161 lines
53 KiB
HTML
161 lines
53 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html>
|
||
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
|
||
<head>
|
||
<meta charset="utf-8" />
|
||
<title>10-CreativeUses</title>
|
||
<link href="10-CreativeUses-web-resources/css/10-CreativeUses.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
|
||
</head>
|
||
<body id="x10-CreativeUses" xml:lang="en-US">
|
||
<div>
|
||
<p class="Heading-1"><span>8</span>. Creative Uses of the Armonica</p>
|
||
<p class="Heading-2">Franz Mesmer</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Franz Mesmer (1734–1815) was a German physician who developed a theory and clinical practice of ‘animal magnetism’ or ‘mesmerism’. It’s from Mesmer that we get the word ‘mesmerize’. He owned a particularly fine glass armonica, played it well, and it was an integral part of his ‘mesmerizing’ practice. One has to wonder if Mesmer's high-profile use of the armonica contributed to the instrument’s association with the ‘uncanny’.</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Mesmer was also one of Mozart’s earliest patrons, and Mesmer and Franklin were professional acquaintances.</p>
|
||
<p class="Heading-3">Early Years</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Mesmer was born in the village of Iznang, Swabia (in southwestern Germany). After studying at the Jesuit universities of Dillingen and Ingolstadt, he took up the study of medicine at the University of Vienna in 1759. In 1766 he published a doctoral dissertation with the Latin title <span class="Book-Title">De planetarum influxu in corpus humanum</span> (“The Influence of the Planets on the Human Body”) which discussed the influence of the moon and planets on the human body and on disease. This wasn’t ‘medical astrology’, however — relying largely on Newton’s theory of gravity and the tides, Mesmer argued that certain tides in the human body can be accounted for by the movements of the sun and moon.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">1</span> Mesmer apparently plagiarized<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">2</span> his dissertation from a work by Richard Mead (1673–1754) — an eminent English physician and Newton’s friend.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">3</span> In all fairness, however, in Mesmer’s day doctoral theses were not expected to be original.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">4</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Soon after receiving his degree Mesmer married Maria Anna von Posch, a wealthy widow, and established himself as a physician in Vienna. He lived on a splendid estate and patronized the arts.</p>
|
||
<p class="Heading-3">Mesmer and the Mozarts</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">In 1768, when court intrigue prevented the performance of <span class="Book-Title">La Finta Semplice</span> (K51) for which a twelve-year-old Mozart had composed 500 pages of music, Mesmer arranged a performance in his garden of Mozart’s <span class="Book-Title">Bastien und Bastienne</span> (K50), a one-act opera. It was performed at the Mesmer mansion on an autumn evening in 1768 (the date remains uncertain).<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">5</span> While conducting, Mozart sat at the keyboard, which he played as a member of the orchestra.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">6</span> Mozart later immortalized his former patron by including a joking reference to Mesmer in his opera <span class="Book-Title">Cosi fan tutte</span> (1790):</p>
|
||
<p class="Quotation">This is that piece<br />Of magnet<br />The stone of Mesmer<br />Who originated<br />In Germany<br />And then became so famous<br />In France.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">7</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">In 1773 father and son Mozart were in Vienna and encountered the armonica at Franz Mesmer’s house. Leopold wrote home to his wife: </p>
|
||
<p class="Quotation">Herr von Mesmer, at whose house we lunched on Monday, played for us on the armonica — the glass instrument of Miss Davies — and played very well. It cost him about fifty ducats and it is very beautifully made.<span class="Book-Title char-style-override-2">8</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">A few weeks later Leopold brought up the armonica again, mentioning that Wolfgang himself tried playing Mesmer’s instrument:</p>
|
||
<p class="Quotation">Do you know that Herr von Mesmer plays Miss Davies’ armonica unusually well? He is the only person in Vienna who has learnt it and he possesses a much finer glass instrument than Miss Davies does. Wolfgang also has played upon it. If only we had one!<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">9</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">This would suggest that Mesmer purchased his armonica some time between 1768 and 1773 — this instrument became his favorite for the rest of his life. Mesmer also played the violoncello and the clavichord.</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Mesmer’s musicales took place in the drawing room of the mansion or, if the weather was pleasant, in his open-air theater. He often took an instrumental part in an ensemble with the professionals, accompanying them through established classics like Purcell and Palestrina, introducing works by Gluck, Haydn, or lesser composers then exciting the Viennese ear. The audience usually included acquaintances knowledgeable enough about their host’s vanity to ask him for a solo on the glass armonica, his own choice for a display of his virtuosity.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">10</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Heading-3">Animal Magnetism</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">We know almost nothing of the medical procedures of Dr. Mesmer in this early period. Interestingly it’s the letters of the Mozart family that give us glimpses of the treatment of a patient who was to become famous in the history of animal magnetism as one of its first successes: Miss Franziska Oesterlin, who was living in Mesmer’s home in 1773. On August 12, 1773, Leopold Mozart wrote to his wife, </p>
|
||
<p class="Quotation">Miss Franzl has again been dangerously ill, and poultices had to be applied to her arms and feet. She is so much better now [hey had expected her to die] that she has knitted in bed a red silk purse for Wolfgang, which she has given him as a souvenir.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">11</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">On August 21 Leopold wrote to his wife that </p>
|
||
<p class="Quotation">Miss Franzl had a second relapse and recovered from it. It is amazing how she can endure so much bleeding and so many medicines, blisters, convulsions, fainting fits and so forth, for she is nothing but skin and bone.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">12</span> </p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">But Mesmer’s treatments were ultimately successful — Wolfgang writes to his father seven years later from Mesmer’s garden on the Landstrasse:</p>
