Lifted in the air by an invisible gas discovered only a few years earlier: hydrogen.

Scientific progress in the 18th century in Europe, a period known as the “Age of Enlightenment”

seemed like magic.

Experiments in chemistry and physics were fundamentally altering how humans understood

the universe.

The world of medicine, on the other hand, was still largely stuck in the past.

Painful, often ineffective medical procedures that had persisted for centuries, like leeching

and bloodletting, were still in practice.

Until a charismatic German physician appeared in Paris in 1778.

He claimed to wield magnetic healing powers.

And that he could cure almost any illness using just his hands.

His methods caused a sensation.

Even the Queen of France herself, Marie Antoinette, received his treatment.

It seemed like Anton Mesmer had discovered the key to how disease works in the human

body.

Or maybe he was making the whole thing up.

Franz Anton Mesmer studied medicine at the University of Vienna,

and he was fascinated by how natural energies in the universe , like gravity, interacted

with the human body.

He ultimately developed a theory about the fundamental nature of life he called “animal

magnetism.”

Basically, Mesmer theorised that all living things are connected by an invisible magnetic

fluid.

It's a bit ambiguous whether it's an actual actual fluid or more like some sort of force.

But essentially it just pervades the universe.

My name is Urte Laukaityte and I'm a PHD student. I'm quite interested in sort of medical history

more generally.

According to Mesmer, most diseases were caused by this fluid being blocked somewhere in the

body.

And the cure for almost anything involved restoring the flow of this fluid.

By “magnetizing” the patient.

Hence the…“medical” sort of treatments that he came up with.

Initially Mesmer had his patients swallow iron filings, which he claimed he could guide

through the body using magnets.

Quite quickly, though, he discovered that just using his hands was enough, and would

produce the same effects.

When he approached the French Academy of Sciences and Royal Society of Medicine to seek approval

for his theory, he was turned away repeatedly.

So he switched tactics, and appealed directly to the people of Paris.

And they loved it.

Mesmer's patients, many of them women, came to him with a range of ailments both physical

and psychological, like “melancholia,” what's now called depression.

His practice was definitely stupendously popular among the French nobility and the upper classes.

He would be invited to court quite a lot.

And that was another way that his popularity sort of grew at the time.

As Mesmer's reputation spread, he found ways to expand his practice.

So he not only trained disciples, but also he started having group seances.

Mesmer invented his “baquet,” a wooden tub that could “magnetize” groups of people

simultaneously.

It was filled with what Mesmer claimed was “magnetized water,” along with other materials

like glass bottles and pieces of metal.

And they would have protruding rods that the patient would press against the affected body

part.

Or tether the ailing body part to the baquet with rope, like this man, who's suffering

from a headache, is doing.

Having in mind the alternatives that were on offer at the time, taking part in Mesmer's

seances was just a great way to spend your time in addition to kind of trying to heal

whatever it is that your complaint is

People crowded in a dimly lit room, while someone nearby played soft music on the glass

armonica.

And then Mesmer would be wandering around in his lilac coat, touching them in various

places.

Lower abdomen, thighs.

Which is where the stoppages seem to be located, especially in the women patients.

People responded to magnetization by experiencing what Mesmer called a “crisis.”

You would expect crying, shouting, convulsing, hiccups, laughter.

Some of the cases that are described involve people biting their hand such that a mark

is left.

It would be fairly extreme reactions.

One of these group seances is reimagined in the 1994 biographical film "Mesmer," which stars

Alan Rickman as the enchanting physician himself.

RICKMAN: You see before you the conductors of my power.

But not everyone loved what Mesmer was doing.

He had already been chased out of Vienna in 1777, after being labeled a fraud and a charlatan

for falsely claiming to have cured a young girl of her blindness.

And he was starting to gain the wrong kind of attention in Paris, too.

Namely, within the scientific community.

The conventional sort of doctors were definitely losing a lot of their patients.

You also had people actually concerned with the fact that, you know, this magnetic fluid

was probably not a thing.

One of those people was the King of France himself, Louis XVI.

Who, in 1784, commissioned a group of leading scientists to investigate Mesmer's methods.

The commission was headed up by the first US Ambassador to France, Benjamin Franklin.

A celebrity scientist himself, who had already mastered a different form of energy: electricity.

Those 'crises' Mesmer's patients experienced certainly made it seem like his methods were

doing…something.

But the commission wanted to figure out if it was caused by magnetic fluid or something

else entirely.

The commission came up with one clear way to test this.

Strip out all the suggestive elements from Mesmer's practice: the group setting, the

glass armonica, and see if animal magnetism could cause a “crisis” on its own.

Mesmer refused to participate, so the commission worked with his lead disciple, mesmerist Charles

Deslon, instead.

Here he is attempting to “magnetize” Benjamin Franklin during the proceedings.

When Deslon “magnetized” a subject while hidden behind a partition, nothing happened

at all.

Then he emerges, does exactly the same moves in front of her. She collapses.

Another test involved a woman drinking water she was told was “magnetized,” but wasn't.

She collapsed quite quickly within, I think, minutes in a full-fledged crisis.

And then the commissioners bring her water to recover.

They told her that this was regular water.

She feels much better after drinking that. However, that cup was, in fact, magnetized.

Their innovative approach became the first prominent placebo-controlled blind trial.

Unsurprisingly, the commission concluded that the subjects only reacted to animal magnetism

when they expected it.

And the true force behind Mesmer's methods was what they labelled “imagination.”

But, as it turns out, that conclusion ended up being an innovation itself.

Although the report shattered the notion that it was magnetic fluid that was doing the work,

they did acknowledge that something's going on.

Even if the reason is imagination.

Once the report was made public, Mesmer's reputation was ruined.

Animal magnetism became a joke.

And Mesmer was once again labelled a fraud and a charlatan.

He left Paris in disgrace, and died in 1815.

But mesmerism lived on, finding a new fanbase in the United States through the mid-1800s.

Until it evolved into something more recognizable today: hypnotism.

James Braid, the surgeon who coined the term “hypnotism” in the 1840s, was fascinated

by animal magnetism, and wrote extensively about its potential.

Like the Franklin Commission, Braid concluded that “outside influence” wasn't necessary

to produce the phenomena of mesmerism.”

It could come from the mind alone.

No magnets necessary.

Mesmer's downfall at the hands of the Franklin Commission's report inadvertently ended

up being foundational for our understanding of the placebo effect.

There are a couple of different ways you can read it.

So one would be, the rational scientific approach, like the scientific method, has triumphed.

Animal magnetism is completely destroyed as a sham.

And that's the end of the story.

Another way of reading it would be how powerful such a psychological suggestion can be.