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MESMER, Franz Anton (1734-1815). Mémoire sur la découverte du Magnétisme Animal. Geneva and Paris: Pierre-Frangois Didot le jeune, 1779.
MESMER, Franz Anton (1734-1815). Mémoire sur la découverte du Magnétisme Animal. Geneva and Paris: Pierre-Frangois Didot le jeune, 1779. 8 o (180 x 115 mm). Half-title. (One or two spots.) Contemporary marbled paper wrappers, manuscript paper label on backstrip, uncut (some edges a bit frayed); quarter morocco folding box. Provenance : Freres Perisse, Lyons (contemporary bookseller's label). "SINCE HIS TIME THE INVESTIGATION OF HOW TO RELEASE SUBCONSCIOUS STATES THROUGH AUTO- AND HETERO-SUGGESTION HAS CONTINUED, AND THE WHOLE FIELD OF EXTRA-SENSORY PERCEPTION AND SPIRITUALISM HAS AFFINITY WITH MESMERISM" ( PMM ) FIRST EDITION OF THE MANIFESTO OF MESMERISM: presented to the French as a "natural" medicine at a time when the cult of nature and the popular enthusiasm for science had reached a peak. Numerous Parisians fell into "crisis" at the touch of Mesmer's hand and recovered with a new sense of being at harmony with the world. His followers, the mesmerists, published numerous case histories documenting their claims. "They produced an enormous barrage of propaganda -- at least 200 books and pamphlets, more than were written on any other single subject during the decade before the opening phase of the Revolution in 1787" ( DSB ). See Darnton, Mesmerism , pp. 3-81; En franais dans le text 171; Garrison-Morton 4992.1; Grolier Medicine 47; Heirs of Hippocrates 1013; Hunter-Macalpine, pp. 480-82; NLM/Blake, p.302; Norman M4; PMM 225; Tischner 10; Waller 6505.