Welcome to the PEEP Podcast. I’m your host Nicolle Morock, and on this episode, we’re continuing our review the history of parapsychology with part 2. If you haven’t listened to Episode 13 yet, I recommend you do since it is part 1. However, it’s not necessary for understanding tonight’s episode. Once again, I’d like to start by crediting my main source for this topic, a book called Parapsychology: A Concise History by John Beloff. When I quote or paraphrase other sources, I’ll let you know.

Considering we have a few centuries of parapsychology to cover, I’m breaking the subject into several episodes, and I’ll use them to fill in spaces between guests. I’m always thankful for the researchers and story-sharers who come on the show, and I’m happy to work around their schedules, so when the calendar shows a lull between interviews, we’ll return to this topic.

By the way, if you’re interested in sharing your personal stories of paranormal investigations with a scientific mindset, near-death experiences, premonitions, after-death communication, or other paranormal and parapsychological topics, I’d love to have you on. You can be as anonymous as you’d like. And if you have a tip for research that I could highlight or an idea for a show topic that can be scientifically studied, fill out the form at peeppodcast.com. I promise not to spam you or sell your info. It’s strictly to make getting in touch with me easy.

Now back to the story of Franz Anton Mesmer and where we left of in Part 1.

You may recall in the late 1700s, a Viennese physician named Franz Mesmer thought he had discovered a fundamental energy that governed the health and well-being of humans, and he called it animal magnetism. He believed he could manipulate this energy or magnetic fluid to treat diseases of all types by transferring it from a healthy person to an ill person. Originally, he used magnets, but soon realized that “the act of stroking or making passes with hands across the patient’s body” would have the same effect. Both would induce convulsions and then the patient would start to feel better.

The practice evolved from inciting convulsions to lulling the patient into a trance-like state practitioners called somnambulism. It was discovered that while in that state, the patient could feel no pain, so it was often used to allow for painless surgical operations – a huge help in a time before chemical anesthetics were discovered.

The practice took its name from its creator and became known as Mesmerism. And soon it was noted that some patients, while in their trance state, had heightened extrasensory perception, or ESP.

Before we dive deeper into Mesmerism, I want to give you a little background on Franz Mesmer.

According to Brittanica.com, he was born on May 23^rd, 1734, in Iznang, Swabia, which was in historic southwestern Germany, and he died on March 5^th, 1815. He attended the University of Vienna and his dissertation in 1766 focused on the idea of animal gravitation. In it, he suggested that the gravitational pull of the planets affected “an invisible fluid found in the human body and throughout nature. In 1775, he pivoted slightly to “animal magnetism.” He said the fluid could be affected by magnets, and when the fluid in the human body is blocked, it causes disease. Removing the blockage and getting the fluid flowing smoothly will heal the ill person.

On a personal side note, this sounds much like the Eastern medicine or alternative holistic medicine idea of a life force flowing through people that when blocked can cause sickness, but we’re discussing Western medicine today, so I won’t go down that road right now.

Brittanica.com’s biographic article on Mesmer says that from 1778 to 1784, he faced ridicule and name calling – charlatan for example – from other physicians and scientists for not being able to back up his claims. First in 1778, that ridicule in Austria forced him to leave the country. He moved to France and set up a lucrative practice, but it didn’t take long for the nay-sayers there to speak out. And “in 1784 King Louis XVI appointed a commission of scientists and physicians to investigate Mesmer’s methods; among the commission’s members were the American inventor and statesman Benjamin Franklin and the French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier. They reported that Mesmer was unable to support his scientific claims, and the mesmerist movement thereafter declined.”

Despite having no hard evidence to back his claims, many of his patience swore by his therapy and reported alleviated symptoms of certain nervous system disorders.

In Parapsychology: A Concise History, Beloff points out that Mesmerism was the forerunner to hypnotism, dynamic psychology, and parapsychology. Lulling patients into a trance state allowed him to interact with them on a deeper level than he could have while they were awake and fully alert. Once some patients were found to have heightened ESP abilities in that state, Mesmerism became a procedure for studying those abilities – possibly the first one ever for controlling the conditions of the observation of ESP!



This is why Mesmer’s role is such an important part of the history of parapsychology. Back then they called it “higher phenomena of mesmerism,” but today we usually call is psi phenomena.

In Paris, he and Charles D’Elson, built a practice that became so popular that they had to come up with a way to treat patients at scale. It was a new system of group therapy in which the patients sat in large tub filled with “magnetized” water. Each patient grasped iron rods that rose from the water and each was connected to the others by a cord. Harmonious music played while magnetizers would move from patient to patient giving treatment.

Of course, this all seemed ridiculous to serious scientists and physicians, which is why the commission mentioned earlier had a job to do. Their negative report resulted in the practice being deemed a forbidden art.

So, how did the discovery of the ”higher phenomena of Mesmerism” come about?

One of Mesmer’s leading French followers, the Marquis de Puysegur, who mostly used Mesmerism for the benefit of the peasants on his estate had a breakthrough in 1784. He was treating a young man named Victor Race, who suffered from severe inflammation of the lungs. (p.21) “Victor responded by going into a trance during which his personality and behaviour underwent a remarkable change. This happened repeatedly throughout the period of his convalescence, but Victor had no recollection of what had transpired when awakened from the trance.”

In the waking, normal state, Victor was normally tongue-tied and dull-witted (Beloff’s description, not mine). But when in a somnambulistic state, he was intellectual and well-spoken. He showed an understanding of his own illness, directed its treatment, and even began doing the same for other patients. This sort of clairvoyance was amazing and brought some notoriety to Victor and Puysegur. While these days, we would consider these abilities paranormal, the Marquis would have told people back then that it was a natural function of the magnetic fluid in Victor’s body.

Victor was not the only patient that – when in a trance – could see and do things he would normally not be able to.

When word got out about what was happening on his estate, the Marquis magnetized a tree for his version of group therapy. Instead of a bath, the patients gathered around the tree for their treatment, and many reported improvement.

This is where Beloff points out that although the Marquis seemed to understand that the patient’s faith might be what healed them, he also fervently believed in the magnetization process.

Some examples of higher phenomena of Mesmerism include things we’d now call clairvovyance and remote perception or remote viewing. A message would be placed in an opaque envelope, and the somnambule would be able to “read” the message without ever having seen it. Or a lost item would be inquired about, and the patient would be able to describe its location. We already touched on what was called at the time “clairvoyant diagnosis” in which the patient seemed to be able to see into the body and determine the cause of illness. Then, there was the “community of sensation,” in which the somnambule had a rapport with a person and was able to physically respond to whatever sensations that other person experienced – “tastes, smells, or pinpricks,” for example. Today, we’d call this empathy. (p.25)

Beloff finishes off the chapter about Mesmerism describing the activities of several “outstanding somnambules,” but I won’t do that here. If you’re really interested in more examples, I encourage you to find a copy of his book! 

That, dear listener, is all I have for you this episode.

Thank you for listening! If you’ve enjoyed this first and second in the series of the history of parapsychology, I recommend finding a copy of Parapsychology: A Concise History. It goes much deeper into these topics than I can and is full of fascinating stories and documentation. What I covered tonight barely got us through Chapter 1!