Mesmerism

An Austrian physician (1734-1815) who sought to treat disease through animal magnetism, an early therapeutic application of hypnotism.

Something that makes others give their attention completely so they cannot think of anything else.

1. Produced by mesmerism; hypnotic.
2. A strong or spellbinding appeal; compelling; fascinating.
3. Hypnotic induction believed to involve animal magnetism.

1. Originally, a system of therapeutics propounded by Mesmer.
2. A precursor of hypnotism, believed by Mesmer to involve animal magnetism.
3. By extension, the power to fascinate in a way that is almost hypnotic.

This term is named for the physician Franz (originally Friedrich) Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), who advocated his theory of animal magnetism or mesmerism. Mesmer stroked his patients first with magnets and later with his hands, believing he possessed animal magnetism. Mesmer's system of therapeutics was a forerunner of modern hypnotism.

An example from literature: "At first, when as a young man he began to dip into the secrets of mesmerism, his mind seemed to be wandering in a strange land where all was chaos and darkness, save that here and there some great unexplainable and disconnected fact loomed out in front of him." Arthur Conan Doyle, The Captain of the Polestar and other Tales, 1894, p. 84.

Someone who has a strong or spellbinding appeal; a fascinating person.

When the members of an audience sit mesmerized by a speaker, their reactions do not take the form of dancing, sleeping, or falling into convulsions; however, if Franz Anton Mesmer were addressing the audience, such behavior could be expected.

Mesmer was a visionary 18th-century physician who believed cures could be effected by having patients do things such as sit with their feet in a fountain of magnetized water while holding cables attached to magnetized trees. Mesmer then came to believe that magnetic powers resided in himself, and during highly fashionable curative sessions in Paris he caused his patients to have reactions ranging from sleeping or dancing to convulsions.

These reactions were actually brought about by hypnotic powers that Mesmer was unaware of possessing. One of his pupils, named Puységur, then used the term mesmerism (first recorded in English in 1802) for Mesmer's practices. The related word mesmerize (first recorded in English in 1829), having shed its reference to the hypnotic doctor, lives on in the sense “to enthrall”.

The act of mesmerizing; the state of being mesmerized.

To have someone's attention completely so he/she cannot think of anything else.

Having the full attention of others fixated as though by a spell; fascinated, hypnotized, mesmerized, spellbound, transfixed.

1. Something that is very attractive, in a mysterious way, making others want to keep looking.
2. Attracting and holding interest as if by a spell; such as, "The sheer force of her presence was mesmerizing."