Paris Archives - Bone and Sickle

The Mesmerist

By boneandsickle | April 20, 2024

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:35 — 59.0MB)

Our understanding of hypnotism, once known as “mesmerism,” has radically evolved over the centuries. This episode looks at where it all began, examining the fascinating (and rather weird) story of the 18^th-century German doctor, Franz Anton Mesmer, after whom “mesmerism” is named.

We begin, with a look at the mesmerist’s sinister reputation in the 19th century, as reflected in the British writer George du Maurier’s 1894 novel, Trilby. While the book’s named for its protagonist, Trilby O’Ferrall, an Irish girl working as a model in a British artist’s colony in Paris, her nemesis is better known, namely, her vocal instructor, Svengali, an Eastern European musician whose hypnotic powers not only propel the aspiring singer to stardom but also come to dominate and ruin her life. We look at the novel’s forgotten popularity in its day, the phenomenon of “Trilbyana,” and the book’s cinematic adaptations, including the 1931 film, Svengali, with John Barrymore in the title role. Along the way, we note some surprising parallels with more prominently gothic novels and films.

John Barrymore as Svengali in the 1931 film of that name.

Beginning with Mesmer’s dubious scholarship at the University of Vienna, we make an attempt to untangle his concept of “animal magnetism,” describing an invisible, dynamic fluid, comparable to the “cosmic magnetism” that guides the planets, but particular to “animals” (i.e., creatures sharing an “animus” (L) or animating spirit.

We particularly focus on Mesmer’s experiences while in Hungary, where in 1775 he was summoned by a Baron Horeczky de Horka, who hoped the German doctor’s new form of therapy might succeeds where treatments of his condition by others had failed. We hear of several curious incidents occurring in the castle, which were documented in detail the family tutor and interpreter Herr Seifert, who had observed Mesmer with a skeptical fascination, expecting the man to be a charlatan.

We next look at Mesmer’s return to Vienna where he attempted the cure of Marie Paradies, a talented musician blind since the age of three who mingled with the musical elites of her city and was regarded with favor by the Imperial court.

As the results here were dubious at best, we then follow Mesmer on his escape to Paris, where he becomes a faddish celebrity. Mrs. Karswell reads for us a lengthy descriptions of his “magnetic salons,” as observed by a Scottish physician, John Grieve, during a visit to Paris in 1784. During that same year, however, Mesmer’s increasing fame drew the attention of the state, and his techniques were the subject of two Commissions called by Louis XVI. The results were unfortunate for Mesmer but provide listeners with some tasty descriptions of the collective madness involved in those salons.

Period illustration showing Mesmer’s patients around the magnetic baquet.

We then have a look at the connection between Mesmer and the Mozarts (primarily father Leopold but to some extent also his musical Wunderkind, Wolfgang,) and here we note Mozart and Mesmer’s mutual fondness for the glass harmonica — Ben Franklin’s invention consisting of a series of glass bowls of descending size mounted on a horizontal spindle, rotated by a foot treadle and played with a wetted finger. While Mesmer considered its sound to have healing “magnetic” properties, others regarded the unearthly sounds with suspicion, and so we hear a bit of lore about the glass harmonica’s “cursed” (and even lethal) reputation during the 18th century.

The show closes with a charming story about a canary kept by the great mesmerist until the day of his death, which is also described.

NOTE: This episode also references the new publication, We Need to Talk About Death, a book by our very own Sarah Chavez, which is now available from Amazon and through stores near you.

The Plague Doctor Unmasked

By boneandsickle | April 1, 2020

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:50 — 53.6MB)

The figure of the masked plague doctor is an object of intense fascination but also the subject of much misinformation. This episode sorts things out while seeking particular evidence for such handsomely dressed character in the historical record.

We begin with a few clips from horror films in which plague doctors figure, including the 2008 film The Sick House in which the spirit of a plague doctor menaces an archeologist, and the 2019 film The Cleansing in which a malevolent bird-masked “Cleanser” stalks through 14th-century Wales.

As most listeners are somewhat familiar with the plague mask and its presumed function, we get that out of the way first, noting the mask’s connection to the antique belief in miasma, or disease-carrying air as the cause of the plague and other ailments. We also clear up the misunderstanding that the plague doctor is a medieval character (since he only appears in the 17th century).

His first appearance is in a German broadsheet from 1655, in which the crow-like character identified as “Dr. Beak” and lampooned (along with doctors in general) for being greedy as carrion crows. As this image was copied and recopied for centuries, it raises the question as to whether the birdlike mask was in fact drawn from life or created strictly in the service of this original broadsheet’s metaphor.

"Dr Schnabel/Beak of Rome, Paul Fürst, 1656 — “Dr Schnabel/Beak of Rome, Paul Fürst, 1656

Next we look at other evidence for the character in the form of actual artifacts, including two masks exhibited in museums in Berlin and Ingolstadt, Germany.

As there are reasons to doubt the authenticity of these, we next look at evidence of plague masks associated with the island of Poveglia in the Venice Lagoon. Along the way, we learn a bit more about early measures the city took against the plague (including the invention of the concept of shipping quarantines along with coinage of the word).

We also review a bit of general information about the islands in the Venetian lagoon (including others besides Poveglia) used for the clinical isolation of victims of plague, leprosy, and the mental illness. A photo taken on Poveglia in 1899 is discussed as it may show an actual plague mask in use in the late 19th century. We also hear some snippets from the TV Show Ghost Adventures, which popularized a number of legends associated with Poveglia, including tales of asylum torture and suicide.

Next, we look at the first textual evidence for this plague mask and suit, in a 1682 volume attributing its invention to Charles de Lorme, royal physician to Louis XIV and the Medici Family, among others.

While the design of the mask seems to be a first with de Lorme, we also hear of some other uses of protective plague garments are documented in France and Italy around this time.

A surprising example from Basel, Switzerland provides rare evidence of particular doctor known to have worn a plague suit and mask. It’s 17^th century painting of the family arms of the Zwinger family of Basel, painted for the doctor and theologian Theodor Zwinger the Younger, and depicting him in a plague mask and suit.

We also have a look at the symbolic use of special historic plague garments, special colors worn in France and Italy for medics working with plague victims, and the symbolic and practical function of the stick or baton held by the the plague doctor in most every historical illustration.

The Great Plague of Marseille (1721 to 1722) provides us one more name of a doctor known to have worn a plague suit and mask. His name was François Chicoyneau, and his efforts were not well received by the citizens he was assigned to serve in Marseille, as we hear.

Along the way, Mrs. Karswell provides us some contemporary accounts documenting other aspects of the Marseilles plague, the last bubonic pandemic of Europe, including novel means of disposing of plague corpses considered by the town council, a curiously relevant form of social distancing, and the basis of the legend of “Four Thieves Vinegar.”

Finally, we discuss those plague doctor masks worn in the Venetian Carnival, learning that they are a strictly modern creation not associated with the 16th-18th century commedia della’arte tradition that gives us the other masks.

We end with a strange parallel between an opera about performers in the commedia della’arte and a 1928 film starring silent horror great Lon Chaney, Sr. Included is a bit of music used to promote the film in question, Laugh Clown, Laugh.”