mesmerism

English

WOTD – 5 March 2016

English Wikipedia has an article on:

Animal magnetism

From French mesmérisme, analysable as Mesmer +‎ -ism; so called after Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), a German physician who developed the animal magnetism theory.

mesmerism (countable and uncountable, plural mesmerisms)

The method or power of gaining control over someone's personality or actions, as in hypnosis or suggestion.
- 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 23, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:
  What is the secret mesmerism which friendship possesses, and under the operation of which a person ordinarily sluggish, or cold, or timid, becomes wise, active, and resolute, in another's behalf?
The state induced by hypnotic methods (especially that of Mesmer himself).
- 2010, Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, volume 2, page 302:
  ...the fact stood proven that I had seen it in my vision. Lawks! ...When the magician's engagement closed there was but one person in the village who did not believe in mesmerism, and I was the one. All the others were converted, but I was to remain an implacable and unpersuadable disbeliever in mesmerism and hypnotism for close upon fifty years.

mesmerism

mesmerism n (uncountable)