I recently read a book called Empire of the Scaple. It's about the history of surgery, dating back thousands of years. When the book got up to the 18th century, the name Franz Mesmer was mentioned. Mesmer was a German born doctor whose father wanted him to become a Catholic priest, but instead became both a lawyer and a doctor. His thesis was that his body contained an abundance of magnetic fluid, which he could pass on to his patients. From Mesmer's point of view, his patients were sick because they lacked magnetic fluid or had blockages in their magnetic fluid circulation.
Mesmer was an impressive and authoritative figure and it was determined that those patients that got better did so because of the power of suggestion. In 1779 Franz Mesmer published a book in French in which he described the 27 principles of animal magnetism. Mesmer had failed as a scientist by misinterpreting hypnosis as a magnetic field.
Franz Mesmer is one of the few people in history whose name has become a verb. What prompted me to find out more about Mesmer, was his name. I was sure it had to do with "mesmerize" and it did!! When you are mesmerized by something it is similar to hypnosis, so I assumed since Mesmer was the first to articulate this psuedo science thesis, his name became a verb, to describe hypnosis.
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