References.—The Comte de Milly’s “Mémoire sur la réduction des chaux métalliques par le feu electrique,” read before the Paris Academy May 20, 1774, brought about many controversial articles, notably from Sigaud de la Fond, Felice Fontana, Jean M. Cadet, Jean Darcet, G. F. Rouelle and Le Dru le Comus; “Biog. Univ.,” Vol. XXVIII. p. 312; Journal de Physique, Tome XIII. p. 393; Philosophical Transactions, Vol. L. p. 774; Duhamel, “Hist. Acad. Reg. Paris,” p. 184; Journal des Sçavans, Paris edition of December 1772, and Amsterdam edition of January 1773.
A.D. 1772.—Mesmer (Friedrich Anton), an Austrian physician, who, upon taking his diploma at Vienna in 1766, had published a thesis “On the Influence of the Planets upon the Human Body,” begins his investigations as to the power of the magnet with the steel plates of Father Hell. The results proved so favourable that Hell was induced to publish an account of them, but he incurred the displeasure of his friend by attributing the cures merely to the form of the plates.
Mesmer subsequently arrived at the conclusion that the magnet was incapable, by itself, of so acting upon the nerves as to produce the results obtained and that another principle was necessarily involved; he did not, however, give an explanation of it, and managed to keep his process a secret for quite a while. He had observed that nearly all substances can be magnetized by the touch, and in due time he announced his abandonment of the use of the magnet and of electricity in his production of what became known as mesmerism.
In 1779 he published his “Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal,” in which he says: “I had maintained that the heavenly spheres possessed a direct power on all of the constituent principles of animated bodies, particularly on the nervous system, by the agency of an all-penetrating fluid. I determined this action by the intension and the remission of the properties of matter and organized bodies, such as gravity, cohesion, elasticity, irritability and electricity. I supported this doctrine by various examples of periodical revolutions; and I named that property of the animal matter which renders it susceptible to the action of celestial and earthly bodies, animal magnetism. A further consideration of the subject led me to the conviction that there does exist in nature a universal principle, which, independently of ourselves, performs all that we vaguely attribute to nature or to art.”
The whole theory and practice of mesmerism was, however, openly rejected by one of Mesmer’s most capable pupils, Claude Louis Berthollet (A.D. 1803), a very distinguished French chemical philosopher, founder of the “Société Chimique d’Arcueil,” and who, in conjunction with Lavoisier (A.D. 1781), Guyton de Morveau (A.D. 1771), and Fourcroy (A.D. 1801), planned the new philosophical nomenclature which has since proved of such service to chemical science (“La Grande Encycl.,” Tome VI. p. 449; “Biog. Universelle,” Tome IV. pp. 141–149).
Mesmer gave all his manuscripts to Dr. Wolfart, of Berlin, who published in 1814, “Mesmerism ... as the general curative of mankind.” And it was one of Mesmer’s students, le Marquis de Puységur, who discovered magnetic somnambulism, an entirely new phenomenon in animal magnetism. (See the article “Somnambulism” in the “Encyl. Britannica,” as well as the numerous works therein quoted, relating to the above-named subjects, notably Mesmer’s own “Précis historique des faits relatifs au magnétisme animal, jusques en Avril 1781.”)
References.—“Bulletin de l’Acad. de Méd.,” Paris, 1837, Tome I. p. 343, etc., and Tome II. p. 370; Blavatsky, “Isis Unveiled,” Vol. I. p. 172, etc.; “L’Académie des Sciences,” par Ernest Maindron, Paris, 1888, pp. 57–63; Richard Harte, “Hypnotism and the Doctors,” Vols. I and II, New York, 1903 (from Mesmer to De Puységur, Dupotet, Deleuze, Charcot, etc.); Robert Blakey, “History of the Philosophy of Mind,” London, 1850, Vol. IV. pp. 570–582, 639–645; the report of Dr. Franklin and other Commissioners ... against mesmerism, translated by Dr. William Bache, London, 1785; J. C. Schäffer, “Abhandlung,” etc., and “Kräfte,” etc. (1776), “Fernere,” etc. (1777), also “Journal Encyclopédique” for March 1777; Van Swinden, “Recueil,” etc., La Haye, 1784, Vol. II. pp. 373–446; C. H. Wilkinson, “Elements of Galvanism,” etc., Chapter XVIII; Champignon, “Etudes Physiques,” etc., Paris, 1843; “Archives du Magn. Animal,” published by M. Le Baron d’Hénin de Cuvillers, Paris, 1820–1823; “Report on Animal Magnetism” made by Charles Poyen Saint Sauveur, 1836; Dupotet’s “Manuel,” etc., Paris, 1868; Hale’s “Franklin in France,” 1888, Part II. chap. v. alluding to an interesting manuscript of T. Auguste Thouret now in the collection of the American Philosophical Society.
A.D. 1772.—Henley (William T.), F.R.S., invents the quadrant electrometer, an apparatus with which the quantity of electricity accumulated in a jar or battery can be measured through the amount of repulsion produced by the fluid upon a pith ball suspended from the centre of a graduated arc. It is generally attached to the prime conductor to measure the state of action of the electrical machine.
He is also the inventor of the universal discharger, for directing the charge of jars or batteries (Edw. Whitaker Gray—1748–1807—“Observations on manner glass is charged and discharged by the electric fluid” in Hutton’s abridgments, Vol. XVI. p. 407).
In the Philosophical Transactions for 1774, Henley and Nairne give an account of many curious experiments proving the superiority of points over balls as conductors. The same is shown by William Swift in the Phil. Trans., Vol. LXVIII. p. 155. (For Wm. Swift consult, besides, the Phil. Trans., Vol. LXIX. p. 454, and Hutton’s abridgments, Vol. XIV. pp. 314, 571.) Henley also states that the vapour of water is a conductor of electricity; that when the flame of a candle is introduced into the circuit and a Leyden jar is discharged through it, the flame always inclines toward the negative side; and he proves that electricity cannot effect a passage through glass (Phil. Trans., Vol. LXVIII. p. 1049). He likewise makes a number of experiments to determine the relative conducting power of the different metals according to the quantity of a wire, each of a given size, melted by equal electrical shocks passed through them, and finds the metals to hold the order following as conductors: gold, brass, copper silvered, silver, iron. It was also shown by Nairne that copper conducts better than iron, in the Phil. Trans. for 1780, Vol. LXX. p. 334.