Word: mesmerizer
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...Subscriber McKee reconsider his decision. TIME, Feb. 1, was reporting the contents of 'Mental Healers, in which Stephen Zweig gives his account of Franz Anton Mesmer (mesmerism), Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science), Sigmund Freud (psychoanalysis...
Mental Healers narrates the life-history, describes the practices of three such doctor-priests?the discoverers of Mesmerism, Christian Science, Psychoanalysis. Franz Anton Mesmer (1733-1814) started the snowball rolling with a bit of magnetized iron. In 1774 Maximilian Hell, astronomer of the Society of Jesus, fashioned a magnet which, on application, cured a lady's stomach trouble. Mesmer tried similar tricks with Hell magnets himself; to his amazement they worked. An enormous practice sprang up at Mesmer's Vienna home. Soon, however, he discovered that the magnet was unnecessary, that he could cure his patients by merely touching them...
...Mesmer left Vienna, went to Switzerland, then to Paris where, after two years of successful practice, he offered his services to Louis XVI. But, as with other salvagers, it took bullion-room gold to keep him dredging up wrecks. He told the king "for the purposes I have in mind, the sum of four or five hundred thousand francs is neither here nor there. My discoveries and myself must be endowed with a generous hand. . . ." Parsimonious Louis declined, whereupon the money was raised for Mesmer by private subscription. Mesmeromania became the rage. He continued practicing, though without official recognition, until...
...mind, apart from the ordinary way of communication. Chance will not account for this class of phenomena; for too many experiments have been performed by responsible persons, Prof. Barrett of Dublin, in particular. He has shown that in 31 cases there has been an actual transfer of will. 2. Mesmerism, so called from Mesmer, who first brought it into notice in Paris, in 1778. He claimed that he could cure all diseases by stroking the patient with his hands. His theory was that there was a passage of a certain fluid from one person to another, but it was disproved...