MESMER Franz Anton Mémoire sur ses découvertes.

Wellcome, IV, 121 ; NLM, 302 ; Osler, 3397 ; not in Waller ; Caillet, 7433 : “Très rare” ; Norman, II, p. 878 (indicates an erroneous pagination, absent in this copy). 

First edition.

During the Revolutionary massacres in 1793 Mesmer left Paris for Vienna to eventually settle in Switzerland where he stayed until 1798 before returning to France hoping to recover some of his seized property. Residing between and three and four year between Paris, the new government agreed to compensate Mesmer with a payment of a lump sum of 400 000 livres. It is at this time that he started to publish his memoirs giving his own materialistic interpretation of animal magnetism, given without any hint to occult belief. 

“C’est dans ce mémoire que Mesmer donne son opinion sur le somnambulisme” (Caillet).

“Animal magnetism, according to Mesmer, was a physical process explicable in terms of matter and motion, particularly as related to the flow of mesmeric fluid, a physical fluid composed of extremely subtle particles, the blockage of which resulted in disease” (Norman).

One blank corner (pp. 97/98) restored.

A very good copy of the rare work, with the bookplate of Dr Maurice Villaret.