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Charles Lafontaine

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Nationality
  
France

Name
  
Charles Lafontaine


Died
  
1892, Geneva, Switzerland

Known for
  
Animal magnetism

Charles Lafontaine httpsuploadwikimediaorgwikipediacommonsthu

Born
  
1803
Vendome

Charles Lafontaine (1803 – 1892) was an early French Magnetizer.

Charles Lafontaine Charles Lafontaine Wikipedia

He eventually lived in Geneva and published a journal called Le magnétiseur. Although he had failed as an actor, he became wealthy as a traveling mesmerist, or animal magnetiser, as it was then known.

He wrote an autobiography, which may have influenced George du Maurier in his writing of Trilby.

He stayed in London for a couple of years 1840–1841, where according to the locale newspapers and magazines of London, he created a great sensation in the city magnetizing a lion in the Zoological Gardens, London, in which he succeeded. Followed by his successful magnetizing on animals, he repeated the performances in various other cities of England. He had a practice of calling one of his audiences to get magnetized and it worked great. "When he magnetised he looked like personified concentration. It was often remarked that when a person on being introduced to Lafontaine had talked with him for a little while, he felt as if he had known him for ever so long, which feeling of 'old acquaintance' shows that he had an eminently sympathetic nature" (Richard Harte - Hypnotism and the doctors)

His stage demonstrations of animal magnetism in Manchester influenced surgeon James Braid to pursue the study of what came to be known as hypnotism (N.B. Braid's "hypnotism" was significantly different from Lafontaine's "magnetism"). Braid first saw Lafontaine in Manchester on November 13, 1841.

References

Charles Lafontaine Wikipedia