![]() Mesmer would then appear and touch each patient in different places on the body. If it was a group treatment in one of the enlarged baths, they would hold each other’s hands. If the patient was by himself, he would grasp the iron bars. The lights in the room would be dimmed and perfume would be used to create a certain atmosphere. ![]() Therefore for Mesmer to be accused of quack remedies was his enemy’s way of basically stating that he really did not know what he was either doing or talking about.Ī patient would be required to sit around a bath of dilute sulphuric acid out of which curved iron bars protruded. In fact the people who took up the work as a ‘quack doctor’ did it for the money they could earn by finding a plague victim – but they were hardly doctors. ![]() The word ‘quack’ would have had some meaning among the medical world then as it alluded to the ‘quack doctors’ who sort out patients during the 1665 Great Plague in London. Others were less sure and a number of doctors in Vienna started to intrigue against him arguing that Maria’s treatment was based around quack remedies and a quack approach. Some were very impressed with Mesmer regarding what he did to Maria. Mesmer achieved fame, or some would argue notoriety, after he partially restored the sight of a young girl called Maria Paradies who had been blind since the age of three. He associated with the rich and famous of the city and they took to his beliefs. Mesmer’s marriage to a wealthy lady allowed him to move in the higher social circles of Vienna. Mesmer recorded that this type of treatment had a remarkable effect. This entailed Mesmer laying his hands on a sick patient. Mesmer used magnetic therapy to treat patients. Mesmer claimed that a mysterious fluid, which he called ‘animal magnetism’, had an influence on the body’s health and that the planets influenced how ‘animal magnetism’ worked. In this work Mesmer attempted to show how the planets exercised an influence on human tissue both in health and disease. While in Vienna, Mesmer wrote a thesis entitled ‘De Planetarum Influxu’. He was educated in Vienna where he qualified in medicine. Franz Mesmer was born in 1734 in a village near Lake Constance.
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