There exists a universal physical fluid, analogous to gravity or electricity, that pervades all living bodies; illness is a blockage of this fluid's flow; the trained operator can redirect the fluid and restore health.
The fluid-mechanism claim is the theoretical foundation of Mesmer’s practice. The 1784 royal commission demonstrated under blind conditions that none of the proposed effects of the fluid could be observed independently of the patient’s expectation and the operator’s suggestion. No physical evidence of any such fluid has been found in any subsequent investigation, and the mechanism is empirically empty. The claim was directionally interesting (it anticipated the broader 19th-century interest in suggestion-based clinical states, eventually formalized as hypnosis) but the proposed physical mechanism was wrong.
Appears in
Sources
- Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal — Mesmer, Franz Anton. *Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal*. Geneva and Paris: Didot le Jeune, 1779. Reprinted multiple times in subsequent editions and in English translation as *Mesmerism: A Memoir on the Discovery of Animal Magnetism*.
- Rapport des commissaires chargés par le Roi de l'examen du magnétisme animal (Public Report) — Bailly, Jean-Sylvain; Franklin, Benjamin; Lavoisier, Antoine-Laurent; Guillotin, Joseph-Ignace; d'Arcet, Jean; Le Roy, Jean-Baptiste; Sallin, et al. *Rapport des commissaires chargés par le Roi de l'examen du magnétisme animal*. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, August 1784. English translation: 'Report of Dr. Benjamin Franklin and Other Commissioners, Charged by the King of France with the Examination of the Animal Magnetism, as now Practised at Paris,' London, 1785.