Angelo Colò and the Metamorphosis of Animal Magnetism in Italy between 18th and 19th Century

Puységur’s rediscovery of magnetic somnambulism is regarded by historians of psychology as a watershed moment in the history of animal magnetism and psychotherapy, and one which paves the way to hypnosis. The complex evolution of magnetism between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century has been the subject of in- teresting studies in recent years, despite the fact that classical his- toriography often reduced it to the linear succession from Mesmer to Puységur. However, this evolution has not been studied for the Italian case, which offers interesting insights into certain dynamics of the spread of animal magnetism. It is worth contextualising the evolution of this phenomenon within very different contexts, cul- tures and forms of socialisation and dissemination of ideas between the two centuries. Angelo Colò’s Prodromo sull’azione salutare del magnetismo animale e della musica was published in Bologna in 1815. Although still unknown even to scholars of the history of animal magnetism, the text was fundamental to the spread of somnambu- lism in Italy at the dawn of the nineteenth century, and it shared with Italian scholars the work of the German magnetizers, who devel- oped the discipline after the French Revolution. The book by Angelo Colò is illustrative of a new animal magnetism, distant both from the theorizations and the figure of Mesmer, and its analysis helps us to understand how the discipline changed at the turn of the century. A comparison between Colò’s book and previous Italian texts on animal magnetism, such as those of Francois Amedee Doppet from 1784, and of Count Carlo Matteo Litta Biumi Resta from 1792, tells us of the gradual evolution of the discipline. Thus, focusing on what happened in Italy, a forgotten country for the history of mesmerism, we can analyze the paths of a transforming discipline.