Mesmer

Guy de Maupassant compares the mind-controlling powers of the Horla to those of the eighteenth-century physician Franz Mesmer. Mesmer used techniques such as hypnosis to treat patients. He attributed his hypnotic abilities to something he called animal magnetism. Charles Mackay, who wrote an essay on Mesmer in his volume Extraordinary Popular Delusions (1841), notes that Mesmer would not allow facts to interfere with his theory. Mesmer spent most of his career conning people, including...