1733-1815

Swiss Physician

The Swiss physician Franz Anton Mesmer was a well-known figure in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The term mesmerized is derived from his name.

Franz Anton Mesmer was born in 1734 in the town of Iznang on the shore of Lake Constance in Switzerland. In 1766 Mesmer passed his medical examinations, completing a dissertation entitled De planetarum influxu (Physical-Medical Treatise On the Influence of the Planets), in which he first presented his theories on animal magnetism, a force which, according to him, existed between and within all bodies, and which Mesmer believed could be manipulated to cure disease.

Upon his graduation, Mesmer relocated to Vienna, where he was known as a patron of the arts, sponsoring a performance of an opera by the young Mozart in his garden. Following the lead of a local Jesuit, Father Maximillian Hell, Mesmer began to...