In its own time Animal Magnetism was as much a social movement as a medical practice. Thus through Memser and his disciples medical attention was directed toward psychological phenomena and the first scientific steps toward an adequate approach to psychological problems were taken. Jean-Martin Charcot in the later 19th century connected the clinical manifestations of hysteria with artificially indcued hypnotic phenomena, and Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis from his acquaintance with Charcot's practices. About the same time James Braid identified the valid phenomena in Animal Magnetism, coining the terms hypnosis and hypnotism. Successful surgery was practiced on patients in a mesmeric state by Topham and Ward and John Elliotson in England in the 1840's. Interest of physicians also continued despite the scandalous financial practices of Mesmer and his associates in Mesmer's Society of Universal Harmony, initiation into which could cost a man his fortune. Mesmer's critics observed that the actual and remarkable cures effected were due to Mesmer's working on the "imagination" of a "willing patient," who could be put into a "special state of mind." The peculiar nature of these cures continued to provoke interest among medical men, even after the Académie royale des sciences report of 1784 by Benjamin Franklin, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier and others attributed the power of Mesmerism to the "imagination." This report was translated into English in 1785. An excellent image of it was reproduced in Cabinet Magazine, Spring 2006. The sole remaining example of Mesmer's baquet, is preserved in the Musée d'Histoire de la Médecine et de la Pharmacie at Lyon. Benjamin Franklin, then American ambassador to France, was fond of demonstrating the power that could be harnessed in a Leyden jar, the prototype of the modern battery, by using one to send a bolt of electricity through a chain of people. Physicians and apothecaries frequently prescribed electric shock treatment, especially in attempts to cure paralysis, and often exposed the sick to a more general "electrical aura" as a healing agent. The baquet, as Mesmer named his magnetic device, was in keeping with the contemporary craze for medical electricity.
Some baquets could seat twenty people, and Mesmer had four of these in his Paris treatment rooms at the Hôtel Bullion on rue Coq-Héron. Because the reactions Mesmer provoked seemed to be contagious, the dramatic effects were exacerbated in a crowded room. In Paris he was besieged by more patients than he could hope to treat individually-as many as two hundred a day, so he invented what he called the baquet to accommodate groups at a time. He also had a great flair for the dramatic and theatrical. His most famous book was Mémoire sur la dévouverte du magnétisme animal (Geneva & Paris, 1779). Mesmer promoted Animal Magnetism through his own publications and those of his many followers. To transfer the healing magnetic force, Mesmer would sit with patients' legs squeezed between his knees, press their thumbs in his hands, stare intensely into their eyes, and stroke their limbs to manipulate their internal ether.
Initially he employed direct contact between his body of the physician and the patient. Later Mesmer concluded that the magnets could be dispensed with in that nearly all substances could be magnetized by touch, and it was this that led him to the idea of a magnet-like property inherent in living creatures.
He later abandoned these in favor of a "universal fluid" acting on the nervous system which was susceptible to it on account of its inherent property of "animal magnetism." At first Mesmer used actual magnets to effect cures, borrowed from the Hungarian astronomer and Jesuit priest Maximilian Hell. Mesmer always insisted on the physical character of his cures, which he at first attributed to magnetic forces, or electricity. Franz Anton Mesmer held sway over the public, "mesmerized" them as we would say, with his philosophy aimed at creating a more perfect society through harmony with the physical universe, and with his healing through "rapport" between physician and patient. On the eve of the French Revolution the Viennese-born Dr. During the decade from 1777 to 1787 more books and pamphlets were published in France on Animal Magnetism (Mesmerism in the movement's own terminology) than on any other subject.
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