Animal magnetism in Spanish medicine (1786–1860)
Ángel González de Pablo
To cite this version:
Ángel González de Pablo. Animal magnetism in Spanish medicine (1786–1860). History of
Psychiatry, SAGE Publications, 2006, 17 (3), pp.279-298. .
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History of Psychiatry, 17(3): 279–298 Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications
(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) www.sagepublications.com
[200609] DOI: 10.1177/0957154X06061604
Animal magnetism in Spanish medicine
(1786–1860)
ÁNGEL GONZÁLEZ DE PABLO*
Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Edited by
Dr TOM DENING
This paper studies the reception and development of animal magnetism in
Spanish medicine. It analyses in turn: the initial rejection of animal magnetism
influenced by the reports of the French Royal Commissions of 1784; the first
attempts to implant Mesmerism around 1816; its reluctant acceptance with the
introduction of phrenology from 1842 onwards; and, finally, its critical revision,
provoked by issues of legal responsibility, from 1856 to 1860. Hypnotism, as a
term, began to appear in Spanish medical publications around 1860.
Keywords: animal magnetism; hypnosis; hypnotism; Mesmerism; somnambulism;
Spain; 19th century
There are several historical bibliographies of animal magnetism and
hypnotism,1 as well as detailed reference works.2 Nevertheless, references to
Spanish contributions to animal magnetism and hypnotism are rare in either
specialized bibliographies3 or in the main works of reference.4 Moreover,
there has been little research dedicated to the history of animal magnetism
and hypnotism in Spain.5 This work addresses these gaps, and has two main
aims: first, to reconstruct the way in which Spanish medicine made contact
with animal magnetism, thus establishing the main stages of the development
of medical animal magnetism in Spain; and, second, to describe the basic
characteristics of magnetic practice carried out by Spanish doctors.
* Address for correspondence: Unidad de Historia de la Ciencia, Facultad de Medicina,
Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), Ciudad Universitaria, 28040 – Madrid, Spain.
Email: [email protected]
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HISTORY OF PSYCHIATRY 17(3)
Initial rejection
The first reaction of Spanish medicine to animal magnetism was very much
influenced by the reports of two French Royal Commissions published in
1784. At the beginning of that year, the French medical profession had
become alarmed by the spread of the controversial doctrine of Franz Anton
Mesmer (1734–1815). The Commissions were established at the request of
Charles d’Eslon (1739–1786), an influential doctor (at that time personal
doctor to the Count d’Artois, the king’s brother) and a former disciple of
Mesmer. In response to increasing hostility from professional colleagues, he
asked the government to investigate the animal magnetism that he practised
in his clinic, in order to silence voices critical of his practice (Gauld, 1992: 7).
Despite the fact that some distinguished members of the nobility were
enthusiastic followers of animal magnetism, the French government viewed it
with apprehension because of the reputation for democracy that mesmeric
societies enjoyed, as was also the case with certain masonic lodges. Mesmer
was not a political character, but his call for harmony between man and
universe could readily be applied to the new harmony of moral and political
order. Thus, when Breteuil, the minister of the Maison du Roi, set up the
Royal Commissions in March 1784 to investigate the claims of animal
magnetism, he may well have had other hidden motives, apart from
supporting d’Eslon’s claims (Gauld, 1992: 8–9).
One of the Commissions was made up of four professors from the Faculty
of Medicine and five members of the Royal Academy of Sciences, and the
other consisted of five scholars appointed by the Royal Society of Medicine.
Both Commissions worked principally with d’Eslon, but Mesmer, who
considered their methods unacceptable, did not co-operate. The first
Commission addressed evidence for the existence of animal magnetism and
the magnetic fluid. The Commission made the observation that magnetic
effects could be obtained without magnetism by making patients believe that
they were magnetized, whereas these effects were not seen when the subjects
had been magnetized without knowing it. It therefore concluded that there
was nothing to prove the existence of either phenomenon, and that the
effects observed during mesmeric treatments were attributable solely to
heightened imagination (Rapport des commissaires chargés pour le Roi . . .,
1784a). The second Commission’s task was to verify the therapeutic results
of animal magnetism. To this end, it divided magnetically-treated patients
into three groups: one consisted of those with clearly identified illnesses;
another of those with vague symptoms; and the third group was formed by
melancholics. This Commission also reached a negative conclusion – albeit
with the sole dissenting vote of the botanist Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu
(1748–1836) – declaring that none of the patients from the first group had
been cured, and that although several of the other two groups claimed to
have improved, the improvement could not be attributed to the specific
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effect of animal magnetism (Rapport des commissaires de la Société Royale de
Médecine …, 1784b).6
The negative conclusions of the Commissions seem to have pleased the
French government, judging by the fact that they printed numerous copies
which were widely distributed (Gauld, 1992: 29). The publicity they received
inevitably caused repercussions in other European countries. In Spain, one of
the first important responses was Disertación médica de el magnetismo animal,
expounded by Florencio Delgado before the Royal Society of Medicine and
other Sciences of Seville in 1786, and published the following year (Delgado,