|
||
<p class="Quotation">The old lady is not at home, but Franzl is now Frau von Posch and is here... she has grown so plump and fat — she has three children — two girls and a young gentleman.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">13</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Franzl had married Mesmer’s stepson, Franz de Paula von Bosch (Bosch and Posch were interchangeable names).<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">14</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Other successes with equally difficult cases — notably Professor Bauer<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">15</span> and Baron de Horka<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">16</span> — established Mesmer’s fame. However, the orthodox medical community nevertheless considered him to be a charlatan.</p>
|
||
<p class="Heading-3">Maria Theresa von Paradis</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">In 1777 he treated Maria Theresa von Paradis (also von Paradies, 1759– 1824), the famous blind pianist for whom Mozart wrote a piano concerto (probably No.18 in Bb, K456, composed 1778). When Maria awoke one morning at the age of three years and seven months, she was totally blind. The parents called in the best medical talent in Vienna, who pronounced her incurable but treated her for several years anyway. They shaved her head and put plasters on it for two months. They applied leaches. Purgatives and diuretics were prescribed in abundance. In addition, thousands of electric shocks were given to her eyes (with Leyden jars) — the only result being that her eyes protruded from their sockets and were continuously spasming and turning upward. </p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Nor was blindness her only affliction — she also suffered from melancholia and attacks of delirium.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">17</span> (Not surprising, considering the ‘treatments’ she was enduring.) In order to give their daughter a diversion, they provided music lessons and she became a capable singer and keyboard player. The Empress attended her performance of Pergolesi’s <span class="Book-Title">Stabat Mater</span> in which she played the organ and sang, and was so moved that she granted the child, then 11 years old, a pension of 200 florins a year so she could continue her musical education.<span class="char-style-override-2">18</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Mesmer had known Miss Paradis for several years, and told her father he could treat her protruding and spasming eyes with his newly discovered ‘animal magnetism’. Privately, Mesmer thought he could cure her blindness as well. Treatment began January 20, 1777. By the fourth day her eyes resumed their normal positions, their movements subsided, and her previously dilated pupils became normal. Within a month apparently some vision had been restored. At best she was always extraordinarily sensitive to light, and having been blind from such a young age she had serious trouble making any sense of her new visual experience: the nose on the human face was absurd to her to the point of bursting into laughter; she was surprised that pictures were flat and not three-dimensional; when she turned her eyes toward a window in daytime or a lighted candle at night, she experienced vertigo.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">19</span> She also had trouble learning colors and judging the distances of objects.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">20</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Partial restoration of vision did not bring happiness — it made her miserable. She asked her father: “Why am I not as happy now as I used to be? Everything that I see makes an unpleasant impression on me. I was much more calm when I was blind... If I am always going to be as excited when I see new things as I am now, I would rather return to my blindness.”<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">21</span> When friends, relatives, or important people were brought to her, she often had attacks of fainting or uncontrollable weeping. When outdoors, she asked that her eyes be bandaged because the light caused vertigo. Before the partial restoration of her eyesight she had walked around her house unaided with complete confidence; now she bound up her eyes and had to be led.</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Worse, it ruined her playing. When she was blind she had played the most difficult music with the greatest accuracy, even while carrying on a conversation. With vision it was hard for her to play: she watched her fingers on the keyboard and played mostly wrong notes. </p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">More medical experts were called in. At first reports of Mesmer’s apparent success were glowing, such as that of Dr. Le Roux,<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">22</span> but the tide began to turn. Dr. Barth, Professor of Diseases of the Eye, had stated on two occasions that Miss Paradis could see, but then changed his mind and declared that she could not see after all.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">23</span> Mesmer’s medical enemies began to work on Maria’s father: as her vision improved and her playing degraded she might lose her pension. Matters became so bad that swords were literally drawn in Mesmer’s home — with poor Maria caught in the middle. </p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Finally the father convinced Mesmer to allow him to take Maria on a vacation “so that she might enjoy the benefit of the country air,” promising to return her to his care. They never brought her back. Instead, Mesmer learned that her family was saying that she was still blind and subject to convulsions. “They compelled her to imitate fits and blindness,” Mesmer wrote. “It was necessary, in the plans of her greedy parents, that this unfortunate girl should become blind again or appear so.” He believed their motive was to retain the pension of 200 florins a year.<span class="char-style-override-2">24</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">She lived the life of a completely blind person for the rest of her days. For years she conducted a school of music for young ladies and was prominent in Viennese musical and intellectual society. She composed music including several operas that were staged in Vienna and Prague — none of which achieved any success. In 1784 she toured Europe and performed in Paris and London.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">25</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">During the rest of her life Maria Theresa had nothing to say about Mesmer apart from a passing reference in a letter in 1780 that her nervous system had been weakened “by the unsuccessful result of an eye treatment.” She died in 1824 at the age of 65.