Benjamin Franklin was
sent to investigate a miracle healer who could cure disease with invisible
forces.
What he discovered
changed science forever.
Paris, 1784. The city
was obsessed with a German physician named Franz Mesmer who claimed he could
cure anything—paralysis, blindness, seizures, chronic pain—using an invisible
force he called "animal magnetism."
Mesmer's treatments
were theatrical spectacles. Patients sat in dimly lit rooms around a wooden tub
filled with water, iron filings, and glass bottles. Iron rods protruded from
the tub. Patients would grasp the rods while Mesmer, dressed in flowing silk
robes, moved among them, waving his hands, staring intensely into their eyes,
and speaking in low, commanding tones.
And then something
extraordinary happened.
Patients would fall
into trance-like states. They'd convulse. They'd cry out. They'd report feeling
waves of energy flowing through their bodies. Some would collapse unconscious.
Others would claim instant healing from ailments they'd suffered for years.
Women especially
seemed susceptible to Mesmer's treatments—which led to whispered scandals about
what exactly was happening in those darkened rooms when the doctor placed his
hands on female patients and stared deeply into their eyes.
But scandal or not,
people kept coming. Because people kept getting better.
Or so they claimed.
Mesmer hadn't always
been so theatrical. When he'd first developed his theory of "animal
magnetism" in the 1770s, he'd used actual magnets—believing he could
manipulate an invisible fluid-like force flowing through all living things,
restoring balance and curing disease.
Then he realized he
didn't need the magnets at all. He could achieve the same results with just his
voice, his hands, his eyes. The "magnetic force" wasn't in the
magnets. It was in him.
He became convinced he
possessed a special power—that he was a conduit for this universal energy.
The Vienna medical establishment
thought he was either a fraud or insane. They ostracized him. So Mesmer moved
to Paris in 1778, where he became an overnight sensation.
Parisian high society
couldn't get enough. Mesmer's waiting list stretched for months. Other
practitioners adopted his methods, calling themselves "magnetizers"
and later "mesmerists." Clinics opened across the city.
But the French
scientific and medical communities were skeptical. They'd seen plenty of
miracle cures come and go. Mesmer's claims sounded like mystical nonsense.
Yet his patients swore
by him. Testimony after testimony described impossible healings. Were all these
people lying? Delusional? Or was there something real happening?
King Louis XVI decided
to settle the matter once and for all.
In 1784, he assembled
a royal commission to investigate mesmerism scientifically. The panel included
some of the greatest minds in France—and one very famous American.
Benjamin Franklin was
78 years old, serving as American ambassador to France. He was also a scientist,
inventor, and one of the Enlightenment's leading voices for rational inquiry
over superstition.
Joining him was
Antoine Lavoisier—the father of modern chemistry, the man who'd discovered
oxygen and revolutionized scientific understanding of combustion and chemical
reactions.
Also on the
commission: Jean Sylvain Bailly (astronomer), Joseph-Ignace Guillotin
(physician who'd later lend his name to the execution device), and several
other prominent scientists and doctors.
Their task: determine
if animal magnetism was real.
The commission watched
Mesmer's treatments. They observed the trances, the convulsions, the dramatic
healings. Impressive theater, certainly. But was it medicine?
Then they did
something revolutionary.
They designed
experiments to test whether the "magnetic force" actually existed—or
whether patients were responding to something else entirely.
In what may have been
the first blind trial in scientific history, they had subjects tested without
knowing whether they were actually being "magnetized" or not.
A mesmerist would
stand behind a door, supposedly directing magnetic forces at a subject on the
other side. The subject, not knowing if the magnetizer was actually there,
would report feeling the effects—even when nobody was behind the door at all.
Trees were
"magnetized" and subjects told which ones. They'd feel powerful
effects from trees that hadn't been magnetized—and nothing from trees that had.
Patients were
blindfolded and told they were being magnetized when they weren't. They'd
respond dramatically. Then they'd be actually magnetized without being told—and
feel nothing.
The pattern was
unmistakable. Patients responded when they believed they were being
magnetized—regardless of whether anything was actually being done to them.
The commission
published its findings later in 1784.
There was no
scientific evidence for "animal magnetism." It didn't exist. The
invisible fluid flowing through all things was imaginary.
But something real was
happening. Patients were responding—genuinely responding—to their own
expectations, imagination, and the power of suggestion.
The commission had
just documented what would later be called the placebo effect. They'd proven
scientifically that belief alone could produce real physiological responses—that
the mind could affect the body in measurable ways, even without any actual
medical intervention.
This was
revolutionary. Not because it vindicated Mesmer—it didn't. But because it
revealed something profound about human psychology and the healing process.
Mesmer was furious. He
denounced the commission as biased, corrupt, closed-minded. His followers
rallied to his defense, pointing to all the people who'd been healed.
But the damage was
done. The craze began to fade.
Mesmer left France and
resumed practicing in Switzerland. Eventually, he returned to the German state
of Baden, where he died in 1815 at age 80—largely forgotten, his grand theory
discredited.
But
"mesmerism" didn't completely die.
It lingered throughout
the 19th century, experiencing periodic revivals. In the 1840s and 1850s,
mesmerist shows were wildly popular in America—traveling performers would put
volunteers into trances and have them perform stunts on stage.
Medical researchers,
meanwhile, had noticed something useful: those trance states Mesmer induced
were real, even if animal magnetism wasn't. Patients in those states really did
become unresponsive to pain. Really did become highly suggestible.
By the late 1800s,
scientists had refined these techniques into what we now call hypnosis—stripping
away Mesmer's mystical theories while keeping the practical therapeutic
applications.
Today, hypnotherapy is
a legitimate medical tool used for pain management, anxiety treatment, and
breaking habits. It's not magic. It's not mysterious cosmic energy. It's the
power of focused attention and suggestion—the same power Mesmer stumbled upon while
waving his hands in darkened rooms.
And we still use his
name. When something captures our complete attention, when we're utterly
transfixed and absorbed, we say we're "mesmerized."
Every time you use
that word, you're referencing an 18th-century German doctor who convinced
himself he could channel invisible cosmic forces—and accidentally helped
pioneer the scientific study of the placebo effect and the power of the mind
over the body.
The 1784 royal
commission didn't just debunk a quack. It established a template for how to
investigate extraordinary claims scientifically. It showed how to design
experiments that could separate real effects from imagined ones.
Franklin and Lavoisier
didn't just prove Mesmer wrong. They demonstrated how science should work—with
controlled experiments, blind trials, and reproducible results.
And they revealed
something Mesmer never understood: he was creating real effects in his
patients. Just not the ones he thought.
The invisible force
wasn't flowing from him to them. It was flowing from their minds to their
bodies—from belief to experience, from expectation to reality.
Mesmer thought he'd
discovered a cosmic energy. What he'd actually discovered was the power of the
human mind to heal and harm itself through belief alone.
That turned out to be
far more interesting—and far more useful—than animal magnetism ever could have
been.
So the next time
something leaves you utterly mesmerized, remember: you're experiencing a trace
of that same mental power that convinced 18th-century Parisians they were being
healed by invisible fluids flowing through magnetic rods.
The power was real.
The theory was nonsense. But the word survived.
And so did the lesson:
extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Even when the patients
swear it works. Even when the healer believes in their own powers.
Especially then.
Benjamin Franklin
helped prove that in 1784. And we've been applying that principle ever since.