1787). Delgado’s dissertation, divided into twenty-three short chapters
grouped in three parts, was little more than a summary of the first report
published by the members of the French Faculty of Medicine and Royal
Academy of Sciences. The first part concisely explained the doctrine of
animal magnetism, based around the existence of a universally extended
magnetic fluid (Delgado, 1787: 237–44). The second part described the two
main ways in which magnetism was applied, intended to modify the
magnetic fluid of magnetized subjects: individual, in which the magnetizer
makes a series of passes over a particular patient; and public, in which, with
the aid of the baquet, several people receive magnetic treatment simultaneously (Delgado, 1787: 245–54). And the third part evaluated its curative
properties, that is to say, whether or not magnetism was a valid remedy,
briefly relating the experiments collected in the French report (Delgado,
1787: 252–66). Finally, as might be expected, Delgado reached the same
conclusion as the Royal Commissioners: that the existence of the alleged
magnetic fluid cannot be proved, and that the curative effects of magnetism
are due to the patients’ imagination:
Animal magnetism is not, nor can it be, a remedy for any maladies, and
its action is ineffective […] If some real cures were effected after the
application of magnetism, they could be the mere effect of nature, and
not by virtue of this supposed essence [magnetic fluid], which should be
seen as a chimera […] Its force, in truth, lies in the fantasy of
hypersensitive brains.7 (Delgado, 1787: 265–6)
Spanish medicine, therefore, following official French dictates, also recognized
some possible therapeutic effects of animal magnetism, but by considering
the fluid that supposedly caused them as a chimera, it concluded that these
cures could not, in fact, be due to animal magnetism, but were the fruit of
the patient’s imagination – an imagination that was, moreover, viewed with
contempt, for its spurious character precluded any medical approach.8
Following this critical initial reception, the rejection of magnetism remained
the dominant attitude of Spanish doctors during the following decades. This
estrangement was emphasized in the medical dictionaries from the early
nineteenth century. One of the best known was Antonio Ballano’s Diccionario
de medicina y cirugía (1805–1807). Here the entry on ‘Mesmerism’ stated: ‘It is
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evident that Mesmer has done no more than to revive chimerical ideas,
praised in other times and forgotten in our day’ (Ballano, 1807: 389). These
antagonistic opinions remained unchanged in the later edition of the Diccionario
of 1815–1817 (Ballano, 1817: 389) and they were even compounded in its
Suplemento, published between 1820 and 1823 by Manuel Hurtado de
Mendoza and Celedonio Martinez Caballero (1821: 583–4), who wrote:
There is no need to suppose an animal magnetism, whose reality cannot be
demonstrated, nor a universal fluid that penetrates arbitrarily everywhere,
to explain all the apparent facts, all the natural cures and revelations, and
all the popularly known states of somnambulism, or rather of semi-ecstasy
and hysterical catalepsy […], their cures and other genuine results
obtained should be attributed to nervous communications and wellknown ways or means […] of illusion which have always been brought to
bear on minds. (original italics)
Thus, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the two main arguments
against animal magnetism continued to be the lack of evidence for magnetic
fluid and the attribution of the therapeutic effects of magnetism and
somnambulism to deluded imagination.
First attempts to introduce animal magnetism
The unanimous initial rejection of magnetism only began to change in the
second decade of the nineteenth century. An indication of this change was
the publication in 1816 by Ignacio Graells of his Noticias del magnetismo. This
was printed, as Graells acknowledged, because of the scarcity of material so
far written in Spanish on the subject, and because ‘this doctrine is producing
general excitement in this Court [Madrid], it already has some followers,
[and] magnetic episodes are frequently repeated’ (Graells, 1816: 23). These
first medical attempts to consider animal magnetism in Spain were related to
the close but ambivalent relationship with France during the War of
Independence (1808–14),9 and to the influence of certain French works on
the subject, such as Histoire critique du magnétisme animal (1813) by the
botanist and librarian of the Museum of Natural History, Joseph Deleuze
(1753–1835).
Nevertheless, the enthusiasm for magnetism among Spanish doctors was
rather limited and did not approach the popularity it had achieved in France,
where the magnetic movement was in high social fashion around 1820 (López
Piñero and Morales Meseguer, 1970: 119–20). It even managed to gain the
approval of Étienne J. Georget (1795–1828), one of the main members of
the school of Jean-Étienne-Dominique Esquirol (1772–1840), and Léon L.
Rostan (1790–1866), one of the most outstanding neurologists of the time
and colleague of Georget at the Salpêtrière.10 Graells could not be compared
with Georget or Rostan, for he was a simple general practitioner working in
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Carabanchel de Abajo, a small town near Madrid. His Noticias was a simple
work, divided into two contrasting parts. The first gave a brief account of the
increasing interest in magnetic practices in Madrid. Taking Deleuze as the
only supporter of his views (Graells, 1816: 12–13), Graells disputed the reports
of the Royal Commissions of 1784 on the grounds that their members ‘were so
prejudiced against the doctrine of animal magnetism, that they did not deign
to examine its effects’ (p. 12). In the second part of Noticias, Graells – as he
admitted – simply transcribed, more or less literally, individual chapters on
mineral and animal magnetism taken from a certain Diccionario de las maravillas
de la naturaleza11 (pp. 23–4).