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">26</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">After Miss Paradis returned to her parents, Mesmer found himself thoroughly discredited without a single defender in the medical profession. So he began to think about leaving Vienna. His departure was not hurried, nevertheless it was strongly encouraged by the medical and ecclesiastical community. Mesmer was provided with a letter of recommendation from the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Viennese ambassador in Paris to facilitate his departure.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">27</span> </p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Mesmer left Vienna about January 1778 — he took his armonica with him but left his wife behind! She needed to stay in Vienna to manage her inheritance, and their relationship at this point seems to have been one of mutual indifference. Mesmer was never to see her again — twelve years later she died of cancer.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">28</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Heading-3">Paris</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Mesmer arrived in Paris in February of 1778 in the company of his valet and Dr. Le Roux. He promptly rented an apartment in the Place Vend<span>ô</span>me — a part of the city preferred by the wealthy and powerful. “He brought with him the robust conviction that he deserved the homage of all mankind, homage due to the discoverer of a new force in nature which could cure all diseases and would eventually displace conventional medicine. He had an imperturbable sense of his importance to the world without a trace of modesty or humility.”<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">29</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">There, in May 1779, Mesmer enchanted Gluck by his playing on the armonica. (Did Gluck tell Mesmer about performing on the musical glasses in London some three decades earlier?) Although Mesmer could play from printed music, Gluck was so impressed with Mesmer’s improvisations that he urged him to confine his playing to extemporization. Apparently Mesmer was particularly fond of entertaining his guests with his armonica at twilight after dinner, and he took Gluck’s advice to heart and rarely performed from printed music. When deeply moved by his own playing, Mesmer used to sing at the same time.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">30</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Paris at that time was certainly an excellent place for a physician, for Paris­ — like any large city of the day — was filled with people suffering from chronic diseases, untreated and untreatable, and ravaged by epidemics of which smallpox was especially feared. It has been estimated that smallpox disfigured the faces of one fourth of the women of France, some 200,000 of whom took refuge in convents from the rejection they experienced because of their appearance. All in all, average life expectancy was about 40 years.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">31</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">The people of Paris were not as tightly controlled as the Viennese, who were dominated by the double dictatorship of Maria Theresa and the Catholic Church. The French had considerably more freedom of speech; censorship of books was easily evaded. </p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Mesmer asked Dr. Charles-Nicolas d’Eslon (1750–1786) to help with his practice. D’Eslon was <span class="char-style-override-3">docteur r</span><span class="char-style-override-3">égent </span><span>of the Faculté de Médicine and </span><span class="char-style-override-3">premier médecin</span><span> of the Comte d'Artois, one of King </span><span>Louis XVI's two brothers. Having </span>d’Eslon<span> at his side increased his visibility and opened the door to the artistocracy. It also allowed patients to be treated in his clinic since foreign physicians could practice only with government approval. Mesmer had been denied official authorization, but </span>d’Eslon<span>, being French, did not need it.</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Meanwhile, patients and curiosity-seekers flocked to Mesmer for treatment. Paris was soon divided into two factions: those who were sure Mesmer was a charlatan who had been forced to flee Vienna, and those who accepted his own self-evaluation that he had made a world shaking discovery. </p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">In order to accommodate the throng of people who eagerly sought treatment with animal magnetism, Mesmer developed a method of mass treatment. Since he had discovered in 1775 that he could communicate animal magnetism to glass, water, and other substances and store it in them, he built a reservoir, the ‘baque<span>t</span>’ (which means ‘tub’), from which several patients could draw the healing agent at the same time.</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Inside the wooden tub, which had a diameter of a little over a meter (four or five feet), were bottles filled with water and laid on their sides and with their necks pointing to the center of the tub; they had been magnetized by Mesmer’s stroking. To give more pressure to the magnetic fluid, a second or even a third layer of bottles could be placed over the first. The tub was filled with enough water to cover the bottles. Iron rods issued from the bottles and extended upward through the lid of the tub, bent so that they might be applied directly to the ailing parts by the patients who stood in a circle around the tub. A cord could be passed around them, and sometimes they joined hands. A pianoforte or Mesmer’s favorite instrument, the glass armonica, furnished music. The magnetism was propagated by the music, as Mesmer had discovered.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">32</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Since Mesmer recognized the part suggestion and imagination play in the healing process, and since he understood the influence of the surroundings on both, he took great pains to provide his patients with a setting in which they could be persuaded to submit to his technique. His whole purpose was to establish rapport with them, to gain their confidence and trust, and then, their nerves being now receptive, to introduce doses of animal magnetism into their bodies. Mesmer laid out his clinic as meticulously as if he were stage-managing a play. Only when he had the right conditions around him was he ready for the day’s session.