But perhaps the most notable figure in the European history of Mental Healing was Franz Anton Mesmer, a native of Switzerland, who was born in 1734, and who later in the century created the greatest excitement in several European countries by his strange theories and miraculous claims. Frank Podmore in a recent work says of Mesmer: "He had no pretensions to be a thinker; he stole his philosophy ready-made from a few belated alchemists; and his entire system of healing was based on a delusion. His extraordinary success was due to the lucky accident of the times. Mesmer's first claim to our remembrance lies in this--that he wrested the privilege of healing from the churches and gave it to mankind as a universal possession." Mesmer held that there was in Nature a universal magnetic force which had a powerful therapeutic effect when properly applied. He cured many people by touching them with an iron rod, through which he claimed the universal magnetism flowed from his body to that of the patient. He called this magnetic fluid "animal magnetism." Later on he devised his celebrated "magnetic tub" or _baquet_, by means of which he was able to treat his patients _en masse_. Podmore gives the following interesting account of scenes surrounding his treatments: "The baquet was a large oaken tub, four or five feet in diameter and a foot or more in depth, closed by a wooden cover. Inside the tub were placed bottles full of water disposed in rows radiating from the center, the necks in some of the rows pointing towards the center, in others away from it. All these bottles had been previously 'magnetized' by Mesmer. Sometimes there were several rows of bottles, one above the other; the machine was then said to be at high pressure. The bottles rested on layers of powdered glass and iron filings. The tub itself was filled with water. The whole machine, it will be seen, was a kind of travesty of the galvanic cell. To carry out the resemblance, the cover of the tub was pierced with holes, through which passed slender iron rods of varying lengths, which were jointed and movable, so that they could be readily applied to any part of the patient's body. Round this battery the patients were seated in a circle, each with his iron rod. Further, a cord, attached at one end to the tub, was passed round the body of each of the sitters, so as to bind them all into a chain. Outside the first a second circle would frequently be formed, who would connect themselves together by holding hands. Mesmer, in a lilac robe, and his assistant operators--vigorous and handsome young men selected for the purpose--walked about the room, pointing their fingers or an iron rod held in their hands at the diseased parts."