Animal Magnetism - Animal Magnetism in Germany

Animal Magnetism in Germany

In Germany, almost all the university towns, public lectures on the subject of mesmerism were given and in this country, mesmerism was fully accepted and practiced. For example, in 1785, Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, a medical practitioner living in Weimar – where he became part of Goethe’s intellectual circle – concerns himself with Mesmer und sein Mesmerismus; a quarter of a century later, while he is the medical head at Berlin’s Charité and chief physician of Frederick William III, Hufeland writes about the existence of a Sympathie which, in nature, has "the effect of connecting everything together, in so doing going on to also explain the most unique relationship which holds together magnetizing therapist and magnetized patient. This relationship is portrayed as being so intimate as to turn the pair of such individuals into a single person".

Early in the nineteenth century, Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert integrated mesmerism into his course of academic lectures. Prof. Ennemoser, one of the main practitioners stated: "Mesmerism is based on experiences that everybody can have. These experiences are solidly grounded in the field of Knowledge." Mesmer's original theory was of the existence of a universal medium or “fluid”. The free and regular circulation of it through a human being produced health, while any obstruction, or impediment to that free circulation, caused disease. Germany naturally adopted the practices or methods of Mesmer's School, namely, the touchings, pressures and pointings, and the baquets, and chains. Ferdinand Koreff and Christian Wolfart, two mesmerists, were inaugurated as professors to the Medicine department of Berlin University. A good friend of Koreff, A. Hoffmann wrote "Der Magnetiseur" (1813) and thereby joined authors like Novalis and Kleist in introducing mesmerisms into German literature. The Science Academy of Berlin, offered a prize consisting of 3,300 francs—for the best explanatory thesis on the science.

It is a curious fact that Mesmer, though German-speaking, is mentioned only somewhat rarely in the early German mesmeric literature until 1809. It seems to have widely assumed that he was dead. However, though he had kept out of the public eye for over twnty years, Mesmer was still alive and tolerably robust. In 1812, the Prussian Academy of Science decided to invite Mesmer to lecture in Berlin. It was Wolfart who went to see Mesmer, and although his attempt to persuade him to visit Berlin was unsuccessful he brought back with him a long manuscript of Mesmer's, which Wolfart edited and published in 1814. In 1817, a public hospital was established in Berlin, in which no medicines were used. Only Mesmerism was adopted. The eminent Hufeland, originally an unbeliever, was the principal physician of this hospital; Hufeland was the most eminent practical physician of his time in Germany and fifteen volumes containing the clinical details and statistics of the cases treated magnetically were published.

Writing in 1816, Koreff noted that it was not especially in nervous illnesses that Wolfart obtained most beneficial results. He succeeded with ailments ranging from scrofula, ankylosis, and eye problems to haemorroids and bleeding in the womb. In some cases ordinary remedies had failed and no result was anticipated