Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Mesmer and His Legacy: Literature, Culture, and Science

Kent Academic Repository Full text document (pdf) Citation for published version Gray, Lesley Frances (2018) Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Mesmer and His Legacy: Literature, Culture, and Science. Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) thesis, University of Kent,. DOI Link to record in KAR https://kar.kent.ac.uk/73400/ Document Version UNSPECIFIED Copyright & reuse Content in the Kent Academic Repository is made available for research purposes. Unless otherwise stated all content is protected by copyright and in the absence of an open licence (eg Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher, author or other copyright holder. Versions of research The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record. Enquiries For any further enquiries regarding the licence status of this document, please contact: [email protected] If you believe this document infringes copyright then please contact the KAR admin team with the take-down information provided at http://kar.kent.ac.uk/contact.html Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Mesmer and His Legacy: Literature, Culture, and Science Lesley Frances Gray Thesis prepared for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Kent 2018 Acknowledgements My PhD studies were generously supported by the Susan Cohen Doctoral Scholarship and I would like to extend my gratitude to the Cohen family. My sincere thanks go to my supervisors Dr Patricia Novillo-Corvalán and Dr Paul March-Russell for all their advice, guidance, and support during my studies. I am so grateful for all the time and effort, as well as their tremendous insight and knowledge, that they have offered so generously over the past few years. I would also like to thank Jacqui Martlew and Gemma Blackman in the SECL Postgraduate Office at the University of Kent, who have always been on hand with help and advice. There were many libraries I wish to thank for their kind assistance during my research: the Bodleian Library, Oxford, particularly to Colin Harris, who is now I hope enjoying a happy retirement, for his help with the Byron–Lovelace papers; the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester for access to the Kay-Shuttleworth Papers; the British Library; the Wellcome Institute Library; as well as the University of Kent Library and my local library in Tunbridge Wells. Thanks are also due to the Estate of Lady Byron thorough Pollinger Limited and Lord Lytton, the copyright holder, for their permission to access the Byron–Lovelace documents. Finally, my grateful thanks to all the friends and family who have been so supportive during my studies. A big thank you to Charlotte Pover for her proofreading, although any residual errors are my own. A very special thank you is due to Rob for his never- ending encouragement and support, as well as cups of tea, I could not have done this without him. Lesley Gray ii University of Kent Contents Acknowledgements ii Abstract iv Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Franz Anton Mesmer: Theories, Therapies, and Early Reception 19 Chapter 2 Magnets and Mesmerism: Ada Lovelace at the Cusp of Reason and Romance 66 Chapter 3 Santiago Ramón y Cajal: Vision, Hypnosis, and the Power of Suggestion 102 Chapter 4 Arthur Conan Doyle and the Interplay between Science and the Imagination 121 Conclusion 152 Bibliography 163 Appendix: Key developments in Mesmer’s animal magnetism 185 Lesley Gray iii University of Kent Abstract The second half of the eighteenth century saw the emergence of Franz Anton Mesmer’s theories and therapies concerning the curative power of animal magnetism, an innate force that he claimed could be harnessed and directed to great healing effect. Formally dismissed by a French Royal Commission in 1784, the many positive treatment outcomes were attributed to the patient’s own imagination. This acknowledgement by the scientific fraternity that imagination alone could effect cures signalled that Mesmer’s work had uncovered new, exciting and even dangerous possibilities about the power of the mind. Always a controversial subject, those who chose to examine animal magnetism, or its later incarnations of mesmerism or hypnosis, were always at risk of social and professional criticism, even disgrace and exclusion, which raises the question of how and why respected members of the social and scientific community would approach this multifarious topic. By selecting as case studies three previously neglected figures in the mesmerism scholarship, namely, Ada Lovelace and two physician-writers, Santiago Ramón y Cajal and Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as incorporating a cutting-edge discussion of Mesmer’s life, ‘art’, and complicated relationship with the scientific community, this thesis offers new perspectives through which to re-examine the complex phenomenon of mesmerism, its possible medical applicability, and the manifold literary representations it elicited. Drawing upon archival sources, scientific