You are getting sleepy, sleeeepy … your eyelids are getting heavyyyyyy. … When I snap my fingers, you will forget everything you’ve ever heard about hypnotism.
Something like hypnotism had already been around for centuries when finally it was “invented” around 1775 by Franz Anton Mesmer, a German physician who used it to effect seemingly miraculous cures.
“Like a lot of people at the time, he was interested in these non-material forces such as electricity and magnetism,” says professor Thomas Broman of the UW-Madison history of science department.