</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">It began in a large room where dozens of patients could be taken care of at the same time in individualized and group therapy. The room at the H<span>ô</span>tel Bullion was an opulent, spacious one in which previous residents had entertained the fashionable society of Paris. It had a lofty ceiling, inlaid floors, paneled walls, full-length mirrors, and oriel windows. The furnishings were in the best Louis XV style, from the artwork on the walls and tables to the chairs in which the patients sat while they were being magnetized.</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Mesmer needed this elegant setting. The aristocrats who came to the clinic would feel at ease in the type of room familiar to them, while the poor would feel that they were being elevated by Dr. Mesmer above the hard and sordid lives they led. In either case, the setting aided the cure. Mesmer accepted all patients — there is no evidence he ever turned a patient away as being beyond help; if he could not cure, he could at least relieve their suffering. “He treated eye troubles, blindness, deafness, apoplexy, asthma, tumors of all kinds, skin and scalp diseases, migraine, and all the rest. Leprosy was to be treated ‘like ringworm,’ with magnetized water. The idea that he limited his practice to disorders of nervous origin is a common error.”<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">33</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">During the séance Mesmer kept the doors and windows closed. Heavy drapes allowed only a dim light, and no noise to filter in from the outside. The atmosphere was warm and oppressive, causing labored breathing conducive to emotional excitement. Silence reigned except for whispers between patients and doctors (Mesmer or his assistants) in the give-and-take of diagnosis, treatment and prescription. One cardinal exception — the sound of a piano or glass armonica came from a corner of the room. Mesmer had learned from his Viennese teachers about the healing properties of music; he had stated in Proposition 16 of his memoir that animal magnetism “can be communicated, propagated, and reinforced by sound,”<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">34</span> and he combined the two ideas by placing instruments where his patients could hear and be moved by them.</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">He was not interested in melody as such when he placed musical instruments in the clinic. They were indispensable to his medical practice, swaying, disturbing, calming the ill. Stormy music helped bring on the Mesmerian “crisis” (essential for the cure), and soft music helped allay it. The musician shifted from one to the other at a signal from Mesmer or an assistant. One of Mesmer’s followers, Caullet de Vaumorel, testified to the exquisite sensitivity with which the mood of the patients changed as the mood of the music changed.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">35</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Sometime between 1778 and 1779 Dr. J.J. Le Roux paid a visit to Mesmer. He reports that Mesmer answered some questions, and then...</p>
|
||
<p class="Quotation">[Mesmer] had me listen to the sound of the armonica, which he plays expertly. This took hold of my senses in a way that I have never experienced before. My whole being appeared suspended, and gradually rose into the air.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">36</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Mesmer offered to prove his animal magnetism, so the next day Dr. Le Roux brought to Mesmer's clinic an army surgeon who had been afflicted with gout for nine years:</p>
|
||
<p class="Quotation">The next day, I drove home one of my friends, staff surgeon of the regiment of the Teutonic Order, a mature man, very bright, and with whom I had made many electrical experiments on our patients. This friend suffered for nine years a very painful gout, and he was then at the end of an attack that persisted for ten days in the stomach and the surrounding area, with tension, pain in the abdomen, fever, delirium, and sweating. Mr. Mesmer, seeing him said: This is precisely the person we need. After several turns around the room, Mr. Mesmer unbuttoned the patient’s shirt and, moving back somewhat, placed his finger against the part affected. My friend felt a tickling pain. Mr. Mesmer then moved his finger perpendicularly across his abdomen and chest, and the pain followed the finger exactly. He then asked the patient to extend his index finger and pointed his own finger toward it at a distance of three or four steps, whereupon my friend felt an electric tingling at the tip of his finger, which penetrated the whole finger toward the palm. Mr. Mesmer then seated him near the armonica; he had hardly begun to play when my friend was affected emotionally, trembled, lost his breath, changed color, and felt pulled toward the floor. In this state of anxiety, Mr. Mesmer placed him on a couch so that he was in less danger of falling, and he brought in a maid who he said was antimagnetic. When her hand approached my friend’s chest, everything stopped with lightning speed, and my colleague touched and examined his stomach with astonishment. The sharp pain had suddenly ceased. Mr. Mesmer told us that a dog or a cat would have stopped the pain as well as the maid did.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">37</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Mesmer also experimented on d’Eslon — Mesmer’s right-hand man — by playing on the glass armonica or the piano and conveying animal magnetism to him. d’Eslon was obliged to beg for mercy about the music, presumably because of the discomfort caused by the charge of animal magnetism that it carried.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">38</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Mesmer wanted official recognition for his discoveries — he considered himself more physicist than physician.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">39</span> He approached the Royal Academy of Sciences, then the Royal Society of Medicine, and then the Faculty of Medicine. He was rebuffed by all. Finally, he informed his patients that he would discontinue their treatments on April 15, 1781 and leave the country. One of these patients, the Duchesse de Chaulnes, complained to her friend Queen Marie Antoinette. The Queen proposed that a commission be established to investigate his claims, and if their report was favorable that he be recompensed (including a life annuity of 20,000 livres) and given official government sanction and support on the condition that he remain in France. Mesmer reluctantly agreed.</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Two weeks later the Minister of State, Jean-Frédéric Phélipeaux, Count of Maurepas, met with Mesmer, saying that the King, informed of Mesmer’s dislike of being investigated by commissioners, wished to excuse him from that formality and would grant him a life annuity of 20,000 livres and pay 10,000 livres a year for a house suitable for the instruction of students. Mesmer repudiated his agreement to the Queen’s offer and also declined the King’s.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">40</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">In 1784, the King appointed four members of the Faculty of Medicine as commissioners to investigate animal magnetism as practiced by Dr. Charles d’Eslon. This commission had not been requested by Mesmer or any of his followers. In fact, Mesmer declined to participate at all. The members of the commission were:</p>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li class="Bullets"><span class="char-style-override-4">•	</span> Michel-Joseph Majault: a physician at Hôtel-Dieu, one of Paris’ main hospitals.</li>
