"As a practicing physician in Vienna of the 1760s, Dr. Mesmer maintained some hold on physical reality by developing and using magnetic contraptions of the kind hereinafter described. He and his patients were convinced of their therapeutic value, even if his fellow practitioners were not. But when he removed to Paris in 1778, the abracadabra of ceremonial magic seems to have been added to his clinical routine. This could have only aroused the most violent antagonism from his colleagues and the authorities and he was charged with being a fraud and a charlatan…"