Several popes attempted to improve navigation on the Tiber in the 17th and 18th century, with extensive dredging continuing into the 19th century. Trade was boosted for a while but by the 20th century silting had resulted in the river only being navigable as far as Rome itself. The Tiber was once known for its floods â the Campus Martius is a flood plain and would regularly flood to a depth of 2 metres (6 ft 7 in).
Franz Anton Mesmer. The modern era of hypnosis and hypnotherapy really begins with Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), the Viennese physician who left the word âmesmerismâ to posterity. For various reasons, he also gave hypnosis the rather unsalubrious reputation that still persists in some quarters today.
Sigmund Freud - Charcot. Jean-Martin Charcot. J.-M. Charcot (1825-1893) had an outstanding influence on the young Freud, to the extent that he named his first son after him. Freud's stay with Charcot for four months between 1885-1886 left him an impression which took some time to fade away. Strongly interested in hypnosis at the time, Freud had addressed the great master with an aim of improving his own technique. Of Parisian origin, Charcot was the prototype of the great master of medicine of the time, the topic of all talks and carrying out a fashionable life. It is in Salpetriere, where he settled in 1862, that his glorious career truly began, leaving strong marks on neurology and modern psychiatry.