Mesmerism

Mesmerists met traditional medicine on its own terms by agreeing that all disorders and cures were physical; they thereby avoided calling into question the reality of the disorder itself. To avoid being drawn into the “woman question,” they similarly endorsed traditional medicine’s distress about the degeneracy accompanying the feminization of culture. But mesmerists held traditional medicine responsible for this degeneration, while putting forth animal magnetism as the path to moral as well as physical regeneration of women. “The value of animal magnetism lay in enabling women to give birth and to be beautiful, charming, and graceful by nature rather than art.” Mesmer’s proposal to invest lay persons with the power of healing themselves resonated with the public and was part of this process (L. Wilson, loc 791-799). Mesmerist supporters criticized a lack of medical progress rooted in the medical community’s alignment with the state in perpetuating the physical and moral decay of the people. The type of reforms advocated by Mesmerists “could precipitate a change in [people’s] temperament and lead to demands for freedom and equality.” Radical mesmerists sought to rid France of a politicized medical community that shared the state’s commitment to a social order reliant, inter alia, on illness, drugs, and laws (loc 752-754).