But although the quality of Graells’ Noticias was very far from the painstaking
approach of Deleuze, Georget or Rostan, this humble doctor still pointed out
the important fact that animal magnetism does have therapeutic effects and
that those effects had been disparaged by the French Royal Commissions
because of their invalidation of magnetic fluid. Although Graells was completely
convinced, from his own experience, of the therapeutic effects of Mesmerism,
he was nevertheless cautious about its practice, because he wanted:
Spaniards to proceed with less frivolity, and to be more cautious and
circumspect than our neighbours in their decisions, setting them in this as
in all else an example of moderation and common sense, to be able to
embrace it or to reject it on solid grounds. (Graells, 1816: 23)
Despite the moderation and common sense, this tentative appearance of
Mesmerism in Spanish medicine was short-lived. In 1814, after the departure of
the French troops, Fernando VII returned to Spain and a brief constitutional
period, 1820–23, was followed by the so-called ‘Ominous Decade’ (1823–33)
during which absolutism was restored and any thinking suspected of
liberalism was repressed. Magnetism, with its aura of a liberal doctrine, was
affected by this repression, as can be seen by the governmental prohibitions
of the practice of animal magnetism which occurred throughout Spain. For
example, in 1827 the provincial government of Manresa made an order ‘to
discover with all diligence whether there is anyone in that district using or
protecting the sham of animal magnetism, and in that case to take action
against him’ (Gobierno militar y político de Manresa, 1827: 3).12
Nor were the 1830s very conducive to magnetic practices in Spain. The
situation was not helped by the first Carlist War, a civil war in Spain (1833–40),
or by further negative conclusions on magnetism and somnambulism
established by the Paris Academy of Medicine in 1831 and 1837.13 For
example, a paper in the Gaceta Médica de Madrid in June 1834 compared
animal magnetism with the utopian socialism of Saint-Simon (1760–1825),
describing both as fleeting ‘whims of fashion’ (Anonymous, 1834: 16).
Nonetheless, the author expressed some hope in its future possibilities:
divested of the absurdities they may contain, these doctrines will still
produce useful results: it cannot be denied that Saint-Simon’s doctrine
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has aired some extremely interesting ideas of political economy […] and
magnetism too seems destined to draw our attention to the hitherto
incomprehensible modifications of the nervous system. (Anonymous,
1834: 16)
Although there is noticeably greater scepticism, the cautious expectations of
magnetism that Graells expressed in 1816 are still discernible in these
comments nearly 20 years later.
Reluctant acceptance
The 1834 article thought that, so far, Spain had not suffered from the
‘contagion’ of the doctrine of animal magnetism, that ‘sensationalist system
which has spread its roots progressively throughout Europe and provoked the
most ardent controversy in the medical world’ (Anonymous, 1834: 16). But
from 1840 onwards the ‘contagion’ began to make itself felt. This change
was probably stimulated by exiles, who had fled to France and England
during Ferdinand’s ‘Ominous Decade’ and on their return brought with them
the ideas in vogue in those countries. And these included magnetism, in spite
of its rejection in official medical circles. Evidence of its persistent popularity
in France was the publication of three journals: Journal du magnétisme animal
(1839–42) published by Jean Joseph Adolphe Ricard; Revue magnétique (1844–
66) published by Aubin Gauthier; and, most important, Journal du magnétisme
(1845–60) published by J. D. Dupotet de Sennevoy. Similarly, in Britain the
magnetic journal The Zoist, founded by John Elliotson (1791–1868), was
published from 1843 to 1856. In addition, the late thirties and early forties
were the golden age of the travelling demonstrators of magnetism. The best
known were Dupotet, C. Lafontaine (1803–1892) and Ricard, whose public
magnetic demonstrations achieved a great reputation and considerable media
reaction in France and Britain (Gauld, 1992: 163–5).
The clamour caused by magnetism in other countries reached the Spanish
medical press from 1840 onwards. Some of the articles published at this time
seemed to be receptive to its possibilities. For example, Boletín de Medicina,
Cirugía y Farmacia recounted one of Lafontaine’s typical theatrical magnetic
demonstrations held in London, which produced different phenomena of
anaesthesia and telepathy among the audience (LL. RR., 1841: 235–7).
Nevertheless, most articles continued to cast serious doubt on animal
magnetism, pointing out the fakery of magnetic vision through opaque bodies
(Anonymous, 1841), the fraud of the new methods and products announced
by the magnetizers (F. R., 1845) or their uselessness in the treatment of epilepsy
(Vinader Doménech, 1844).
Despite this fierce criticism, the popularity of magnetism increased,
leading in the mid-1840s to the first Spanish translations of treatises on
animal magnetism: those of Ricard (1844), Alphonse Teste (1845) and
Aubin Gauthier (1846). All of them were standard works on magnetic theory
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and practice, and they became authentic reference books in Spain. A
translation was also published of Rostan’s article on Mesmerism (originally
published in 1825 in the Dictionnaire de médecine), which in Spanish was
called Del magnetismo animal (Rostan, 1845).
Teste’s manual was translated by Mariano Cubí y Soler (1801–75) and his
follower Magín Pers y Ramona (1803–88). Cubí, who returned to Spain
from the USA in 1842, was the main architect of the development of
phrenology in Spain (Granjel, 1950: 203). Phrenology maintained that the
faculties of individuals could be learnt by the inspection and feeling of their
cranial protuberances, which supposedly bore a relation to the encephalic
locations of these faculties. Despite opposition from the religious authorities,
phrenology14 had a certain esteem in its own right in Spanish medicine15 but
it also had an important effect in supporting the influence of magnetism.16 In
fact, Cubí included an appendix dedicated to animal magnetism (‘Magnetismo
humano’) in his Elementos de frenología (Cubí y Soler, 1849).
‘Magnetismo humano’, although brief, was the most complete work on
animal magnetism published in Spain in the first half of the nineteenth
century. In it, Cubí followed the model of Teste’s treatise, but introduced
several contributions from his own personal experience: ‘I consider myself to
be one of the men who has magnetized most and who has seen most
magnetize’ (Cubí y Soler, 1849: 177).17 Although not explicitly stated, there
are in effect three main sections in ‘Magnetismo humano’. In the first (pp.
