Mesmerism and Spiritual Healing Practices
Some researchers note that "many phenomena of animal magnetism emerged in a very similar form in a fair variety of appreciably different cultural and geographical settings, from New York to Calcutta and from Shetlands to Brazil. An obvious inference is that some at least of the phenomena are not the direct or indirect products of culturally determined belief, but rather reflect features of man's psychological" and physiological "constitution, which function independently, not perhaps of all his belief-system, but of his belief as to his own constitution."" Today scholars believe Mesmerism to share a concept of life force or energy with such Asian practices such as reiki and qigong. The practical and theoretical positions of such practices are on whole substantially different from those of mesmerism.
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