|
||
<li class="Bullets"><span class="char-style-override-4">•	</span> Charles-Louis Ballin: a professor of physiology, pathology, and pharmacology.</li>
|
||
<li class="Bullets"><span class="char-style-override-4">•	</span> Jean d’Arcet: a physician and chemist.</li>
|
||
<li class="Bullets"><span class="char-style-override-4">•	</span> Joseph-Ignace Guillotin: physician, after whom the guillotine is named, although he didn’t invent it — he championed it as a more humane method of executing the condemned (and indeed it was).</li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<p class="Normal">At the request of these commissioners, five additional members from the Royal Academy of Sciences were appointed:</p>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li class="Bullets"><span class="char-style-override-4">•	</span> <span class="char-style-override-5">Benjamin Franklin</span> (!): then in Paris, regarded as a world expert on electricity, and the only foreign member of the commission. Now 78, he was suffering from severe gout.</li>
|
||
<li class="Bullets"><span class="char-style-override-4">•	</span> Jean-Baptiste Le Roy: physician</li>
|
||
<li class="Bullets"><span class="char-style-override-4">•	</span> Jean-Sylvain Bailly: astronomer and the first mayor of Paris.</li>
|
||
<li class="Bullets"><span class="char-style-override-4">•	</span> Gabriel de Bory: geographer and previously governor of Santo Domingo.</li>
|
||
<li class="Bullets"><span class="char-style-override-4">•	</span> Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier: a major founder of modern chemistry.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">41</span><div><div class="frame-2"><img class="frame-1" src="10-CreativeUses-web-resources/image/MesmerArmonica_opt.jpeg" alt="MesmerArmonica.psd" /></div><div class="Basic-Text-Frame"><ol><li class="Figure-Caption"><span class="char-style-override-4">Figure 39: </span>A cariciature of Mesmer magnetising a patient, from J.J. Paulet <span class="Book-Title">L'Antimagnétisme</span> (1794). Notice the glass armonica.</li></ol></div></div></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Franklin and Mesmer had previously been acquainted. In a letter from Mesmer to Franklin written sometime before November 1, 1779, Mesmer apologizes that his armonica isn’t available.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">42</span> But that seems to be rectified, as Franklin and Mme. Brillon went to Mesmer’s house in Paris to hear him play later that year. They were interested in Mesmer’s armonica. That the visit was rather strained, with the guests trying to keep the conversation on music and their host trying to promote his medical theories is reflected by an exclamation of Madame Brillon in one of her many evocations of paradise, dated November 1, 1779: “in heaven, M. Mesmer will content himself with playing the armonica and will not bother us with his electrical fluid!”<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">43</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Mesmer wrote to Franklin on December 1, 1779,<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">44</span> referring to some patients Franklin had seen — it appears that the genuineness of the cures was in question, and Mesmer promised to show him other patients when they were to dine together in the following week. Mesmer had given Franklin twelve copies of his <span class="Book-Title">Precis historique</span> (“A Precise History,” a tract Mesmer had written about animal magnetism, published in 1781). Franklin gave them to his friends but still remained skeptical. On March 19, 1784, Franklin wrote to de la Condamine:</p>
|
||
<p class="Quotation">As to the animal magnetism, so much talk’d of, I am totally unacquainted with it, and must doubt its existence till I can see or feel some effect of it. None of the cures said to be perform’d by it, have fallen under my observation; and there being so many disorders which cure themselves and such a disposition in mankind to deceive themselves and one another on these occasions; and living long having given me frequent opportunities of seeing certain remedies cry’d up as curing everything, and yet so soon after totally laid aside as useless, I cannot but fear that the expectation of great advantage from the new method of treating diseases will prove a delusion. That delusion may however in some cases be of use while it lasts. There are in every great city a number of persons who are never in health, because they are fond of medicines and always taking them, and hurt their constitutions. If these people can be persuaded to forbear their drugs in expectation of being cured by only the physician’s finger or an iron rod pointed at them, they may possibly find good effects tho’ they mistake the cause.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">45</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">At the same time, one should consider the following anecdote about Franklin: In the spring of 1772, Franklin called on Prince Adam Czartoryski, heir apparent to the throne of Poland. His wife had been suffering from ‘melancholia’:</p>
|
||
<p class="Quotation">I was ill, in a state of melancholia, and writing my testament and farewell letters. Wishing to distract me, my husband explained to me who Franklin was and to what he owed his fame. Franklin had a noble face with an expression of engaging kindness. Surprised by my immobility, he took my hands and gazed at me saying: pauvre jeune femme [“poor young lady”]. He then opened an armonica, sat down and played long. The music made a strong impression on me and tears began flowing from my eyes. Then Franklin sat by my side and looking with compassion said, “Madam, you are cured.” Indeed in that moment I was cured of my melancholia. Franklin offered to teach me how to play the armonica — I accepted without hesitation, hence he gave me twelve lessons.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">46</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Alas, several years later she seems to have relapsed.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">47</span> </p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">As soon as Mesmer learned that a commission had been formed to investigate animal magnetism as practiced by d’Eslon, Mesmer wrote a letter to Dr. Franklin. He disavowed d’Eslon, stating that he had only an incomplete knowledge of animal magnetism.