159–69), the author defined magnetic fluid and the magnetic state,18 gave a
brief history of magnetism and emphasized that magnetism does not affect
spirituality, free will or the immortality of the soul. This latter point was
made to avoid his earlier experience of offending the religious authorities
with the publication of his Sistema completo de frenología (1844). The second
part (pp. 169–74) was devoted to explanations of what he considered to be
the three main techniques of hypnotic induction; first, the technique of
Deleuze, making passes; second, that of Jose Custódio de Faria (1756–
1819), better known as Abbé Faria, who used verbal commands; and his
own, which he called ‘the Cubí method’, a mixture of Deleuze’s and Faria’s
methods.19 In the third section of ‘Magnetismo humano’, Cubí described the
phenomena of magnetism and lucid and non-lucid somnambulism (Cubí y
Soler, 1849: 176–87).
In his works Cubí also mentioned some combined techniques, though he
did not use the specific term phrenomesmerism. Phrenological examinations
were conducted by means of a tactile examination of the cranial contours to
‘read’ the faculties of the underlying encephalic phrenological organs. But
magnetizers, more ambitiously, tried in addition to ‘stimulate’ those particular
cerebral organs. This was done in such a way that, when the magnetizer
touched, or even indicated without actually touching, a certain zone of the
skull of a previously magnetized subject, the person in the state of trance
showed the feelings corresponding to the encephalic phrenological organ
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thus excited. Cubí’s use of phrenomesmerism was already referred to in his
notes to the translation of Teste’s manual (Teste, 1845: 214–15), but he
made more extensive reference to this practice in a later work, La frenología y
sus glorias: lecciones de frenología (Cubí y Soler, 1853: 235).20
Despite his enthusiasm for magnetism, Cubí, who was not a medical doctor
but a philologist, only considered its therapeutic possibilities in passing (Cubí y
Soler, 1849: 183). This limited therapeutic concern was not shared, of course,
by the doctors who came to magnetism from phrenology, for example
Telesforo Pérez and Ramón Comellas, who both published in 1846. Pérez
wrote a brief article in the Boletín de Medicina, Cirugía y Farmacia. Comellas
went into more detail in a pamphlet entitled Reseña sobre el magnetismo animal
dedicada a los médicos y al público español, claiming that magnetism had direct
beneficial effects on diseases affecting the nervous system (epilepsy, hysteria,
hypochondria, monomania, catalepsy, neuralgia, rheumatism, blindness,
some types of deafness and of paralysis) and indirectly, basically by the
suppression of pain, on many others (Comellas, 1846: 20–7). Both authors
(Pérez without mentioning it, and Comellas doing so very often) used as their
main reference Rostan’s ‘Mesmérisme’, the Spanish translation of which had
been published in the previous year. And both, like Rostan, explained the
effects of animal magnetism by the theory of emanation (Comellas, 1846:
10–12; Pérez, 1846: 21).21
The second main therapeutic indication of magnetism, pain control, was
partly jeopardized from 1846 onwards by the introduction of anaesthesia with
ether.22 Medical papers of the time compared ether-induced anaesthesia with
magnetic anaesthesia, and these comparisons throw light on the actual practice
of magnetism. One such paper in El Telégrafo Médico described the numerous
operations carried out with the aid of magnetic sleep by the Scottish surgeon
James Esdaile (1808–59) in the Native Hospital of Hooghly, in Bengal (Anonymous, 1847: 334–5), as well as the series of twelve operations carried out
with mesmeric anaesthesia by Loysel in Cherbourg between October 1845
and June 1847, and witnessed by many people (Anonymous, 1847: 336–7).
A third area of interest was in the therapeutic possibilities of lucid somnambulism, including the ability to recognize, at least up to a point, either one’s
own afflictions or those of other people supposedly in magnetic communication
with the somnambulist. This procedure was led by French magnetizing doctors
such as Rostan (1845: 90–1) but, at least until 1846, Spanish doctors practising
magnetism had unanimously ignored the lucid therapeutic capacities of the
somnambulist state, branding them as ‘confused’ (Comellas, 1846: 8) or
‘exaggerations’ (Pérez, 1846: 22). However, subsequently this began to change,
possibly as a result of the increasing influence of animal magnetism in medicine
and the consequent increase of experimentation with it. The first text to
propound the value of therapeutic somnambulism was signed by the initials ‘R.
J. y G.’ (identity not established, but probably not a doctor) and entitled
Nociones prácticas del magnetismo animal. This short work included three brief
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dialogues between a magnetizer and a somnambulist. The second of these
described the lucid divination by the somnambulist of his own disease and the
self-prescription of a series of remedies; and the third dealt with clairvoyant
divination and treatment of a third party by the somnambulist (R. J. y G., 1846:
10–13). The following year, Juan Andrés Enríquez (1847) published a series
of four articles entitled ‘Magnetismo animal: curiosas observaciones de
sonambulismo’. These described, at length and rather disjointedly, different
clairvoyant phenomena and a process of premonitory divination and lucid
treatment of her own ailment (a menstrual disorder) in a young patient whom
Enríquez had previously magnetized into a somnambulistic state.
