Friedrich Anton Mesmer was born in Iznang, on the Lake of Constance, May 23, 1734; destined by his parents for the church, he turned from the study of theology to that of law, and again changed to medicine. He graduated as a physician from the University of Vienna in 1776, and in his doctor's thesis upon "The Influence of the Planets on the Human Body," he attempted to revive the underlying doctrines of astrology from a medical point of view. He defined the "quality of animal bodies, rendering them susceptible to the influence of heaven and earth," as "animal magnetism;" and regarded the action involved as analogous to that of the moon upon the ebb and flow of the tide. The fluctuations and periodicities of disease he sought to produce artificially, and therefore called his theory the "imitative theory," the object being to imitate the ups and downs of nature. He records his first practical test on the 28th of July, 1774, when he placed magnets upon the chest and feet of his patient, a young lady, who was suffering from a variety of morbid symptoms. Shortly thereafter "she felt internally a painful streaming of a very fine substance going now here and now there, but finally settling in the lower part of her body, and freeing her from all further attacks for six hours." Somewhat later, when the same patient chanced to be suffering from one of her attacks, and was lying unconscious, she responded by violent movements to the slightest touch of Mesmer, but remained entirely unresponsive to the manipulations of a bystander. One of six cups was then chosen by Mesmer's visitor to be impressed with magnetic properties. Contact with this cup, which Mesmer had touched, produced in the patient movements of her hands and expressions of pain. Mesmer's influence made itself felt at a distance of eight steps, and even when a third person stood between the two. These simple observations were the humble beginnings of the practices of animal magnetism.