Thomas Jefferson was committed to rationalism – the belief (ha ha ha) that “reason rather than experience is the foundation of certainty in knowledge.”

He disdained Mesmerism, considering it (in his own words) “an imputation of so grave a nature as would bear an action at law in America.”

The New Agers of the day (the Spiritualists and the Swedenborgians who blended Mesmerism into their dogmas) made it easier for Jefferson to discredit Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815).

At one point Jefferson was so sure of his and others’ success at suppressing the rapidly expanding Mesmerist movement that he journaled in 1785 …

“Animal magnetism dead, ridiculed.”

Jefferson wrote (Feb. 19, 1791) …

“The animal magnetism too of the maniac Mesmer, had just received its death wound from his [Benjamin Franklin’s] hand in conjunction with his brethren of the learned committee appointed to unveil that compound of fraud and folly.”

But it wasn’t dead, thanks to innovative leaders like the Marquis de Lafayette (1857-1834), who did much to popularize Mesmerism in the United States.

If Jefferson was alive today, he would be cracking down on the work of scientific heretics like Rupert Sheldrake and Zeng Cui.

Thomas Jefferson inoculated himself and his children and all of his domestic slaves against smallpox in 1782.

Later he championed Edward Jenner’s cowpox vaccination over the older smallpox inoculation, conducting “experiments” on some of his newer uninoculated slaves.

Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse (1754-1846) and Jefferson introduced and promoted the cowpox vaccination to the U.S. and beyond.

Waterhouse was fired from the Harvard Corporation (now Harvard University) for trying to create a vaccine monopoly (among other things).
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