These sporadic news items about lucid somnambulist therapies in medical
publications of the 1840s did not, however, modify the majority opinion that
still considered them as dreams, deliriums or illusions (see, for example, Cubí y
Soler, 1849: 182–4). But perceptions of the possibilities of somnambulism
underwent a change from 1853, as a result of a magnetic phenomenon that
excited European and Spanish society: the so-called ‘table-turning’.23 This
phenomenon consisted of the formation of a ‘magnetic chain’, placing the
hands of each participant on a table with the thumbs superposed and the
right little finger on the left little finger of the person located to the right,
thus forming a closed circle. After a few minutes the table would begin to
turn in an anti-clockwise direction. Instead of a table, any object could be
used (an upside-down top hat was among the favourites) or even a person.
The Spanish medical press made several references to this, for example,
Anonymous (1853), Delgras and Ramos Borguella (1853), Nieto (1853),
Quintana (1853), but El Heraldo Médico was the professional journal which
gave the greatest attention to the phenomenon. This journal included articles
and letters bringing together news about it published in the Spanish and
foreign political press (e.g., Gutiérrez de la Vega, 1853a) and in the foreign
medical press (e.g., Gutiérrez de la Vega, 1853b), as well as explanations of
the event given by French doctors (Piégu, 1853). But in particular it published
descriptions of the first-hand experiments carried out by Spanish doctors and
their attempts to explain this marvel (Alarcón Salcedo, 1853a, 1853b; Torres
and Castellví Pallarés, 1853; Vérges, 1853a, 1853b), almost always attributed to
a nervous or zoomagnetic fluid akin to electricity, supposedly radiated by the
subjects forming the magnetic chain.
The phenomenon of turning tables was considered as proof of the supposed
existence of zoomagnetic fluid and its ability to radiate outside the body.
This led to increased therapeutic uses of magnetism during the mid-1850s
for nervous pathology (Fernández López, 1852) and for pain (J. B.-A de G. y
A., 1853). In addition, the therapeutic possibilities of somnambulism were
also regarded more seriously, as evidenced by Joaquín Quintana (1856: 275),
a doctor in Cabra (Córdoba):
It is necessary to agree that magnetism reunites all the necessary
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conditions to impose itself on an area of pathology, more or less
extensive, in relation to the importance of vital disturbances […] And
note that, so far, I refer only to magnetism considered in itself as a means
of treatment, and in no way to the amazing medical prospects afforded by
somnambulism […] From this new viewpoint [of somnambulism], I see a
considerable expansion of the circle of therapeutic operations; and
magnetism will become a great treasure, which on more than one
occasion the wise doctor will be able to turn to account.
Thus, the years 1853–56 saw the culmination of the process that started
around 1840, whereby it was admitted within Spanish medicine that the
therapeutic effects observed in magnetized patients were due effectively and
specifically to animal magnetism, were not reproducible without it, and were
not mere fantasies arising from an overexcited and misleading imagination
(recall the rejected conclusions of the Commission of the Paris Academy of
Medicine in 1831; see Note 13). The cause of animal magnetism was helped
considerably by the fashionable interest at that time in supposedly magnetic
effects such as table-turning. These phenomena (childish and banal, but
nevertheless widespread and popular) seemed to constitute tangible proof of
the existence of the zoomagnetic fluid (analogous to the electrical fluid)
which acted as the medium of animal magnetism.
Critical revision
From about 1856 onwards, Spanish medicine moved into a period of
reflection and critical assessment of magnetic doctrines. Typical of this
standpoint was Pedro Mata y Fontanet (1811–77), a strong somaticist and
determinist figure who was crucial to the development of Spanish forensic
medicine and psychiatry (Doménech, 1980).
Mata analysed animal magnetism (which he usually referred to as artificial
somnambulism) in three lectures delivered at the Athenaeum in Madrid in
1856 and 1857, and published in 1864 in his Tratado de la razón humana en
sus estados intermedios.24 Mata started from the premise that artificial or
magnetic somnambulism is similar to natural somnambulism, with the single
difference that in the former it is the magnetizer who plunges the subject into
a dream state by dominating his or her will (Mata, 1864a: 341). Next, he
distinguished magnetic phenomena from the explanations that had been
given about them. He maintained that the phenomena of magnetic or
artificial somnambulism are ‘actual fact’ (Mata, 1864a: 338) and that they
are the same phenomena which occur in natural somnambulism; the most
significant of these are: more or less profound numbness, partial wakefulness
of certain senses and organs, heightening of external and internal senses,
enhancement of the memory, visions or hallucinations, and predictions or
prophecies (although never completely accurate) (Mata, 1864c: 387). Mata
did not mention the more outlandish features of somnambulism,25 but he
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had no doubts about magnetic phenomena and some aspects of lucid
somnambulism.
However, Mata strongly disagreed with the explanation given for the
production of magnetic phenomena: the notion of magnetic fluid (Mata,
1864a: 339). For him, what caused the subject to fall into the state of
magnetic somnambulism was his or her own imagination. Somnambulism
was merely an alteration or a ‘wound’ of the imagination:
All the magnetizer does is to wound the magnetized subject’s imagination;
and he does not wound it with fluids, nor with substances radiating from
his hands, eyes or other parts, nor with any kind of spiritual emanation,
nor other nonsense of the sort; it is wounded as fantasy is always
wounded, with ideas generated by its presence and its emulation or its
pretensions in the brain of the somnambulist; and it is the latter’s own
ideas, produced like any other, which immerse him in the somnambulistic
state. (Mata, 1864c: 396)26
Mata distrusted the therapeutic results of magnetic practices, which he
described as doubtful. As a forensic doctor, he was not aiming to test the
curative capacity of artificial somnambulism but instead to explore the
criminal responsibility of the magnetized subject and the magnetizer in
crimes committed by a somnambulist under the influence of his magnetizer.
