But the general stream of the explanation continued in the direction of the magnetic doctrine. It was especially Mesmer in the eighteenth century who, in a long life of fantastic mysticism and yet of universal serious study, surely contributed much to the development of the theory. He had started to use, like others, the magnet in his medical practice. But he discovered that the same therapeutic successes could be gained without applying the magnet itself, but by simply using his own hands. The patients became cured when he moved his hands slowly from their heads to their feet. The magnetic power was therefore evidently in man himself. It was an animal magnetism in opposition to the mineral one which belonged to the magnet and to the stars. He believed further that he was able to infuse this magnetic power into any lifeless thing, which would then have curative influence on the nerves. There can be no doubt that, whatever may have been the value of his theories, he cured a large number of patients, evidently producing a state which we would call today a hypnoid state and often simply appealing to the natural suggestibility of the impressionable minds. Among his pupils, usually called mesmerists, was Puyseyur, who discovered, in 1784, the state which was called artificial somnambulism, a kind of sleep in which the ideas and feelings of the magnetized can be guided by the magnetizer. Here evidently was the first recognition of the psychotherapeutic variation which we call today hypnotism. There followed a period in which the scientific interest of the physicians was somewhat sidetracked by an unsound connection of these studies with mystic speculations and with clairvoyance. But especially in Germany animal magnetism in Mesmer's form and in the form of artificial somnambulism grew in influence through the first decades of the nineteenth century and succeeded in entering the medical schools. The reaction came through popular misuse. At about the third decade of the century, interest ceased everywhere.