Mesmerism Effects On Society

Effects of Mesmerism on Modern Science and Society

The 1700’s was considered the age of enlightenment. What is enlightenment? This question has been inquired about by historians for years. To me, enlightenment is the wonder and curiosity one shows to expand their mind. In this period, scientists were asking perplex questions and even came up with quality explanations for these questions, but some scientists had far fetched ideas that would become a type of pseudoscience. The far-fetched idea that will be discussed is Mesmerism. When the idea came to be, it didn’t sound as ludicrous because years earlier Newton had constructed his theory on gravity. Which explained that every body of matter extorts a force on other bodies of matter. The Leyden
Mesmerism is construed as the act of “mesmerizing” the fluid that flows in your body from the north pole (your head) to the south pole (your feet) to continue to flow as it naturally did. Its like “a tide(that) takes place in the human body” (Mesmer 33). He believed this tide was called animal magnetism. The practice of mesmerism would be to unblock the tide by mesmerizing or massaging the poles, which would create an epileptic episode of convulsions in the body, and then would result in harmony for the person after. During the exercise, the patient would put their knees enclosed between Mesmer’s and then he would run the magnets up and down their bodies from pole to pole. Eventually they would have convulsions or episodes and after the person would perceive to feel better. (Mesmerism and Popular Science.) Mesmerism was believed to cure blindness, scurvy, convulsions, or other “hysterical” events. Mesmer picked Paris for his first time using mesmerism to cure people because the people in Paris have already been exposed to popular science courses. The people had been taught that “knowledge resided in the sensory experience and responsive feeling…in sensibility” (Chapter Six). Meaning that when Mesmer demonstrated mesmerism and its effects, they were susceptible to belief without proof. Mesmer told people that he had never seen the fluid before and it couldn’t be seen because it was
After the investigation, Mesmer would have a hard time doing anything scientific because everyone thought of him as a fraud. He was beckoned a charlatan and the success of charlatans is that the outcomes are very probable (schaffer astrological roots). Is he the only charlatan? Mesmer took ideas from Richard Mead and Pater Hell to come up with mesmerism. If he took these ideas from other people, why wasn’t anyone else considered a charlatan? Mesmer was subject to more social assault because his ideas were made more popular. Thousands of people would come to his shows to see if what he was doing was true. In making people believe that they are the voice of truth because they are the only ones that can feel their own feelings, he exploited them. With that being said, Mesmer used other people’s vulnerabilities against them to make money. At the time, he didn’t know what he was doing but with creating mesmerism, he constructed positive and negative ramifications that will last