Although he reached no clear conclusion about this at the end of his lectures,
he did recommend the prohibition of its practice:
So that legislation and administration of justice may finally put an end to
all the difficulties of this kind [in relation to criminal responsibility], I
believe that […] the Penal Code would do well to prohibit those practices,
demanding responsibility of magnetizers for everything which may arise
from their magnetizations with respect to what the law sets out. (Mata,
1864c: 416)
Mata’s thinking illustrates very clearly two of the fundamental characteristics
of animal magnetism as perceived in this period of revision: first, that
magnetic phenomena are unquestionably actual facts, although not specifically
produced by magnetic practices, since they can also take place in natural
somnambulism; and second, that the means by which those phenomena
occur is through the affecting – the ‘wounding’ – of the subject’s imagination.
These two ideas were certainly similar to those expressed by the French
Royal Commissions and were reflected in Delgado’s 1787 Disertación, except
that the reality of magnetic effects was now acknowledged. There was also a
recognition of their medium, the imagination, whose power is ‘as strong as it
is mysterious’, as d’Eslon put it (see Note 8). Subsequently, the question of
the imagination would be more carefully scrutinized and questioned; and
before long new notions such as suggestion or the unconscious would
appear.27
Therefore, in the late 1850s, as Mata’s work shows, Spanish medical
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thinking moved from a consideration of the physical effect of the magnetic
fluid to the psychological study of influence and imagination as the means of
producing magnetic phenomena – in other words, early signs of the transformation of magnetism into hypnotism. The anaesthetic experiments carried
out by Paul Broca (1824–80), surgeon at the Necker Hospital in Paris who
followed Braid’s hypnotic method, started to impact on the Spanish medical
world from about 1860. This influence was the crucial factor in effecting the
transformation in Spain.
Epilogue
From this survey, the following conclusions can be drawn: animal magnetism
had marginal importance within Spanish medicine as a whole; it was carried
out almost exclusively by less prominent doctors; only belatedly, and at arm’s
length, did any of the great medical personalities, such as Mata, show any
interest in it.
Animal magnetism in Spain was affected by developments in France. The
main Spanish works on Mesmerism (by Delgado, Cubí, Comellas, Graells,
Mata and Quintana) were greatly influenced by French publications, and
most of the Spanish ones were assessments or clarifications of French works
based on their own experiences of animal magnetism. Nevertheless, medical
magnetism in Spain, unlike that in France, was very moderate and careful.
There were persistent calls among Spanish authors for the moderate practice
of therapeutic magnetism and for restraint, in contrast to the excesses of the
French magnetizers. Therapeutic applications were therefore limited to the
control of pain and the improvement of chronic nervous affections, and
Spanish doctors only occasionally suggested the therapeutic use of lucid
somnambulism.
Three stages can be distinguished in the development of medical animal
magnetism in Spain. First, from 1786 to 1840 magnetic treatments were
considered illusory because the theoretical medium which caused them (the
magnetic fluid) was seen as a mere chimera. This stage also witnessed
sporadic governmental prohibitions of magnetic practices, reacting against
the liberal aura surrounding animal magnetism. Claims made by some
doctors during this period about magnetic cures were uncommon and went
practically unnoticed. The second stage lasted from 1840 to 1856. After the
arrival of phrenology in Spain in the early 1840s, magnetism achieved a
certain degree of acceptance. Magnetic healing was no longer seen as
something illusory, and came to be considered as specifically originated by
animal magnetism, and not reproducible without it. Similarly, magnetic
fluid, through its comparison to electrical fluid, was regarded as real,
especially with the popularity of alleged magnetic phenomena around 1853.
The third stage, from 1856 to 1860, was basically a period of review and
evaluation of magnetic practices, motivated by the importance given at that
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time to the question of the criminal responsibility of the magnetized subject
and the magnetizer. Magnetic phenomena were now considered as positive
facts (in the sense that they were substantiated), but not specific to
magnetism. The lack of a specific character for magnetic phenomena led to
the abandonment of the concept of magnetic fluid and an increased interest
in the role of the imagination, and in 1856–57 the notion of physical fluid
became transformed into psychological influence – a precursor of the
transformation of magnetism into hypnotism in Spanish medicine.
Acknowledgements
This study was prepared within the research project HUM2004-0077/HIST granted
by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science.
I am grateful to: the staff of the Library of the Faculty of Medicine of the
Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), without whose continuing help this
work would not have been possible; the Historical Library of the Uriach Foundation
(Barcelona), for providing extremely useful information and invaluable bibliographical material; and the Erickson Institute of Madrid, where in the last two years
I have learnt to appreciate and to know hypnosis (and magnetism) in practice.
Notes
1. The most complete bibliographical collection on animal magnetism and hypnotism was
published by Crabtree (1988). For magnetism and hypnotism prior to 1890, Max
Dessoir’s bibliographies (1888) and (1890) are very useful; there is a recent facsimile
edition containing both works (Dessoir, 1888 & 1890). The book by Caillet (1912) also
contains much relevant information. On journals about animal magnetism and
hypnotism, see Gravitz (1987, 1993, 1996). Also of great practical use is the thematic
bibliography in Waterfield (2002: 432–51).
