Pat here:
The easier it is to read a novel, the harder it is to write, I’ve decided. And if I’m to spend twelve-hour days with a book, then the subject and characters need to be fun while I corral them into 90k words. That’s my excuse for writing my magical historical romances, anyway. Even the research tickles my funny bone.
In working on WHISPER OF MAGIC (May 31 release, $2.99 pre-order discount price), I somehow managed to create two people with dangerously compelling voices. In modern day terms, I suppose, you can imagine preachers and politicians who speak with such authority and persuasion that crowds of people will support anything they say. It seems unbelievable, but one need only listen to our current politicians and wonder what’s happening to common sense.
But I’m writing about my educated, scientific Ives who are much too logical to listen to conmen or believe that a voice can cause compulsion, so they must seek other reasons for mob behavior. And in 1830, the most scientific reason available would be Mesmerism. Franz Mesmer believed that people and the universe consist of “fluid matter.” As one publication in 1790 expressed it: “this fluid matter introduces itself through the interstices and returns backwards and forwards, flowing through one body by the currents which issue therefrom to another, as in a magnet, which produces that phenomenon which we call Animal Magnetism.”
Animal Magnetism! You just have to love it.
At the time, scientists were mostly concerned with using “mesmerism” to cure the ill, but the above explanation could also be applied to mob behavior and “laying on of hands” as well.
The French, in particular, were into studying the relationship between spiritualism and medical science, hence so many of my magical Malcolms have “gifts” named by the French, such as clairvoyance or clairaudience. In 1826, the Royal Academy of Medicine in Paris studied Mesmerism and one of its many deductions was “we may conclude with certainty that this state exists, when it gives rise to the development of new faculties, which have been designated by the names of clairvoyance; intuition; internal prevision; or when it produces great changes in the physical economy, such as insensibility; a sudden and considerable increase of strength; and when these effects cannot be referred to any other cause.”
How can I not write that into my battle of the sexes, between science and the mystical? Even educated scientists debated whether magic exists, and it’s called Animal Magnetism! But readers would laugh my hero off the face of the earth if he talked about animal magnetism in reference to his voice—lust, desire, and sex probably weren’t what Mesmer was after. And my heroine comes from Jamaica and knows nothing of Royal Academy reports. I couldn’t use that lovely piece of research, but I offer it to you now in hopes you’ll smile along with me. As you read the book, read “animal magnetism” instead of “compulsion” or “mesmerism” and enjoy!
Mesmerism as hypnosis is scientifically accepted today by medical professionals for various purposes. It is a known factor on an individual basis. Mob behavior, however, is a fascinating study of its own. Mesmer might have had a point about “fluid” bouncing back and forth, interacting so that all the individuals in a crowd are attuned to each other. Mass hypnosis would explain a lot! But can one become hypnotized by television? Now there’s a scary thought!
What do you think? How wrong was Mesmer?