Mesmer's Tub (mixed media)

Le Baquet de Mesmer; Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) German doctor who published a treatise on animal magnetism in 1779 and opened a consulting room in the Place Vendome, Paris where patients sat round the tub filled with fluid either holding hands or touching one of the iron bars; Mesmer believed that the effect of magnetism could heal the sick and restore the human body's natural magnetism; this tub is almost certainly the only surviving example; Mesmer's theories and practices, although later discredited, influenced the Scottish physician and surgeon, James Braid (1795-1860 to develop the use of hypnosis in medical treatment;