2. On the history of animal magnetism and hypnotism, Gauld (1992) and Méheust (1999)
are indispensable. Also very useful are: Baruk, 1972; Crabtree, 1993; Forrest, 1999;
Rausky, 1977. A good deal of information is also provided by: Edmonston, 1986;
Ellenberger, 1970; López Piñero, 2002; López Piñero and Morales Meseguer, 1970. For
Britain, the most notable book is Winter’s (1998), for France, see Barrucand (1967) and
for Germany, Engelhardt (2003). Dingwall (1967–1968) devotes different chapters to the
specific history of magnetism and hypnotism in different countries. Finally, numerous
texts on animal magnetism and hypnosis are collected in Tinterow (1970).
3. No Spanish authors appear in Crabtree (1988). Dessoir’s collections do include Spanish
works: Dessoir (1888) has 16 references in Spanish, and Dessoir (1890) has 17, but none
of them in either collection has anything to do with animal magnetism.
4. Gauld (1992) does not mention a single Spanish author in relation to magnetism, and
only mentions one in relation to hypnotism, namely Abdón Sánchez Herrero (p. 348).
5. Since the pioneering works of Montserrat-Esteve (1964), Balaguer Perigüell (1969) and
Pons Barba (1975), the following publications have appeared more recently: Diéguez
Gómez (2003), González Ordi, Cano Sanz and Miguel-Tobal (1995), and González de
Pablo (2003). The only work published in English remains that of Dingwall (1968) and
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6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
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HISTORY OF PSYCHIATRY 17(3)
only a few lines are devoted to the development of hypnotism in Spain. Of all these works,
only those of Balaguer Perigüell (1969), Diéguez Gómez (2003) and Pons Barba (1975)
contain any information about animal magnetism carried out in Spain.
The reports were reprinted in an edited version in Bourdin and Dubois (1841). The first
report is also obtainable under Bailly (1784) at: http://www.bium.univ-paris5.fr/histmed/
medica/magnetisme.htm (the second report is mentioned there in error). Also, on this
website some indispensable sources for the history of animal magnetism can be consulted
online. Further details of the well-known history of the Royal Commissions are to be
found, for example, in Barrucand, 1967: 16–19, and Gauld, 1992: 25–38. But the most
complete analysis of the Commissions is still that of Rausky, 1977: 123–49.
All the translations were made by the author.
D’Eslon never denied, however, that imagination was responsible for most of the
magnetic effects, but unlike most of his colleagues he thought that it could and should be
studied, and used in therapy. Thus, the report of the first French Royal Commission
points out that: ‘D’Eslon believes he is able to demonstrate that the greatest part of the
effects of animal magnetism is due to the imagination; and he has said that it may be that
this novel agent [the magnetic fluid] is none other than imagination itself, whose power is
as strong as it is mysterious […] He has commented to the commissioners that
imagination, thus directed to the relief of suffering humanity, would constitute a great
benefit of medical practice; and, persuaded of the truth of the power of the imagination,
he invited to them to study its development and its effects in his clinic.’ (Bailly, 1784:
73–4).
Graells (1816: 6) notes that: ‘The first person to practise Mesmerism in Madrid was an
artillery officer, taken prisoner during our glorious defence against France, whose
unfortunate experience gave him the opportunity to familiarize himself with this doctrine
[…] The news has spread from mouth to mouth, and our magnetizer already has some
disciples.’
Georget (1821, I: 267–301) devoted a chapter of his book, De la physiologie du système
nerveux et spécialement du cerveau, to magnetism, and Rostan was the author of the article
on magnetism which appeared in 1825 in the Dictionnaire de médecine, the basic reference
work for the anatomoclinical school (Rostan, 1825).
Unfortunately I have been unable to find this dictionary.
In this 3-page proclamation, there is reference to other governmental prohibitions
introduced in Algeciras and Cádiz; magnetism is branded as ‘erroneous and detrimental
to our Holy Catholic religion’, and its followers are ‘denounced for their revolutionary
ideas’ (Gobierno militar y político de Manresa, 1827: 2).
In 1826 the Paris Academy of Medicine appointed another commission to re-evaluate
animal magnetism and, after five years of experiments, they stated in their conclusions
(1831) that ‘it seems to us that a great number of observed effects depend only on
magnetism and are not reproducible without it. They are well-verified psychological and
therapeutic phenomena.’ (López Piñero, 2002: 43). The report was badly received by the
Academy as a whole, which agreed that it should not be printed. This was the result of a
petition from the academic Castel, who affirmed that ‘if the facts announced by the
commission are real, they demolish half of physiological knowledge; it is dangerous, then,
to propagate them by means of the press’ (Quintana, 1856: 274). In 1837 D. J. Berna
asked for and obtained the appointment by the Paris Academy of Medicine of another
commission to examine two somnambulists whom he presented: their phenomena were
supposedly going to achieve the definitive acceptance of magnetism. The commission
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14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
293
concluded that Berna had been victim of a hoax (Quintana, 1856: 274). For more
information on these later commissions, see: Gauld, 1992: 133–8; López Piñero and
Morales Meseguer, 1970: 120–2.
Cubí was forced to defend himself before the Ecclesiastical Court of Santiago from the
accusation that phrenology was a doctrine inimical to the Church (Cubí y Soler, 1847).
Cubí forged an enthusiastic relationship with phrenology in North America, and after
returning to Spain in 1842 he devoted himself to spreading this doctrine throughout the
country. His mission was far from unsuccessful, for in 1846 there were 19 phrenological
societies throughout the national territory (Granjel, 1950: 220). But, in spite of this rapid
promulgation, the development of phrenology in Spain came rather late, and coincided
with the beginning of its general decline – as early as 1842 the physiologist Pierre
Flourens (1794–1867) had launched the first serious attack against phrenological theories
with his Examen de la phrénologie (Flourens, 1845).
