Sunday 10 November 2024

Animal Magnetism - A Mesmerising Debate

LAHS Newsletter & Reviews Editor, Cynthia Brown, explores the unsettling practice of mesmerism in early Victorian Leicester.

‘Is animal magnetism true or false? asked a headline in the Leicestershire Mercury in July 1839. On closer reading this proved to be an advertisement for Holloway’s Ointment, a patent medicine claiming to be ‘an astonishing remedy… possessing powers truly magnetic’ for a whole range of diseases (Leicestershire Mercury, 20 July 1839) - but it was a clear echo of a contemporary debate about what may be more familiar to us as mesmerism.

This took its name from the experiments of the Austrian physician Franz Mesmer in the 1770s, whose theory of ‘animal magnetism’ was based on the belief that the human body possessed an invisible fluid that was affected by the planets. While his ability to induce a trance-like state in many of his subjects was not denied, his use of magnets to treat illness by influencing the flow of this fluid was derided by other physicians, and he moved his practice from Vienna to Paris. There, as widely reported in the British press, a commission established by Louis XVI in 1784 conducted a series of experiments before dismissing his methods as ‘a threat not only to health… but also to morality, especially in the case of weak, virtuous women’. Nevertheless, animal magnetism remained in the public eye in Britain, in the form of letters to newspapers urging closer examination of its therapeutic potential, demonstrations conducted by itinerant ‘professors’, or its mocking inclusion in theatrical performances such as the comic opera The Highland Reel in Canterbury in 1789, which incorporated ‘the Farce of ANIMAL MAGNETISM’ (Kentish Gazette, 21 August 1789).

In the later 1830s, however, it once again became the subject of serious debate among the medical profession. In 1837, Dr John Elliotson, professor of medicine at the University of London hospital, began to experiment with mesmerism as a therapeutic tool. He resigned his position the following year following adverse publicity and the hostility of many medical colleagues. An investigation published in the London Medical Gazette (1838) also concluded that there was no evidence of any magnetic agency in mesmeric phenomena. This was just the sort of controversy that appealed to the Mechanics Institute in Leicester, and in March 1841 it hosted a lecture on ‘that strange subject, Animal Magnetism’ by Dr Edward Cantor, ‘Lecturer to the Principal London Institutions’ (Leicestershire Mercury, 30 October 1841). Dr Cantor:

did not positively express his belief in this curious, and, with some, exploded theory… [but] commented on the folly of discrediting anything because we could not understand it, or discover its cause… At the same time Dr. Cantor recommended persons not to try these manipulations on any parties in whom they might be interested, lest they should be like the magician’s apprentice, who learned how to raise a ghost, but could not get rid of him again.

Later that year the Scottish surgeon James Braid also concluded that therapeutic effects could be achieved by mesmerism without any magnetic influence, by ‘concentrating the patient’s attention on one object or one idea and preventing all interruption or distraction whatever’ – giving this the name of hypnotism. Alongside the scientific debate, however, mesmerism had once more become a form of public entertainment, often attracting large audiences and – echoing the findings of the Paris commission - almost invariably involving young women who were widely considered to be more ‘biddable’ than male subjects.

In 1842 the French mesmerist Charles Lafontaine visited Leicester during a tour of Britain. After calling together a number of medical practitioners ‘to witness and take part in a preliminary trial’ of its effects, he held a public demonstration in the parlour of the Town Hall (The Guildhall at that time), reported in detail in the Leicestershire Mercury (26 February 1842). Here he conducted a variety of experiments on the young woman accompanying him on the tour, beginning with ‘a series of manipulations, passing his hands a number of times over the head, face, shoulders etc.; his movements becoming more rapid as he proceeded. During this operation, the young lady gradually passed into a state of slumber’. To demonstrate that ‘insensibility was now almost complete,’ she was then pierced by needles in various places, but ‘manifested no sign of feeling’. A lighted match was held to her nostrils, ‘but she only sighed.’ Her feet were raised from the floor and remained outstretched, and an arm was also extended, holding a weight. A pistol was fired close to her ear, ‘but she scarcely moved,’ and ‘did not stir’ when it was fired again. An electric shock was then administered - after first being applied to the Town Clerk ‘to test its strength.’ This was said to produce ‘only a slight trembling, which would be occasioned even in a corpse’.

