hands, or joined by cords, the patients sat in expectancy, and then Mesmer, clothed in the dress of a magician, glided amongst them, affecting this one by a touch, another by a look, and making “passes” with his hand towards a third. Nervous ladies became hysterical or fainted; some men became convulsed, or were seized with palpitations of the heart or other bodily disturbances. The government appointed a commission of physicians and members of the Academy of Sciences to investigate these phenomena; Franklin and Baillie were members of this commission, and drew up an elaborate report admitting many of the facts, but contesting Mesmer’s theory that there was an agent called animal magnetism, and attributing the effects to physiological causes. Mesmer himself was undoubtedly a mystic; and, although the excitement of the time led him to indulge in mummery and sensational effects, he was honest in the belief that the phenomena produced were real, and called for further investigation. For a time, however, animal magnetism fell into disrepute; it became a system of downright jugglery, and Mesmer himself was denounced as a shallow empiric and impostor. He withdrew from Paris, and died at Meersburg in Switzerland on the 5th of March 1815. He left many disciples, the most distinguished of whom was the marquis de Puysegur.
MESNAGER (or Le Mesagner), NICOLAS (1658–1714), French diplomatist, belonged to a wealthy merchant family. He gave up a commercial career for the law, however, and became advocate before the parlement of Rouen. In 1700 he was sent as deputy of Rouen to the council of commerce which was established in Paris for the extension of French trade. Here he made his mark, and was chosen to go on three missions to Spain, between the years 1704 and 1705, to negotiate financial arrangements. In August 1711 he was sent on a secret mission to London to detach England from the alliance against France, and succeeded in securing the adoption of eight articles which formed the base of the later Treaty of Utrecht. As a reward for his skill he was made one of the three French plenipotentiaries sent to Utrecht in January 1712, and had the honour of signing the treaty the next year. As he had used much of his own large fortune to keep up his state as ambassador, he was granted a pension by the grateful king of France. His portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud is in the gallery of Versailles.
MESNE (an Anglo-French legal form of the O. Fr. meien, mod. moyen, mean, Med. Lat. medianus, in the middle, cf. “mean”), middle or intermediate, an adjective used in several legal phrases. A mesne lord is one who has tenants holding under him, while himself holding of a superior lord. Mesne process was such process as intervened between the beginning and end of a suit (see Process). Mesne profits are profits derived from land whilst in wrongful possession, and may be claimed in damages for trespass either in a separate action or joined with an action for the recovery of the land. The plaintiff must prove that he has re-entered into possession, his title during the period for which he claims, the fact that the defendant has been in possession during that period, and the amount of the mesne profits. The amount recovered as mesne profits need not be limited to the rental value of the land, but may include a sum to cover such items as deterioration or reasonable costs of getting possession, &c.
MESOCEPHALIC, a term applied by anthropologists to those skulls which exhibit a cephalic index intermediate between the dolichocephalic and brachycephalic crania (see Craniometry). Taking the longer diameter of a skull, i.e. the one from front to back, as 100, mesocephalic skulls are those of which the transverse diameter varies between 75 to 80.
MESOMEDES of Crete, Greek lyric poet, who lived during the 2nd century A.D. He was a freedman of the emperor Hadrian, on whose favourite Antinous he is said to have written a panegyric. Two epigrams by him in the Greek anthology (Anthol. pal. xiv. 63, xvi. 323) and a hymn to Nemesis are extant. The hymn is of special interest as preserving the ancient musical notation written over the text. Two other hymns—to the muse Calliope and to the sun—formerly assigned to Dionysius of Alexandria, have also been attributed to him.
See J. F. Bellermann, Die Hymnen des Dionysius und Mesomedes (1840); C. de Jan, Musici scriptores graeci (1899); S. Reinach in Revue des études grecques, ix. (1896); Suidas, s.v.