The first performance of the comedy Frenología y Magnetismo by Manuel Bretón de los
Herreros (1796–1873) was staged in Madrid in 1845; this gives some idea of how widely
phrenological and magnetic practices had spread within society at that time (Granjel,
1986: 108).
Cubí devoted himself to magnetism immediately after his return to Spain in 1842.
However, his objective was never magnetism in itself, but its use to achieve advances in
phrenology and to make his phrenological lectures more pleasant (Granjel, 1950: 208–9).
The magnetic fluid was, according to Cubí y Soler (1849: 159), analogous to the nervous
fluid, and the magnetic state was analogous to the state produced by opium, ether or
chloroform and resided in a condition of the nervous fluid produced by an external
physical agent. Cubí described the magnetic state in the following words: ‘a slight
headache, a little tightness of the neck, some sort of peculiar sensation in the body or the
limbs’ (p. 175).
Cubí described his method as follows: ‘With the patient sitting upright, I place my hands
on his temples, with my thumbs on his eyebrows. In this position, I stare the patient in the
eyes so fixedly, with such concentration and authority that it seems to me that I have him
completely under my control. After half a minute or a minute at most, I say to him, in a
commanding voice, like Faria’s: sleep. When I utter this word to him, I pass my thumbs
over the eyelids of the patient and immediately place my hands on his closed eyes and his
forehead, without allowing him to open them. If the patient does not fall asleep at once,
which frequently happens, I repeat, in a commanding voice, sleep. If this does not produce
the desired effect, I put my hands on his head, I put my little fingers in his ears, or I make
some passes over him; but the whole operation does not take more than three minutes.’
(Cubí y Soler, 1849: 173)
Phrenomesmerism in Spain, as Cubí’s example shows, had nowhere near the significance
reached in the USA and particularly in Britain (on the latter, see Winter, 1998: 109–36).
Elliotson was one of the firmest defenders of this practice, which was a commonly accepted
proposition of the works appearing in the journal The Zoist (Gauld, 1992: 226–8). James
Braid (1795–1860), who was not in favour of the magnetic fluid, oddly enough used
phrenomesmerism in a very similar way to Elliotson and devoted a whole chapter of his
book Neurypnology to these points (Braid, 1843: 79–149), although later, from 1844, he
dismissed them completely. In France, however, as in Spain, phrenomesmerism had a
much smaller following. So it is mentioned very occasionally in the Journal du magnétisme
and nearly always with reference to British magnetizers, not French (e.g., Anonymous,
1845).
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21. The idea that the curative forces operated by means of the action of the will of the
magnetizer passing his magnetic fluid to the interior of the patient’s organism was already
to be found in Mesmer’s works. This concept was extended by Antoine Chastenet de
Puységur (1752–1809) and developed mainly by Deleuze (1813, I: 81–94). Rostan’s
version of the theory of emanation, which he never claimed to be original (Rostan, 1845:
56), was identical to that of Deleuze, except that for Rostan the magnetic fluid had a
similar character to electricity which Deleuze (1813, I: 84) did not recognize since he
affirmed that ‘most somnambulists have an aversion to electricity’. According to Rostan,
the brain of the magnetizer would secrete a fluid very like the electrical one. This agent
does not remain imprisoned in the skin or muscles of the magnetizer, but bursts into the
exterior with a certain force, creating a ‘nervous atmosphere’ around itself. This ‘active
nervous atmosphere’ of the magnetizer mixes with the ‘passive nervous atmosphere’
generated by the receptive will of the magnetized subject. The mixture of the two nervous
atmospheres (in which magnetic rapport resides) generates some kind of modification in
the nervous system of the subject and explains the communication of desires, will and
even of the thought of the magnetizer to the magnetized subject. Up to here, more or less,
the two Spanish doctors agreed with the French. But Rostan took the theory of emanation
further than Pérez or Comellas ventured. For Rostan this mixture of nervous atmospheres
was also an agent which was to some degree able to penetrate solid bodies. This would
explain the magnetization of somnambulists through solid bodies, like doors or partitions,
and also the phenomenon of clairvoyance or vision through opaque bodies (Rostan, 1845:
54–6).
22. On the diffusion of chemical surgical anaesthesia in Spain, see Vitoria, 1981.
23. Several works, almost all pamphlets of a few pages, were published from 1853 in French,
English and German on the question of ‘turning tables’ (see the entry ‘table-turning’ in
Crabtree, 1988: 522).
24. On the flow of ideas on somnambulism as a whole produced in these lectures, see
Rosselló, Rosselló, Horrach and Perelló, 1995.
25. In fact, Mata’s second lecture, which dealt with animal magnetism, was addressed to
criticizing the excesses of the theory of Baron K. von Reichenbach (1786–1869) and the
force which he called ‘Od’ (Mata, 1864b).
26. On the divergence and similarities between the imaginationists and the fluidists in animal
magnetism, see Méheust, 1999: 340–4.
27. Although Mata did not refer to it, in the same year as he gave his lectures, Carl Gustav
Carus (1789–1869) dedicated a work, Über Lebensmagnetismus (1857), to the psychological
interpretation of magnetic phenomena through his notion of the unconscious, developed
previously in his Psyche, zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Seele (1846).
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