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">48</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Since the King’s first members of the commission belonged to the Faculty of Medicine, the rival organization, the Royal Society of Medicine, asked to be represented, and the King authorized a second commission.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">49</span> Both commissions began their work promptly, and their reports were published about five months later. The first commission, of which Franklin was a member, carried out their experiments at Franklin’s house in deference to his health. D’Eslon’s demonstrations broke down under the committee’s examination when, for example, a patient who was supposed to feel the effects of animal magnetism was unable to tell — when blindfolded — whether the mesmerizer was present or not. The committee reported that Mesmer’s results were due to his good salesmanship and the patient’s imagination, and that his “animal magnetism” was really the faith of the patient. The second commission reported essentially the same findings.</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">(In all fairness, the commission noted that Mr. d’Eslon used a piano, and not an armonica, to conduct the magnetism.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">50</span> Perhaps the experiments would have succeeded had they used an armonica!)</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Opinions raged, books and letters were volleyed back and forth, and satirical plays abounded. Michel-Augustin Thouret (1748–1810), a docteur-régent (senior physician) of the Faculty of Medicine, was commissioned by the Royal Society of Medicine to collect everything concerning animal magnetism in ancient and modern authors and to make a report on its origins. The result was his <span class="Book-Title">Recherches et doutes sur le magnétisme animal</span> (“Research and Doubts about Animal Magnetism”). One of the precursors Thouret cited was our old friend Athanasius Kircher for his work on magnetism: <span class="Book-Title">Magnes, Sive de Arte Magnetica</span> (1643, “The Magnet, or the Magnetic Art”).<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">51</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">The committees’ reports were the beginning of the end for Mesmer. Franklin wrote on April 29, 1785 that Mesmer was still working in Paris:</p>
|
||
<p class="Quotation">Mesmer continues here and has still some adherents, and some practice. It is surprising how much credulity still subsists in the world. I suppose all the physicians in France put together, have not made so much money during the time he has been here, as he alone has done.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">52</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Mesmer still kept in touch with Franklin.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">53</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Heading-3">Twilight</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Mesmer left Paris later that year, wandering around Europe until he was ‘rediscovered’ by a group of physicians in Berlin.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">54</span> By then d’Eslon had died (August 1786), and France had been caught up in the Reign of Terror: the King and Queen, and commission members Lavoisier and Bailly were guillotined. Perhaps the commissions actually did Mesmer a favor — due to their findings Mesmer had left France and missed the French Revolution altogether.</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Around 1809 Mesmer ended up retiring in Frauenfeld in (what is now) his native Switzerland.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">55</span> “He played his glass harmonica in a masterly manner with extensive improvisations, usually after meals and to honor a guest who was agreeable to him.”<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">56</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Mesmer was in good health until February 1815.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">57</span> On March 1 he suffered a stroke, and on the 5th, with the end imminent, he asked if his Catholic priest friend Fessler would come and play the glass armonica for him. The priest hurried to the bedside of the dying man, but Mesmer died quietly before he got there. Kerner (a biographer of Mesmer) says that the pet canary “neither ate nor sang again, and was soon found dead in its cage.”<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">58</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Mesmer was not a poor man. At the time of his death he was employing three servants, and had a horse and carriage. Soon after his death and before the estate was settled, Dr. Wolfart asked the heirs for the glass armonica, which he said Mesmer had promised him. It was sent to Dr. Wolfart, and has been lost.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">59</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Heading-2">Phantasmagoria</p>
|
||
<p class="Heading-3">The Magic Lantern</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">The ‘magic lantern’ was an early slide projector — we saw how in 1665 Walgenstein showed the device to Athanasius Kircher, who in turn described it in his book <span class="Book-Title">Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae</span> (1671, “Great Art of Light and Shadow”).<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">60</span></p>
|
||
<div>
|
||
<div class="frame-2">
|
||
<img class="frame-3" src="10-CreativeUses-web-resources/image/kircher-magiclantern_fmt.png" alt="kircher-magiclantern.jpg" />
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div class="Basic-Text-Frame">
|
||
<ol>
|
||
<li class="Figure-Caption"><span class="char-style-override-4">Figure 40: </span>‘Magic Lantern’ from Kircher's <br /><span class="Book-Title">Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae </span>(1671)</li>
|
||