texts, letters, non- fictional and fictional works, this interdisciplinary study combines close textual analysis with an examination of scientific, social and cultural contexts. Through this pluralistic critical approach, and by seeking to understand the endurance of what may now be considered a protoscience rather than a pseudoscience, the thesis concludes that while Mesmer’s work paved the way for a serious research into the constructs of the mind, the qualities of vision, observation and communication are essential to the re-evaluation of new ideas and their interpretation. Lesley Gray iv University of Kent Introduction Animal unity, the unity of a universal fluid, the unity of matter, all these recent theories, by a strange coincidence, have somehow entered the minds of poets at the same time that they have entered the minds of scientists (Charles Baudelaire, ‘Preface’ to Edgar Allan Poe’s Mesmeric Revelation, 1848). By the time that Charles Baudelaire wrote these words, Franz Anton Mesmer (1734– 1815) had been dead for over thirty years. However, animal magnetism – the name that Mesmer gave to an innate force common to all living things that he asserted could be harnessed to heal the sick – was far from defunct and Mesmer’s own name had become synonymous with therapies and treatments claiming to use this energy. Baudelaire’s comment reflects the dual aspects of the spiritual and scientific that surrounded the theories of animal magnetism and the often-frenzied enthusiasm for the subject. The fascination with animal magnetism, or mesmerism as it became known, and all its evolved forms, which includes the medical practice of hypnotherapy, still exerts a hold today. It is both the endurance of this phenomenon and the diversity of its impact that concerns this thesis. The survival of animal magnetism is surprising as the extensive investigations into Mesmer’s work carried out by the French Royal Commission in 1784 had culminated in the publication of a series of damning reports that dismissed the existence of animal magnetism. In addition, the Commission acknowledged that while the positive therapeutic outcomes in those treated by animal magnetism were mostly genuine, these results were due to the imagination of the patient rather than to animal magnetism itself. Such a statement was controversial for, as Benjamin Franklin, one of the Commissioners, wrote, ‘many wonder at the force of imagination described in it [the report]’ (Franklin 1906: 543), signalling that Mesmer’s work had uncovered new, exciting, and even dangerous possibilities about the power of the mind. In turn, the idea of the imagination effecting improvements in health also undermined the power of the medical institutions, as it implied that their specialized knowledge was no longer needed. In England, the Commissioners’ report was considered so important that the English writer and political theorist William Godwin was commissioned to provide a full Lesley Gray University of Kent Introduction 2 translation from the French original. In his Introduction to the translation, Godwin calls animal magnetism an ‘imposture’, but also comments that the report ‘seems to throw new light […] respecting the influence of the imagination upon the animal frame’ (1785: xvii). Intentionally or otherwise, the findings of the French Royal Commission encouraged a different way of looking at how the mind works and its construction of the self. Therefore, the findings of the 1784 Commission fuelled, rather than detracted from, the popularity of the practice of animal magnetism. This is evidenced by the prosperity of the Societé de l’Harmonie Universelle (Society of Universal Harmony), an elite group that followed a similar model to Masonic lodges where, in return for a large subscription, Mesmer would divulge the secrets of his therapy. From its inception in Paris in 1783, the Society rapidly expanded, and by 1789 the Paris cohort numbered 430 and branches of the Society thrived in the major cities and towns across France. Animal magnetism, as a healing therapy, underwent numerous changes over time. At first, Mesmer’s treatments involved the application of large magnets to the patient’s body; however, he later discarded the magnets, claiming that his own body alone could act as a conduit, enabling the so-called magnetic fluid to flow into the patient either directly or by the patient touching objects that had been magnetized, such as the baquets used in Mesmer’s salons or the large trees in a garden. The next change in the treatment using animal magnetism involved the mesmerist inducing a trance-like state of somnambulism. It was this practice of mesmeric somnambulism that drew a more positive response from the medical fraternity, resulting in the establishment of a further French Royal Commission in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Animal magnetism became a subject that, as Baudelaire noted above, was considered worthy of study by many respected figures in the worlds of science, medicine, philosophy, and the arts.

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