Memoir on the Discovery

science, debased by ignorance, whatever it might have possessed of utility and truth.

Based on my ideas on this subject, I presented in Vienna, in 1766, a Dissertation on the influence of the planets on the human body. Original title: "Dissertatio physico-medica de planetarum influxu." This was Franz Mesmer's doctoral thesis, where he first explored the idea of celestial forces affecting human health. I proposed, according to the known principles of universal attraction—confirmed by observations which teach us that the planets mutually affect one another in their orbits, and that the moon and the sun cause and direct the ebb and flow The tides of the sea on our globe, as well as in the atmosphere; I proposed, I say, that these spheres also exert a direct action on all the constituent parts of animated bodies, particularly on the nervous system, by means of a fluid which penetrates everything: I defined this action by the INTENSITY AND DIMINUTION The original terms "intension" and "rémission" refer to the increasing and decreasing strength of a physical quality or force. of the properties of matter and of organized bodies.