Almanac: Mesmerism

And now a page from our “Sunday Morning” Almanac: March 5th, 1815, 202 years ago today … the day German-born Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer died at the age of 80.

Mesmer believed he could harness a force he called “animal magnetism” to cure the sick. 

Relying largely on the power of suggestion, his controversial methods came to be called “Mesmerism” -- a forerunner of modern hypnotism.

Alan Rickman portrayed Mesmer as only he could in the 1994 movie of that name -- just one of countless depictions of hypnotism in popular culture:  

“You see before you the conductors of my power. Don’t be frightened if you swoon away.”

Bela Lugosi portrayed hypnotism as the most horrifying of mythic dark arts in the 1931 film “Dracula” … while the 1962 Cold War thriller “The Manchurian Candidate” credited hypnotism with near-irresistible powers at Communism’s beck-and-call:

“I am sure you’ve all heard the old wives’ tale that no hypnotized subject may be forced to do that which is repellent to his moral nature, whatever that may be. Nonsense, of course.”

By contrast, Dawn Wells and Russell Johnson played hypnotism strictly for laughs in the 1960s TV series, “Gilligan’s Island.”

Entertainment value aside, hypnotism’s modern-day medical practitioners employ it to help patients do everything from stopping smoking to losing weight, as Dr. Svetlana Cogan recently explained to our New York station WCBS:

“The purpose of hypnosis is to address these deeply-seated conflicts between the subconscious and the conscious so we can get to the root of the problem,” Dr. Cogan said. 

Serious therapy or parlor trick, popular views on hypnotism’s value remain divided -- not unlike the way they were in the days of the late Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer.