To Heal Without Drugs or Surgery:

The Sydney Weltmer Exhibit

This traveling exhibit explores the history of the Weltmer Institute, an alternative medical school and clinic founded by Sidney A. Weltmer in Nevada, Missouri just before the turn of the twentieth century. The Institute taught and practiced methods known as magnetic healing and hypnotic suggestion. As a philosophical descendant of eighteenth-century Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer, Sidney Weltmer believed he could manipulate an invisible force known as animal magnetism to cure disease. Weltmer’s practices brought him into legal conflict with the orthodox medical community, Christian clergy, and the United States government, even as his business enterprise created a major economic boom in Nevada, Missouri.