by HongConnerChe History of the Nerd: Franz Anton Mesmer

King Louis XVI had a problem on his hands in the city of Paris 1784. There was a predator on the loose- a predator of young women. Acts of sexual deviancy and mind control ran rampant in “The City Of Lights” and the worst part was that the victims worshipped this predator as a savior. Who was this monster? A con artist? A cultist? A devil in disguise? He was Franz Anton Mesmer, a German physician and astrologist and the source for the word “mesmerize”.

Anton Mesmer wasn’t just some under-educated street hustler; on the contrary, he was born to a wealthy family village of Izang, in Swabia, Germany on the shore of Lake Constance. By the age of 15 he was entered into the Jesuit College at Dillingen in Bavaria and in 1752 studied at the University of Ingolstadt, where he studied philosophy, theology, music, and mathematics. While versed on many subjects a young Mesmer settled on medicine and attended the University of Vienna in 1759 and received a medical degree in 1766. Of course if you were rich enough you could buy a degree no matter how stupid or crazy you were in the 1700’s. Then again George W. Bush would do the same over 200 years later.. I guess things haven’t changed that much after all.

(Franz Anton Mesmer)

In January of 1768, Mesmer married a wealthy, but-her-face, widow and settled in Vienna to establish himself as a physician. He lived on his wife’s wealth like a rich guy in a period movie, bewigged and made-up like a drag queen performing in Las Vegas. His estate was vast and lavish and Anton became a patron of the arts. There is a story of Anton Mesmer helping out a 15 year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In 1768, the Emperor ordered that Mozart’s opera, La finta semplice (The Pretended Simpleton) was not to be performed. He did this perhaps because he loved making tiny teenage boys cry tiny, tiny tears. When word of this got to Mesmer, he arranged to have a one-act opera commissioned. Mozart titled the opera Bastien und Bastienne (Bastien and Bastienne) and performed the piece in Mesmer’s personal garden. Later, Nissen, Mozart’s biographer, would state that there is not proof that the performance ever took place or that there was the touching of any penises at that performance. The connection between Mesmer and Mozart doesn’t end there. Mozart would immortalize Anton with a comedic reference in the opera Cosi fan tuttle.

(Amadeus, Amadeus, c’mon rock me Amadeus)

In 1774, Mesmer had a patient swallow a preparation that had a high concentration of iron in it and then attached magnets to different parts of her body. She reported that she felt streams of mysterious fluid coursing though out her body and that her symptoms were relived for hours. Most likely the high concentration of iron was just gently corroding her intestinal lining but what the fuck did you she know. Mesmer didn’t believe the magnets cured the girl on their own, which would be totally insane. I contributed the cure to his discovery, Animal Magnetism.

Anton believed that the world was filled with a kind of fluid that flowed through all living things, kind of like “The Force” in Star Wars. This fluid he called Animal Magnetism, and he believed that occasionally this flow of fluid would get blocked up and that was what made people sick. Soon he would stop using magnets and would utilize only the power of his voice and the dirty touching in his hands.

An unfortunate event occurred in 1777 when the parents of a girl named Paradis hired Mesmer to cure their daughter of blindness. The unfortunate event was that he failed to cure her blindness when he tried to unblock her flow of Animal Magnetism with his penis. I guess it was worth a shot anyway. Needless to say her parents withdrew her from his care after the incident. His reputation was destroyed and he was pretty much forced to leave town after this. He moved to Paris in the following year of 1778 to start his life over again.

He rented an apartment in a part of the city favored by the wealthy and established a medical practice. Soon, controversy over Animal Magnetism would divide Paris between those who believed him to be a genius and savior and those who thought he was a fraud who was driven out of Vienna with good reason.

