Carl Sandburg distinctly remembered the mesmerist who appeared at the old Opera House on the south side of the Public Square. The act was on the theater's bill for a whole month. Carl went to see the demonstration as often as he could acquire a dime to buy a seat in the gallery.

 

The mesmerist asked members of the audience to come onto the stage to be hypnotized. Carl knew some of the boys who were fighting bumble bees and rolling their bodies across the stage.

 

The highlight of the act was the mesmerizing of a man whose body became stiff. His head was on a table and his feet on another table with nothing supporting the torso of his body. A rock was placed on the man's stomach. Ben Holcomb, a blacksmith with very strong arms, swung a sledge at the rock and it split. The unconscious man didn't move.

 

The mesmerist snapped his fingers and the man awoke. They left the stage as the audience applauded. Carl and his friends were sure it wasn't a miracle, but it was a wonder.

 

Franz Friedrich Anton Mesmer, an eighteenth century physician, believed there was an invisible natural force in all living things. He called it animal magnetism and tried to prove it would be a healing  mechanism. From the 1780s until the 1850s it was a medical specialty. Today it is almost forgotten, but some of the ideas still appear in spiritual healing.

 

Hypnosis is an artificially induced state similar to sleep. The individual has a reduced awareness of the world around him or her and an increased capacity to respond to suggestion. Today, it is identified as hypnotherapy and can be a method to help individuals quit smoking or lose weight.

 

Individuals can be classified according to high or low susceptibility to hypnosis. About eighty percent of the population is in the middle range and the characteristic is stable throughout a person's life. Those at the high end of the scale spend much their time as children daydreaming or in imaginative play. Those at the low end may have had unpleasant childhood experiences from which they withdraw or forget.

 

Ancient meditation practices in the oriental world have similar aspects. Self-meditation can serve as a way to remain calm in a hectic world.