Magnetic healing

Magnet therapy, or magnetic therapy, or magnotherapy is a form of alternative medicine involving magnetic fields. Proponents claim that subjecting certain parts of the body to doses of magnetic fields has a beneficial effect. This belief has led to the popularization of an industry involving the sale of magnetic-based products for "healing" purposes: magnetic bracelets and jewelry; magnetic straps for wrists, ankles, and the back; shoe insoles, mattresses, and magnetic blankets (blankets with magnets woven into the material); and even water that has been "magnetized". The therapy is generally considered pseudoscientific by the mainstream scientific community, and marketing of the therapy as an effective treatment is heavily restricted by law in many jurisdictions, including the United States.
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Type of "healing" that supposedly involves the flow of "vital energy" to the patient through the mind and body of the practitioner. The expression "Magnetic healing" stems from mesmerism.

Form of hypnotism named after Franz Anton Mesmer (c. 1734-1815), a flamboyant Viennese physician who had planned to become a cleric. (Writers also refer to Mesmer as Franciscus Antonius Mesmer, Franz Antoine Mesmer, and Friedrich Anton Mesmer.) Mesmer coined the expression "animal magnetism" to refer to his concept of a mysterious, magnetic "vital fluid" that (a) permeated the universe and (b) was the agent whereby he induced hypnosis ("mesmeric sleep") in patients. He postulated that an imbalance between animal magnetism within the body and animal magnetism in the environment caused many illnesses. Supposed use of animal magnetism characterizes mesmerism, which apparently survives only partially, as Magnetic healing (see above).

Magnetic Healing Introduced to the West by Mesmer; in it the pranas or general vital powers of the healer are able to help, in many cases, a sufferer to throw off an ailment or disease by arousing the sufferer's own powers of resistance to vital inharmony or disease. The success of magnetic healing arises from the fact that human or animal magnetism is a fluid, and hence an emanation flowing from the healer to the sufferer. The existence of such human or animal magnetism has now been established by the researches of a multitude of investigators during the last century or more. All human beings have this magnetic fluid, but some natural-born healers have the instinctive power of projecting or emitting their own magnetism, which flows from different parts of the body, but especially from the tips of the fingers, the eyes, or the hands.
To animal magnetism likewise are to be ascribed the cause of the so-called antagonisms or repulsions, or again affinities and attractions, between human beings.