MESMER Franz Anton Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal.

Garrison-Morton, 4992.1; PMM, 225; Norman, 100 books famous in medicine, 47; Norman cat. M-4; D.S.B., IX, pp.3265-28; Heirs of Hippocrates, 1013; En français dans le texte, 171.

First edition.

“The manifesto of natural magnetism. On the eve of the French Revolution, Mesmer captured the imagination of the Parisian public with his remarkable ability to effect cures by throwing patients into ‘mesmeric’ trances, and with his philosophical system aimed at creating a more perfect human society through harmony with the physical universe. As much a social movement as a medical practice, mesmerism spread quickly through Europe and America, and became such a mania in pre-Revolutionary France that between 1779 and 1779 more literature was generated on mesmerism than on any other single topic” (Norman).

“Du somnambulisme provoqué à l’hypnose et à la psychanalyse, l’expérience contemporaine de la psychiatrie dynamique, la découverte de l’inconscient et la guérison par l’esprit trouvent leur origine dans l’audace autoritaire et maladroite des intuitions du précurseur Mesmer” (En Français dans le texte).