</ol>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p class="Normal"></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">People have been projecting images using concave mirrors and pin-hole cameras (<span class="Book-Title">camera obscura</span>) since Roman times.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">61</span> But glass lens technology wasn’t sufficiently developed to make slide projectors (or telescopes) until the 17th century. </p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">The first allusion to a ‘magic lantern’ is by Dutch scholar Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695) in the 1650s and he is generally credited with inventing it — though he didn’t want to admit it, considering it “frivolous.”<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">62</span> Whether he had actually invented it or not, Huygens introduced this curiosity to Thomas Walgenstein who realized its commercial value for entertainment and traveled through Europe — mostly France and Italy — demonstrating his machine to foreign princes and selling them replicas for their own amusement. </p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Until 1783 the only light source was lamps burning sperm or colza oil — not very bright at all, so images could only be projected for very small audiences. But in 1783 the Argand lamp was invented which was considerably brighter, and the magic lantern really started coming into its own.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">63</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Others used the magic lantern in séances and ghost shows, notably Johann Schröpfer (1730–1774) and Paul de Philipsthal (17??–1829).<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">64</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Heading-3">E.G. Robertson </p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Étienne-Gaspard Robertson (1763–1837) — originally “Robert” — was born in Liège, Belgium, the son of a rich merchant. From an early age he was fascinated by the supernatural. Sent to Louvain to study philosophy, he began to develop a voracious appetite for the study of all branches of physics and the natural sciences, as well as developing his proficiency in art. On his return to Liège he formed a close acquaintance with an optical instrument maker, Fran<span>ç</span>ois Villette (1729–1809).</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">In his mid-twenties, Robertson had made up his mind to become a great painter — he had already won a gold medal. (All these skills would prove useful in developing his ‘phantasmagoria’ shows.) Despite the protestations of his parents who tried to encourage him to enter the priesthood, Robertson set out for Paris.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">65</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">On his way to Paris he saw a conjurer perform some magic, and with his background in physics he immediately understood how the trick had been done. The seed was planted.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">66</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">In Paris he initially supported himself as a miniature portrait painter, and later by tutoring, and his circumstances gradually improved. In his spare time he attended lectures in natural science at the College of France and was eventually able to afford the relatively expensive lectures by Jacques Alexandre Charles (1746–1823) — who pioneered the use of hydrogen gas for balloon flight. Charles’ flamboyant lectures were also seminal in Robertson’s Phantasmagoria.</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Robertson first came to public notice in 1796 when he proposed to the Directoire a scheme for burning up the British fleet with a gigantic assemblage of mirrors designed to concentrate the sun’s rays on a distant object until it caught fire.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">67</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">In 1792–3 Robertson apparently saw one of Phillipstahl’s magic lantern shows,<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">68</span> recognized the uncanny illusionistic potential of the new device, and with his usual flamboyance developed the magic lantern’s pseudo-necromantic power to new heights. He called it the “phantasmagoria” from “phantasm” — “ghost”, and “agora” — “gathering,” so a “phantasmagoria” was a “gathering of ghosts.”</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal para-style-override-1"></p>
|
||
<div>
|
||
<div class="frame-2">
|
||
<img class="frame-4" src="10-CreativeUses-web-resources/image/phantasmagoria1_fmt.png" alt="phantasmagoria1.jpg" />
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div class="Basic-Text-Frame">
|
||
<ol>
|
||
<li class="Figure-Caption"><span class="char-style-override-4">Figure 41: </span>Robertson's <span class="Book-Title">Phantasmagoria<br /></span>From his <span class="Book-Title">Memoires</span> (1831)</li>
|
||
</ol>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p class="Normal para-style-override-1"></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">The first performance took place in Paris on January 23, 1798. An advertisement in the <span class="Book-Title">Journal de Paris</span> (January 20) informs us:</p>
|
||
<p class="Quotation">PHANTASMAGORIA at the Pavillon in the rue de l'<span>É</span>chiquier, by citizen E-G. Robertson: apparitions of Spectres, Phantoms and Ghosts, such as must appear or could appear in any time, in any place and among any people. Experiments with the new fluid known by the name of Galvanism [a.k.a. electricity], whose application gives temporary movement to bodies whose life has departed. An artist noted for his talents will play the Harmonica.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">69</span> [What else?!]</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">When Robertson opened his show at 6pm, the 60 seats were soon filled. At a later performance he had to drop several items to accommodate the crowds. Robertson soon realized that not only was the theater too small, but that his phantasmagoria might make him rich and famous.</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">An attendee describes the show:</p>
|
||
<p class="Quotation">A <span class="char-style-override-3">decemvir</span> [member of the ruling body] of the republic has said that the dead return no more, but go to Robertson’s exhibition and you will soon be convinced of the contrary, for you will see the dead returning to life in crowds. Robertson calls forth phantoms and legends of spectres. In a well lighted apartment in the Pavilion de l’Èchiquier I found myself seated a few evenings since with some sixty or seventy people. At seven o’clock a pale thin man entered the room where we were sitting, and after extinguishing the candles he said ‘Citizens and gentlemen, I am not one of those adventurers and impudent swindlers who promise more than they can perform. I have assured the public in the Journal de Paris, that I can bring the dead to life, and I shall do so. Those of the company who desire to see the apparitions of those who were dear to them, but who have passed away from this life through sickness or otherwise have only to speak and I shall obey their commands’. A moment of silence followed, and a haggard looking man with dishevelled hair and sorrowful eyes rose in the midst of the assemblage and exclaimed ‘As I have been unable in an official journal to re-establish the worship of Marat, I should at least be glad to see his shadow’. Robertson immediately threw upon the brazier containing lighted coals, two glasses of blood, a bottle of vitriol, a few drops of aqua fortis and two numbers of the <span class="Book-Title">Journal des Homme Litres</span> and there instantly appeared in the midst of the smoke caused by the burning of these substances, a hideous livid phantom armed with a dagger, and wearing the red cap of Liberty. The man at whose wish the phantom had been evoked seemed to recognize Marat, and rushed forward to embrace the vision, but the ghost made a frightful grimace and disappeared. Robertson threw onto the brazier a few sparrow’s feathers, a grain or two of phosphorus and a dozen dried butterflies. A beautiful woman with her bosom uncovered and her hair floating about her soon appeared and smiled on the young man with the most tender regard and sorrow. A grave looking individual sitting alongside of me suddenly exclaimed ‘Heavens! It’s my wife come to life again’, and he rushed from the room, apparently fearing that what he saw was a phantom.