John Nesbitt credited as playing...
Narrator
- Narrator: Tens of thousands of afflicted people - the poor afoot, the rich in their carriages - crowded into his clinics, where he treated all comers with magnets, or glass wands. He claimed that this mumbo-jumbo produced mysterious magnetic currents that would cure all ills. And this fantastic nonsense actually produced results, and Dr. Mesmer was believed by the ignorant to be in league with the powers of Hell.
- [first lines]
- Narrator: This time, from that single word in the dictionary which hides the curious life story, we seek another adventure in time's passing parade. For today, in a grave in Switzerland that for a hundred years was neglected and forgotten, there lies the dust of a fabulous fraud: "Lived in Glory, Died in Shame / Forgotten his story, Defiled his name."
- [last lines]
- Anton Mesmer: I held a key that might have unlocked the door to an unknown world... but I could not enter it. Those who follow - the men of science - I wonder... if they will find a footprint left by old Mesmer... the charlatan.
- Narrator: Lived in glory, died in shame. Franz Anton Mesmer, 1815.
- Narrator: For as tens of thousands were helped by mesmerism, tens of thousands also died - murdered by ignorance. And even your celebrated cure of blindness failed at last, when you ceased the treatments. Your mighty discovery was kill or cure - but twice as often as it cured, it killed. So exit Mesmer, who purchased fame at the price of death.