Mesmerizing Medicine

Dessin humoristique représentant un charlatan mesmérien, 1780

In the first half of the 16th century, the great anatomist Vesalius noted that Hippocrates did no dissection, at all, and Galen did his on monkeys. In other words, they might be wrong. He shortly went about proving that they were.

News of this catastrophe spread like…glass (which, if you know your physics, is actually a fluid, and therefore even slower than molasses).

In 1628 William Harvey published his “De Moto Cordis” (On the Motion of the Heart and the Blood), which established the circulatory system in its modern form and dealt the old Greek concept of the humors its death blow. Except no one noticed.

Thus, the stage was set for the introduction of another humor, in addition to the time honored black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood. This one was brand new, yet another product of the poorly understood discovery of magnetism.

Enter Franz Anton Mesmer, a physician who published his doctoral thesis in 1776 on the effect of the planets on the human body (although, to be fair, he may have plagiarized it). Mesmer was convinced that the body contained a fluid he called “animal magnetism.” This was responsible for all disease, of any type. If one could just figure out how to control it, one could cure anyone of anything.

And guess who had figured out how to control it?

Mesmer’s early experiments were on a young woman with a variety of somatic complaints. In the old days, she would have been considered a “hysteric.” In modern parlance, she was probably  neurotic, or suffering from a somatiform conversion disorder. Lay folks might call her a hypochondriac (another great word from Ancient Greece). Regardless, he fixed her round with some magnets and waved his hands and, ouila! she was cured.

He eventually discovered that he didn’t need the magnets at all. He could accomplish the same thing with the simple force of his magnetic personality, accompanied by a variety of showman’s tricks.

Mesmer did raise some eyebrows among the medical establishment, who were so far advanced that they were still using bloodletting to treat just about everything, even though the humoral theory of disease had been discredited a full hundred years before. But they were pretty sure Mesmer was a charlatan, anyway. He at least wasn’t behaving like a gentleman doctor.

Mesmer ran into trouble in Vienna when he attempted to cure an opera musician of her blindness. He was certain he had cured her; the medical men of Vienna were just as sure that she was as blind as ever.

So Mesmer headed to that great credulous city of Paris, where he set up shop. He did marvelously, curing various and sundry folks of many different ailments, including some of the rich and famous (most famously, the hero of the American Revolution, the Marquis de Lafayette). Soon he was so busy that he had to invent a group healing system, wherein a bunch of ailing folks sat around a baquet–an iron contraption holding previously “magnetized” water.

He also aroused the ire of the Faculte of the Royal Medical Society.

The Faculte wanted Mesmer shut down. Unfortunately, one of their number, a physician named d’Eison, had been won over. D’Eison proposed what might very well have been the first randomized clinical trial in history. A group of sufferers would be randomly assigned to receive either Mesmer’s therapy or conventional therapy. Results would be compared when the trial was over.

(Lest we think this is in any way modern, let us remember that this proposal was for all comers, regardless of disease. Plus, Mesmer would perform his cure without divulging his secrets.)

The Faculte declined, and ousted d’Eison, who, having been made privy to Mesmer’s methods during the battle for acceptance, promptly opened up his own shop to dispense the same cure. Mesmer, annoyed and insulted, appealed to Queen Marie Antoinette for support.

What he got was the attention of Louis XVI, who was known for being meticulous about his science. He appointed a commission to evaluate Mesmer’s methods. The members of the commission read like a who’s who of science in pre-Revolutionary France, most notably including Lavoisier, the celebrated chemist, Bailly, the astronomer, Guillotin (the doctor who proposed the contraption that would eventually kill Lavoisier, Bailly and Louis), and America’s Ben Franklin, who was serving as Ambassador from the new republic.

The panel investigated Mesmer by observing d’Eison. They found no evidence of magnetic activity in the baquet (surprise!), nor did they feel anything special when he magnetized them. They then attempted to apply his methods themselves. Their patient population included an asthmatic, a blind man, a tuberculous patient, and several other minor ailments. None showed improvement.  They even went so far as to attempt to magnetize a tree in Franklin’s yard, and see if a teenage farm hand could pick out which one. He picked out four trees, not one of them magnetized.

The commission declared Mesmer to be a total fraud. They blamed his “cures” on a combination of hysterics, suggestion, and the as-yet-unknown, but rather well described in their report, placebo effect. It didn’t help when one of his most famous cures died during a session, or when the famous blind musician gave a concert in Paris, still blind.

Mesmer left Paris with his tail between his legs.

His legacy, however, is still hotly debated. The hypnotists hail him as the (largely unwitting) pioneer of their field. Most scientists just pass him off as yet another of the charismatic quacks of the 18th century, pointing to an interview given late in his life,when he claimed he had magnetized the sun. Charcot and Freud saw him as laying the foundations for their study of hysteria.

Hysteria, which comes from the Greek word, hustera, meaning “uterus.” Which brings us back, full circle, to Hippocrates.

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