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">70</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">One evening Robertson received an unplanned challenge: produce the phantom of Louis XVI. To comply would be fraught with peril during the Reign of Terror. According to a journalist who attended, Robertson cleverly replied:</p>
|
||
<p class="Quotation">I had a recipe for this sort of thing before the [French] Revolution but have now lost it. It is probable that I cannot ever find it again, and it is therefore impossible to bring back the Kings of France.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">71</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Robertson claimed he never said it, and if he had one would think that his reply had deftly navigated the politics of his day, but the authorities shut down his show anyway. Mockingly, Robertson says: </p>
|
||
<p class="Quotation">They searched everywhere where there might be any trace of a ghost, and at that point, I had the thought, confirmed before and since, that to run after shadows and to grasp at phantoms, in order to transform them into realities, often very fatal, is one of the principal means of the existence and one of the most frightful necessities of the secret police.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">72</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">The authorities didn’t find the evidence they were looking for, but neither did they allow him to reopen his show. So instead Robertson went to Bordeaux for a few weeks, giving presentations of his phantasmagoria there and enjoying his first hot air balloon ascent. Finally returning to Paris he discovered that the very same Pavilion de l’Èchiquier was now hosting a rival phantasmagoria show, the producers being the owner of the Pavilion, assisted by two of Robertson’s former assistants. Robertson decided to re-launch his show on a more elaborate scale.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">73</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">He chose the eerie Convent des Capucines. The convent and its chapel had been built in 1688 and abandoned by the nuns at the outset of the Revolution. “What more suitable place than a vast abandoned chapel in the middle of a cloister, littered with broken gravestones ‘heaped up in hundreds’ outside the church? Here his audience might imagine the ghosts arising in a disturbed passion from real sepulchers.”<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">74</span> Robertson’s premier exhibition at the convent occurred on January 3, 1799 at 7:30pm. The music was supplied by a glass armonica.</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">The glass armonica was Robertson’s favored instrument. He noted that it contributed “powerfully to the effects of the phantasmagoria, in preparing not only the minds but the very senses for strange impressions by a melody so sweet that it sometimes gave great irritation to the nervous system.” The armonica can produce a somewhat monotonous sound, if desired, and Robertson put that to use: he observed that “a uniform noise puts thought to sleep; all the ideas seem to concentrate on one and the same object and one and the same impression.”<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">75</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Robertson’s phantasmagorie at the Capucine convent was enormously popular — it ran for four years, and the convent grounds became a center for other popular amusements.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">76</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Robertson’s success naturally attracted competition in spite of the patent he filed in February of 1799. In 1800 he filed suit to shut down a rival show. There was a temporary injunction, but Robertson lost because he hadn’t personally invented any of the technology he was using, he simply had the imagination to use existing technology in a new way, which wasn’t patentable. Legal battles continued for another two years. In the end Robertson lost, having to pay a negligible settlement.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">77</span> It also didn't help that in order to defend his patent he had to reveal his secrets.</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">So Robertson took to the road, largely occupying himself with ballooning, but as the reigning authority on phantasmagoria shows he still staged occasional exhibitions and dispensed private advice. Between 1803 and his triumphant comeback season of phantasmagoria shows in Paris in 1814, he visited Vienna, Prague, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Stockholm, Copenhagen, and the major cities in Germany.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">78</span> </p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">He was also a hot air balloonist, setting an altitude record in Hamburg in 1803. He later accompanied the Russian ambassador to China where he demonstrated ballooning technique in the 1820s.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">79</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Various ‘copy-cats’ produced phantasmagoria shows throughout Europe, including England, where a popular effect was to change the image of the British traitor Benjamin Franklin into a skeleton!<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">80</span> I haven’t been able to determine whether these shows, which were not under Robertson’s auspices — in England or anywhere else — were accompanied by the glass armonica.</p>
|
||
<p class="Normal">Charles Dickens summarized Robertson:</p>
|
||
<p class="Quotation">He was a charmer who charmed wisely, — who was a born conjurer, inasmuch as he was gifted with a predominant taste for experiments in natural science, — and he was useful man enough in an age of superstition to get up fashionable entertainments at which spectres were to appear and horrify the public, without trading on the public ignorance by any false pretence.... [His] is the story of an honourable and well-educated showman.<span class="Endnote-Reference char-style-override-1">81</span></p>
|
||
<p class="Normal"></p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</body>
|
||
</html>
|