Animal Magnetism - Proposals For Different Names For Animal Magnetism and Mesmerism

Proposals For Different Names For Animal Magnetism and Mesmerism

Many practitioners came from a scientific basis, such as Joseph Philippe François Deleuze (1753–1835), a French physician, anatomist, and gynecologist. One of his pupils was Théodore Léger (1799–1853), who wrote that the label "mesmerism" was "most improper." (Léger moved to Texas around 1836). Noting that, by 1846, the term Galvanism had been replaced by electricity, Léger wrote that year:

MESMERISM, of all the names proposed, is decidedly the most improper; for, in the first place, no true science has ever been designated by the name of a man, whatever be the claims he could urge in his favor; and secondly, what are the claims of Mesmer for such an honor? He is not the inventor of the practical part of the science, since we can trace the practice of it through the most remote ages; and in that respect, the part which he introduced has been completely abandoned. He proposed for it a theory which is now exploded, and which, on account of his errors, has been fatal to our progress. He never spoke of the phenomena which have rehabilitated our cause among scientific men; and since nothing remains to be attributed to Mesmer, either in the practice and theory, or the discoveries that constitute our science, why should it be called MESMERISM?

Léger instead of "mesmerism" proposed the name “Psychodunamy” or “power of the soul.”. Léger renamed all the appropriate operations, the verb being to “dunamise,” etc. So he dismissed “animal electricity” (Petetin), “mesmerism,” “pathetism” (Sunderland), and “etherology” (Grimes). In renaming the phenomenon, however, Leger did not revise the characteristics attributed to it. Légér was not the only one in proposing other names for the phenomena of mesmerism.

The baron von Reichenbach proposed the term Od. He wrote: "Va," in Sanscrit, signifies to blow (as the wind). In Latin, " vado," and in the ancient Norse, "vada" means, "I go, I go fast, I hasten on, I flow on." Hence, in the old German dialect, "Wodan " siguifies the idea of the all-penetrating, which in various old idioms passes into "Wuodan, Odan, Odin," meaning the all-pervading power, which was ultimately personified in a German deity. "Od" is, therefore, the sound appropriate to a dynamide or imponderable force, which rapidly penetrates and constantly flows through all objects in collective nature, with irresistible and unrestrainable power."

In France we could mention Dr. Barety, who after a long series of experiments coined the name "neuric force", The neuric force, he said, circulated within the nerves of the body and could be projected out of it as well. The latter was accomplished by means of passes, by pointing the fingers to the desired target, as well as through eyesight, and breath. Boirac instead proposed the name "biactinism" for any phenomena in which a radiating influence is apparently exerted at a distance over other animate beings.

The use of different names for the phenomena increases even more in the twentieth century. For example the description of "bioplasma" proposed in Russia in the twentieth century corresponds to the concepts attributed to "animal magnetism".