Mesmer e il magnetismo

A lively lecture delivered in Florence at the close of the 19th century, this work invites listeners into the bustling world of Italian scholars who grappled with the feverish spread of Mesmer’s ideas. Angelo Mosso, a pioneering physiologist, sets the scene by tracing the avalanche of publications on animal magnetism that flooded libraries and journals, revealing how the phenomenon captured the imagination of doctors, philosophers, and the general public alike.

Mosso then turns to the man himself, outlining Mesmer’s early experiments, his mystic leanings, and the dramatic case of a young Viennese patient whose strange convulsions sparked fierce debate. By weaving together contemporary newspaper reports, archival finds, and his own observations, the speaker paints a portrait of a science on the edge of credibility, where magnetic forces were hailed as miracle cures and dismissed as folly in equal measure. The talk offers a nuanced glimpse into an era when the boundaries between medicine, mysticism, and popular culture were strikingly fluid.