These experiments, with additional features, were repeated during a second demonstration that attracted ‘a much more numerous audience’ a few days later. A request to the young woman to sing was only partly successful, prompting a member of the audience to say (after Hotspur in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I), “You may call spirits from the vasty deep, but will they come?” …’. When her forehead was pierced ‘till the blood ran down in two streams’, she showed no sign of feeling, but this produced a ‘sickening shudder… and some exclamations of displeasure’ on the part of the audience. A youth fainted when a needle was inserted under a fingernail, to cries of ‘No, no’ from those present. M. Lafontaine had previously ‘magnetised’ a number of girls brought to him at his inn at his request, two of whom – aged around 15 and 13 - also appeared on the platform on this occasion, with the promise that ‘pins should not be thrust into them [but] they might be tickled’. The tickling had no effect – but when a male member of the audience volunteered to be mesmerised, M. Lafontaine agreed but said ‘he did not expect success, and the correctness of his opinion was verified by the result’ (Leicestershire Mercury, 5 March 1842).

These and other demonstrations were attended by medical practitioners including Dr George Shaw, Senior Physician at the Leicester Infirmary, and Dr Joseph Noble of Danet’s Hall, along with James Francis Hollings, a master at the Leicester Proprietary School in New Walk. ‘The idea that he could send restless people to sleep, or save them any suffering, delighted him,’ Mary Kirby wrote of James Hollings in Leaflets from my Life (1888). In September 1844, however, he became embroiled in controversy when he practised mesmerism to assist at an operation on a young woman, Mary Ann Lakin, to amputate a leg. In a lengthy account in the Leicester Chronicle (14 September 1844) he stated that he did so at the request of Mr John Tosswill, a surgeon to the Leicester Poor Law Union and Leicester Provident Dispensary, who approached him ‘with a view to mitigating, if not of wholly counteracting, the pain and apprehension than necessarily attendant upon so formidable and operation’. He felt unable to refuse on the grounds of ‘common humanity’; but Mr Tosswill also sought the approval of Dr Shaw and Mr Thomas Paget, a highly respected local surgeon, who ‘gave it as their opinion that Mesmerism, if inefficacious, would at least be productive of no injury… and further consented to be present at the operation’.

Mary Ann, a dressmaker aged around 23, was said to have suffered ‘paroxysms of the most intense agony from a rapidly increasing tumour, which had by this time attained such a size as to measure at least thirty-three inches in circumference’, both above and below the knee. The amputation was effected in around two and a half minutes; the tying of arteries and veins in around 25 minutes, throughout which Mr Hollings ’observed no indications of suffering – nothing, in short, at any given moment, consistent with the character of deep, but very troubled sleep’. Mary Ann herself assured him that she had been ‘perfectly unconscious’ throughout the operation, but both Dr Shaw and Mr Paget had earlier given rather different versions. ‘I am by no means prepared to give my unqualified assent to such a proposition,’ Dr Shaw wrote in a letter to the Leicester Chronicle (7 September 1844): ‘as the patient unquestionably exhibited strong marks of sensibility to pain during the operation’. In the same edition, while describing Mr Hollings as ‘talented, principled, and respected’, Mr Paget wrote that: ‘During the operation there was a considerable groaning, writhing, and an approach to screaming; indeed, I have seen those who, under operations equally severe, have, without mesmerism, given far less indications of pain…’ (Leicester Chronicle, 7 September 1844).

