For the time, medieval orthodoxy, as represented by that Society, triumphed. But the Faculty were utterly unable to get rid of Animal Magnetism. Having explained it away to their own satisfaction, it was distressing to find that, like Frankenstein, it turned up again and yet again, and asked for a further explanation.
Today the tables are turned, and, such are the revenges of Time, the doctors who do not "believe in" hypnotism and its allied phenomena run the risk of being considered "rusty" and "old-fashioned."
There are even signs that Mesmer's own special theory, which has been for the most part disregarded since his death, is in process of rehabilitation. Professor Boirac, late Rector of the Academy of Dijon, in his recently published book, La Psychologie Inconnue* supports the view, after years of research and experiment, that the human body is a store-
* Psychic Science (La Psychologic Inconnue), An Introduction and Contribution to the Experimental Study of Psychical Phenomena. By Emile Boirac, Hector of Dijon Academy. Translated by Dudley Wright. Demy 8vo. London: W. Bider & Son, Ltd. 10s. 6d, net.
house of magnetic energy. The hypothesis is not of recent date. It did not entirely originate with Anton Mesmer. But Mesmer, by fearlessly devoting his life to it, did more than any other man to give it" a local habitation and a name."