MESONERO ROMANOS, RAMÓN DE (1805–1882), Spanish prose-writer, was born at Madrid on the 19th of July 1803, and at an early age became interested in the history and topography of his native city. His Manual de Madrid (1831) was published when literature was at a low ebb in Spain; but the author’s curious researches and direct style charmed the public, and next year, in a review entitled Cartas españolas, under the pseudonym of “El Curioso parlante,” he began a series of articles on the social life of the capital which were subsequently collected and called Panorama matritense (1835–1836). Mesonero Romanos was elected to the Spanish Academy in 1838 and, though he continued to write, had somewhat outlived his fame when he issued his pleasing autobiography, Memorias de un setentón, natural y vecino de Madrid (1880). He died at Madrid on the 30th of April 1882, shortly after the publication of his Obras completas (8 vols., 4to, 1881).
MESOPOTAMIA (Μεσοποταμία, sc. χώρα or Συρία, from, μέσος, middle, ποταμός, river), one of the Greek renderings of the earlier Semitic names for the river-country that stretches eastward from northern maritime Syria. The earliest appearance of a Semitic name of this kind is in the last paragraph of the biography of Aḥmōse of el-Kāb, the aged officer Name.of Tethmosis (Tḥutmōse) I. As early therefore as the late 16th century B.C. the name Naharin (N’h’ryn’ ) was in use. That the name was connected with nahar (a river) was plain to some of the Egyptian scribes, who wrote the word with determinative for “water” in addition to that for “country.”
The scribes show no suspicion, however, of the name’s being anything but a singular.[1] Is it possible that a consciousness that the word was not a plural can have survived till the early Christian centuries, when the Targum of Onqelos (Onkelos) rendered Naharaim by “the river Euphrates” (Pethor of Aram which is on the Euphrates: Deut. xxiii. 4 [5])? The Naharin or Naharen of the Egyptian texts appears some five generations later in the Canaanitic of the Amarna letters in the form Naḫrim(a), which would seem therefore to be the pronunciation then prevalent in Phoenicia (Gebal) and Palestine (Jerusalem). About the same time Naharin (N-h-ry-n) is given as the northern boundary of Egypt’s domain (year 30 of Amenḥotep or Amenophis III.), over against Kush in the south (tomb of Khamhet: Breasted, Anc. Rec. ii. 350).
The origin of the name is suggested by the Euphrates being called “the water of Naharin,”—on the Karnak stele more fully “the water of the Great Bend (pḫr wr) of Naharin (N-h-r-n)” (Breasted, Anc. Rec. ii. 263), or on the Constantinople obelisk simply “the Great Bend of Naharin” (loc. cit. note d). The precise meaning of pḫr wr is not certain. When Breasted renders “Great Bend” of the Euphrates he is probably thinking of the great sweep round between Bīrejiḳ-Zeugma and Raḳḳa-Nicephorium. W. M. Müller, on the other hand, rendering Kreislauf, explains it of the Euphrates water system as a whole, thought of as encompassing Naharin. The Sea of the Great Bend would seem to be the sea fed by the north-to-south waters of Naharin, just as the Mediterranean, fed by the south-to-north waters of the Nile, is called the Great Circle (šn wr).
For many centuries after Amenophis IV. the name cannot be found. The next occurrence is in Hebrew (Gen. xxiv. 10＝J), where the district from which a wife for Isaac is brought is called Aram-Naharaim. The diphthongal pronunciation of the termination aim is probably a much later development. We should probably read something like Aram-Naharīm. The meaning is: the Naharim portion of the Aramaic speaking domain.[2] Probably the author thought primarily of the district of Harran.[3] Some generations later Aram-Naharīm is used of the district including Pĕthōr, a town on the west bank of the Euphrates[4] (Deut. xxiii.- ↑ The threefold n after Nahar in a stele of Persian or Greek times (healing of Bentresh) is probably only the determinative for “water,” a fourth n being accidentally omitted (Breasted, Ancient Records, iii. § 434).
- ↑ Cf. Aram-Damascus, which means, the Damascus portion of the Aramaic domain; and har-Ephraim, which means, the Ephraim portion of the (Israelitish) highlands—EV “Mount Ephraim.”
- ↑ Halévy’s suggestion that we are to look towards the Ḥaurān, and think of the rivers of Damascus, has not met with favour.
- ↑ Padan-Aram (Rev. Vers. better Paddan-Aram), Gen. xxv. 20, &c., rendered by the Septuagint “Mesopotamia of Syria,” is obscure. Paddan has been connected phonetically with Patin, west of the Euphrates, and explained by others as a synonym for Harran.