Mary Ann recovered and was still working as a dressmaker at the 1851 Census. However, the controversy around whether mesmerism was capable of mitigating the pain of surgery was reignited in December 1844 when Mr Hollings assisted at two further operations conducted by Mr Tosswill, one an amputation, and the other for strabismus or a squint of the eye. Mr Hollings declined to comment on these in the press. Having been previously subjected to ‘so much “talking-at” … he must decline… lest his so doing should be misconstrued or misrepresented’ (Leicester Journal, 5 November 1844). In a letter to the Anti-Mesmerist (28 September 1844), however, Mr Frank Fullagar, a Leicester eye surgeon, described an account by an observer of the strabismus operation as ‘turning the eye out of its socket’ as ‘trash’ and ‘hocus pocus’, described Mr Tosswell as ‘an ignorant blockhead to publish such rubbish’, and dismissed mesmerism as ‘a compound of fraud and blasphemy’. ‘I have operated more times for strabismus than Mr Tosswill…,’ he stated: and without any mesmerism; but I assert that in the majority of them the patients have evinced very little pain indeed… With all these facts staring us in the face, I think mesmerism is nearly at its last gasp in Leicester.’

Doctors in Leicester ‘scarcely know how to deal with mesmerism’, the Leicester Chronicle claimed: ‘They are anxious – properly anxious – not to commit themselves by yielding credence to any supposed discovery in the curative art, lest they should hereafter live to be laughed at, and lose their reputations’ (7 September 1844). This was undoubtedly true, but they were not averse to adopting other means of alleviating the pain of surgery once their efficacy had been proven; and the availability of ether, first successfully demonstrated as anaesthesia in Boston, USA in 1846, went far to remove mesmerism from the picture.

Mr Hollings’ own reputation did not suffer unduly from his involvement in Mr Tosswill’s operations. He became President of the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society in 1846-47, and again on two occasions in the 1850s. However, as the London Medical Gazette claimed in the late 1830s, practitioners of animal magnetism consisted of:

those who pursue science entirely for its own sake… whose efforts have been constantly directed to the advancement of truth… [or] who have entered on the pursuit of science, either with a view of gratifying their ambition or avarice, or of satisfying that craving after novelty that which in many furnishes so powerful a stimulus for its action (1838 -9, p446)

For the remainder of the 19^th century the latter were predominant, as ‘mesmeric performances’ remained a form of popular entertainment in Leicester and beyond. Among them was a series of appearances by Dr Leon Vint, billed as ‘the World’s Greatest Mesmerist’ and ‘Laughter King of the World’ at the Temperance Hall in Leicester in November 1894, admission 3s, 2s, 1s and 6d (Leicester Journal, 16 November 1894). His popularity no doubt owed something to George du Maurier’s novel Trilby, published earlier that year and featuring the mesmerist Svengali - ‘a bad fellow… I’m sure of it,’ in the words of one of the characters – and his mesmeric influence over the artist’s model Trilby O’Ferrell. Chloroform and nitrous oxide had long been added to the medical options for general anaesthesia - but the potential of mesmerism for evil as well as good, and the unpredictable response of the mesmerised, continued to exert their fascination.

Cynthia Brown, 2024.  Email newsletter@lahs.org.uk

Sources

George du Maurier, Trilby (published serially in Harper's New Monthly Magazine from January to August 1894, and in book form in September 1894)

Medical journals: London Medical Gazette; The Anti-Mesmerist (ed. James Quilter Rumball, a prominent phrenologist)

Newspapers: Kentish Gazette; Leicester Chronicle; Leicester Journal; Leicestershire Mercury; Northampton Mercury

W.T. Preyer, address to the British Medical Association Annual Meeting, 1880, on James Braid

Report of the Royal Commission to Investigate Animal Magnetism: Résumé with Extracts, [11 August 1784], English translation - Report of the Royal Commission to Investigate Animal Magnetism … (archives.gov)

Royal College of Physicians - Anton Mesmer and his Animal Magnetism | Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (rcpe.ac.uk)

Victorian Web: Mesmerism. Ancient and Modern (victorianweb.org)

Alison Winter, Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain - Winter, Mesmerized, excerpt (uchicago.edu)