Anton’s practice was very much like a hippy gathering: his clients were mostly women, s oft music would be playing as everyone would gather into a dimly lit room. As a man of theatrics he wore long purple suits looking as if he raided 80’s pop star Prince’s wardrobe. He moved among the people until a certain girl would call to him. He would sit across from her with their knees touching. This was already pornographic when during the time the very sight of a woman’s bare ankle could send a man into ejaculatory spasms. (That is actually true and why tablecloths were invented — to cover the legs of a table so men wouldn’t get all lusty.) He pressed her thumbs into his palms and locked eyes with her. As he gazed into her he said that her Animal Magnetism was blocked. He proceeded to make “passes” over the client by moving his hands from her shoulder down along her arms. He then placed his fingers just below her diaphragm holding them there, sometimes for hours. When the patient’s flow was unblocked by this they had something called a “Healing Crisis”. The girl would convulse and scream and vibrate like a surge of orgasmic rage was released throughout her body. This performance is very much like what faith healers do today complete with convulsion and screaming. The girl was then led into a padded room where they were able to loosen their corsets and thrash around or do whatever they need to do to release the healing energy. Word spread of the miracle doctor and his healing touch and he began to have disciples called Mesmerists.

Just like any man that had a hot item, be it tasty fried chicken or the cure to everything, you do what every self-respecting businessman would do — you franchise the mother fucker. Mesmer branched out and taught others. Through doing this his technique evolved. He would go to the woods and “magnetize” trees. He or his assistants would take two magnetized iron rods and touch them to a tree and that would transfer the energy to the trees. The trees would have the same healing abilities as actually being attended to Mesmer himself. When I start my own cult remind me to do this on days I want to sleep in. Groups of people would sit around touching the trees and have orgasms together. There was only one problem to all of this tree hugging and sisterly love, real doctors were losing patients and more importantly, money. They protested to the king.

(The King of Bling: The Blurriest Man in France)

King Louis XVI established a commission that consisted of the eight most famous doctors, naturalists, and scientists of the time in 1784. It was like the Justice League of Science. Their job was to investigate if Mesmer was a true healer or a charlatan. The roster had a few notable figures still highly regarded today (cue Eye of the Tiger):

Jean Sylvain Baily, Astronomer: He calculated the orbit of Haley’s Comet, reduced Lacaille’s observations of 515 zodiacal stars and in 1763 was elected into the French Academy of Sciences. Later he would become one of the leaders of the French Revolution: the last accomplishment he would regret in his final moments of his life as his head rolled off his neck and into a wicker basket. The French citizens eventually turned on him and had him guillotined during the “Reign of Terror”.

Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, physician: Contrary to his namesake he did not invent the guillotine; but he did suggest that a something like it should be put into use. During a debate on capital punishment in 1789 he proposed that “the criminal shall be decapitated; this will be done solely by means of a simple mechanism.” This would allow people to witness a spectacular public spectacle and still be able to get back to work before the end of a lunch break.

Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, the father of chemistry: He was the first to state the Law of Conservation of Mass, recognized and named oxygen and hydrogen and also figured out that fire was chemical reaction and not an angry living sprite from the land of fairies.

Benjamin Franklin, American Ambassador, and inventor: He was fat and jolly and enjoyed a good fart joke. Oh, and he also invented some stuff like, lighting rods, bifocals, the Franklin stove and, you know, a little thing called AMERICA! He was also a gigantic pussy hound and couldn’t bare the fact that Mesmer was getting more tail than he was.

The team devised a series of experiments to test for magnetic forces. Their approach was not to find out if Animal Magnetism worked or not they was more concerned with whether or not Animal Magnetism existed. You might think that if it worked, then it existed, but there is a reason why these guys were smarter than you and me. They were keenly aware that the mind could perform great feats if coerced into the right state regardless of a force or not, so testing if it existed would put an end to the whole debate.

One of their test is seen today as one of the first placebo tests ever performed. On Franklin’s estate, just south of France, he blindfolded a young boy and told him that one the five trees were magnetized using Mesmer’s technique. The boy’s job was to tell them which one was magnetized. At the first tree he began to tremble, at the second tree he began to sweat, when they got to the “magnetized tree”, he dropped to the floor in convulsions. And not a single person touched his wee. Of course the first four trees were not administered to and were not magnetized by a Mesmerist. Because of this and experiments like it they concluded that there was no magnetic field, but they didn’t think that people were faking it either. They believed that a real physical effect was being produced by the imagination of the patient.

After the investigation on Animal Magnetism was concluded, Franz Anton Mesmer was driven into exile. He moved to London to try to start the whole mess again, but it failed. The last twenty years of his life are largely unknown. He died in obscurity in 1815.