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Mental Healings in Modern Times artificial magnets. Later on he threw away his magnets and evolved the theory of animal magnetism. This he held to be a
fluid,
which pervades the universe, but is most active in the human organism. He claimed that this magnetic fluid, which was going forth from him to his patients, healed them. People flocked to him, and many wonderful cures were affected.
Mesmer moved to Paris, and while there the Government appointed a commission composed of physicians and members of the Academy of Science, of which Benjamin Franklin was a member, to investigate his cures. The report admitted the leading facts claimed by Mesmer, but held that there was no evidence to prove the correctness
of his magnetic fluid theory, and said the effects were due to the imagination of the patients. Soon after this, Mesmer was driven into exile, and died in
1815.
Shortly afterwards, Dr. Braid of Manchester undertook to show that magnetic fluid had nothing to do with the production of the healings of Dr. Mesmer. Dr. Braid discovered that patients could be thrown into hypnotic sleep by suggestion, during which many of the well-known phenomena ascribed to magnetism by Mesmer could be produced. You can readily see that all these cures were undoubtedly brought about by the active imagination of the patients together with a powerful suggestion of health to their subconscious minds. All this could be termed blind faith, as there was no understanding in those days as to how the cures were brought about.
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