ABSTRACT
The beginnings of hypnosis in the West are, as I said, hard to excavate. But as we hack our way through the jungle, we suddenly come across a clearing with the remains of complete edifices. They are covered in creepers and weeds, to be sure, but one ruin is particularly prominent, towering above the rest. This tower represents Franz Anton Mesmer. In his chequered career as a healer, he encapsulated in miniature the whole range of the future history of hypnosis, from flamboyant showmanship to serious medicine, and from wacky theorizing to the limits of science (such as they were in his time). Was Mesmer a charlatan or the prophet of a new medicine? The jury is still out.
