Should Mesmer be given credit for pioneering modern hypnotism?
Mesmer spent most of his adult life in France and enjoyed, for a time, the support of Marie Antoinette. Most other physicians considered him a quack. He made a fair amount of money, but by nearly all accounts he was sincere. He treated the poor for free. The medical establishment abhorred his theories and was determined to take him down; and it did, officially, with committees, experiments, and reports by eminent doctors who dismissed his claims. All but one, a Dr. Deslon, a respected court physician. Deslon believed in the phenomenon of animal magnetism but did not believe it had anything to do with magnets. Deslon believed it worked (sometimes) via the imagination of the patient, by what we would now call suggestion or hypnosis. Mesmer was adamant that his treatments had nothing to do with the imagination and adopted a “thanks, but no thanks attitude” toward Deslon. Undeterred, Mesmer continued his work. He moved out of Paris to the fashionable resort of Spa and continued his work. M
