Book: Mesmerism Spiritualism Witchcraft And Miracle by Allen Putnam
Mesmerism is a bit of medical quackery developed in the 1806 Sibly18th century by the German Physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815). In 1766, he published his doctoral dissertation on how the planets affect health: De planetarum influxu in corpus humanum (On the Influence of the Planets on the Human Body). The work was not original, but largely plagiarized (Pattie 1994). Nevertheless, it satisfied the faculty at the University of Vienna.Mesmer also discovered that even though he didn't need magnets to get results, the dramatic effect of waving a magnetized pole over a person, or having his subjects sit in magnetized water or hold magnetized poles, etc., while he moved around in brightly colored robes playing the scientific faith healer, made for better drama and for larger audiences. He was able to evoke from a number of his clients entertaining behaviors ranging from sleeping to dancing to having convulsions. Mesmer did basically what today's hypnotists do in showrooms and at fairs, and what faith healers do in circus tents and churches. Mesmer set up a Magnetic Institute where he had his patients did such things as sit with their feet in a fountain of magnetized water while holding cables attached to magnetized trees. He was later denounced as a fraud by the French medical establishment and by a commission which included Benjamin Franklin.
Downloadable books (free):
Paul Boyer - The Salem Witchcraft Papers Vol 3Gordon Ireland - Faq On Wicca And Witchcraft And More
John Seymour - Irish Witchcraft And Demonology
Walter Rowe - Mysterious Delusions Witchcraft In Salem
Allen Putnam - Mesmerism Spiritualism Witchcraft And Miracle
