Hypnotism: Its History, Practice and Theory

 

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by fixation of the gaze. Relying on a statement of Stein, Preyer believes that the condition of a Japanese religious leader, who lived long before Christ, was also an auto-hypnosis, and that this kind of

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6 HYPNOTISM.

could be utilized for the curing of diseases (sympathetic cures); also men could cure themselves of diseases by transferring them to animals and plants. A remnant of this system developed by Maxwell still exists in country places, where people occasionally apply excreta to their wounds. Adolf Witke, in his work on popular German superstitions of to-day, treats in detail of the transference of disease from one person to another; as, for example, the prevalent belief among Thuringians that if a person suffering from nasal catarrh wrap up a copper coin in a piece of paper into which he has blown his nose, and throw it back-wards over his shoulder into the street, then the cold will be transferred to the individual who may happen to pick up the packet. Maxwell also assumed the existence of a vital spirit of the universe (spiritus vitalis), by means of which all bodies are related to each other; a theory we meet later on in Mesmer's universal fluid. In the beginning of the eighteenth century we find Santanelli in Italy asserting a like proposition. Every-thing material possesses a radiating atmosphere, which acts magnetically. Santanelli, however, recognized the great influence of the imagination (Ave Lallemant).

Although the foundation of the doctrine of animal magnet-ism was thus laid, universal attention was first drawn to it by Mesmer,l a Viennese doctor (1734-1815). He studied in his dissertation the influence of the planets on human bodies. In the year 1775 he sent out a circular-letter particularly addressed to several academies. In this he maintained the existence of animal magnetism, by means of which persons could influence each other. He, however, distinguished animal magnetism from the magnetism of minerals, which he at first used in the treatment of diseases, but later on ceased to employ. The only academy which replied to him was that of Berlin, at Sulzer's instigation, and its reply was unfavourable. However, about this time Mesmer was nominated a member of the Bavarian Academy.

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