Antoine Mesmer, Godfather of Hypnotism

Early in the eighteenth century the attention of Europe was directed to a very remarkable instance of fanaticism, known as animal magnetism – today we call it hypnosis or mesmerism in honor of the charlatan who discovered the condition.
Antoine Mesmer maintained “that the sun, moon, and fixed stars affect each other in their orbits; that they cause and direct in our earth a flux and reflux through the medium of a subtle and mobile fluid.”
He soon found that he could produce the effects merely by passing his hands over the patient and the art of hypnosis was born.