Pera ♡ ´･ᴗ･ `♡

The Habsburg-Rosenberg cup belonging to Georg Nicklaus Graf von Rosenberg, counsellor to Emperor Leopold I. Crafted in Vienna in 1665.

Franz Anton Mesmer (1734 - 1815), a German/Austrian phyisican who developed the theory of what he called "animal magnetism", an invisible natural force possed by all living things. Based on that theory, he claimed to be able to heal basically any ailment by the use of magnetic healing streams.

His methods included, among others, attaching steal magnets to a patient (during a seizure), the lying on of hands and group therapy sessions. For those, he had people sit around a tub filled with sand or iron fillings (serving as "storage" for the magnetic energy) and hold ropes connected to it. Many of thess meetings, he concluded by playing on a glass harmonica.

After he had been quite "successful" with this pratice in Vienna for a while, a commission set up by the empress of Austria declared Mesmer a fraud in 1777, and he moved to Paris. There, he continued where had he left off, became successful again quickly - and was found to be a fraud by another commission, this time set up by the French crown in 1784.

"Capitalism is Genocide,"