The Vital Fluid and The Practice of Animal Magnetism
A 1791 London publication explains the Mesmer’s theory of the vital fluid :
“Modern philosophy has admitted a plenum or universal principle of fluid matter, which occupies all space; and that as all bodies moving in the world, abound with pores, this fluid matter introduces itself through the interstices and returns backwards and forwards, flowing through one body by the currents which issue therefrom to another, as in a magnet, which produces that phenomenon which we call Animal Magnetism. This fluid consists of fire, air and spirit, and like all other fluids tends to an equilibrium, therefore it is easy to conceive how the efforts which the bodies make towards each other produce animal electricity, which in fact is no more than the effect produced between two bodies, one of which has more motion than the other; a phenomenon serving to prove that the body which has most motion communicates it to the other, until the medium of motion becomes an equilibrium between the two bodies, and then this equality of motion produces animal electricity.”
In Mesmer’s view, illness has to do with blockages in the natural flow of this universal vital energy throughout the human body. Harmony could be restored by various techniques and some of them are employed even today by practitioners of energetic techniques. One was the laying on of hands on specific points called "poles", another was making passes over the patient’s body. In Mesmer's original approach, patients typically went through the "crisis" as part of the healing process.
According to an anonymous writer of a series of letters published by the editor John Pearson in 1790, animal magnetism can cause a wide range of effects ranging from vomiting to what is what is classically termed the “crisis.” According to Deleuze: "“Magnetizers have given the name of crises to the remarkable changes which the action of magnetism produces upon those who are subjected to it, or to that state which is different from the natural one, into which they are thrown by its influence”
Read more about this topic: Animal Magnetism
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