ANIMAL MAGNETISM or MESMERISM is a supposed influence or emanation by means of which one person can act upon another, producing wonderful effects upon his body, and controlling his actions and thoughts. It was fancied to have some analogy to the magnetism of the loadstone, and hence its name. The term has been used to group together a multitude of manifestations deemed of a wonderful kind, and which have given rise to an amount of delusion and credulity hardly exemplified on any other subject. Electro-biology, Odylism, table-turning, spirit-rapping, table•talking, spiritual ism, have been classed as only modifications of the same phenomena. The art of inducing the magnetic •state, as practiced by its discoverer, Mesmer, involved the use of apparatus—the baguet or magnetic tub, iron rods, ' but the more common means have been passes made by the hands of the magnetizer from the head of the " subject" or patient downward, or simply making him fix his eyes on the operator. IIe then gen erally feels a creeping sensation over the surface, and shortly falls into the mes meric sleep—a state more or less resembling somnambulism. About one person in ten is found capable of being thus affected, to a greater or less extent. While in this state, the functions of the body are liable to be much affected; the pulsations of the heart and the respiration are quickened or retarded, and the secretions altered, and that chiefly at the will of the operator; at his direction, the limbs are made rigid, or become endowed with unnatural strength; one liquid tastes as any other, and is hot or cold, sweet or bit ter, as the subject is told; in short, every thought, sensation, and movement of the sub ject obeys the behest of the mesmerizer. According to the mesmeric theory, the nervous energy of the operator has overpowered that of the subject, as a powerful magnet does a weak one, and the two are in rapport, as it is termed. In some cases the mesmeric trance assumes the form of clairvoyance. See SOMNAMBULISM.
It has been clearly established, however, that the notion of a force of any kind what ever proceeding in such cases from a person or from a magnetizing apparatus, is a delu sion. The effects, whatever they are, must have their cause somewhere else. Where it is to be looked for was indicated, though not followed up, as early as 1785, in the report of the commissioners, one of whom was Franklin, appointed by the king of France to examine the pretensions of Mesmer. They report that " on blindfolding those who
seemed to be most susceptible to the influence (of this agent), all its ordinary effects were produced when nothing was done to them but when they imagined they were magnet ized, while none of its effects were produced when they were really magnetized, bu imagined nothing was done; that when brought under a magnetized tree (one of Mesmer' modes of operating), nothing happened if the subjects of '''the experiment thought th• were at a distance from the tree, while they were immediately thrown into convulsic s if they believed they were near the tree, although really at a distance from it; and t t, consequently, the effects actually produced were produced purely by the imagination.
But this part of the science of human nature—the reflex action of the mental on the physical—had not then been sufficiently studied, and is not now widely • •ugh known to render the conclusion of the reporters a satisfactory explanation of the -nom elm; and the fallacies of mesmerism, though subjected since to many similar c °sures (Dr. Falkoner of Bath, e.g., annihilated the patent metallic tractors of Perkin, • making wooden ones exactly like them, which produced exactly the same effects), have nstantly revived in some shape or other. One chief cause of the inveteracy of the lusion is, that the opponents of mesmerism do not distinguish between denying the t ory of the mesmerists and the.facts which that theory pretends to explain, and have b • n too ready to ascribe the whole to delusion and It thus happens that the most • eptical often become all of a sudden the most credulous. Finding that things do , ually happen which they cannot explain, and had been accustomed to denounce as i postures, they rush to the other extreme, and embrace not only the facts but the theo •' and call this, too, believing the evidence of their senses. Now, the reality of the • af.er part of the manifestations appealed to by the mesmerist must be admitted, th; gh we deny his explanation of them; and even where. their reality must be denied, does not follow that the mesmerist is not sincere in believing them; there is only _ atcr room than in any other case for suspecting that he has deceived himself.