Charles Poyen

Charles Poyen (died 1844) was a French mesmerist or magnetizer (a practitioner of a practice that would later inspire hypnotism). Mesmerism was named after Franz Anton Mesmer, a German physician who argued in 1779 for the existence of a fluid that fills space and through which bodies could influence each other, a force he called animal magnetism.

Early life

Born in France, Poyen studied medicine in Paris. In January 1836 he began lecturing about mesmerism in and around Boston; as word spread, people would volunteer to be treated by him.

Poyen said that his effect on patients differed: sometimes they felt calmer, sometimes more agitated, sometimes hot or cold, sometimes there was pain. But "lmost always the patient feels relieved of his usual pain, and sometimes the symptoms of the existing sickness cease as by a charm." Poyen believed this demonstrated the existence of a "magnetical agent".

The BMSJ described Poyen: "In person, Dr. Poyen was of a middle height; rather slender, yet well formed. Nearly one half of his face was covered, or rather discolored, by a naevus, of a dark-red hue, which greatly modified the natural expression. The cranial region for firmness was raised quite high enough to indicate obstinacy. He was habitually grave, thoughtful, industrious and studious, but not a close reasoner, nor by any means an original or profound thinker. Whatever was marvellous or extraordinary engaged his earnest consideration, particularly if it could be dragged into the service of the dearest of all interests—animal magnetism." According to Willa Cather and Georgine Milmine, writing for McClure's in 1907, Quimby was so excited by Poyen's lectures that he "followed him from town to town". However there is no record of Quimby following Poyen or seeing more than one or his lectures. Quimby himself wrote he had heard just one of Poyen's lectures and had "pronounced it a humbug as a matter of course" describing Poyen as someone "who did not appear to be highly blest with the powers of magnetising".

Death Poyen returned to France and died in Bordeaux in 1844, just as he about to sail back to the United States. "Having sown the seed," the BMSJ wrote, "... a mighty host of animal magnetizers sprung up in a trice; they swarmed throughout the length and breadth of the northern States, like locusts; but having used up the resources of their silly admirers, and devoured the green leaves of vulgar Popularity, they gradually died away, one after another, and have now become, in vulgar parlance, the laughing stock of every commonsense community. After the manner of Lycurgus, when he had fairly imposed his system of laws upon the Spartans, Dr. P. left the Continent; and when on the point of returning to ascertain the workings of the machinery he had set in motion, death dropped the curtain, and his career on earth was closed forever."

Selected works Husson, M., Charles Poyen, David K. Hitchcock, Report on the magnetical experiments made by the commission of the Royal Academy of Medicine, of Paris, read in the meetings of June 21 and 28, 1831, Boston: D. K. Hitchcock, 9 Cornhill, 1836. Poyen, Charles. Progress of Animal Magnetism in New England, Boston: Weeks, Jordan & Company, 1837 (archive.org). Poyen, Charles. A letter to Col. Wm. L. Stone of New York, on the facts related in his letter to Dr. Brigham, and a plain refutation of Durant's exposition of animal magnetism, &c., Boston: Weeks, Jordan and Company; New York: C. Shepard, 1837.