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Casper
City (pop., 1996 est.: 49,000), E central Wyoming, on the N. Platte River. Founded in 1888, it was located on the Oregon Trail and the Pony Express route. The discovery of oil in the 1890s began an oil boom, and the oilfields of the Teapot Dome Scandal were located nearby. Casper's economy is based on the production of oil and natural gas and the manufacture of oilfield equipment. Mining (uranium, coal, bentonite) and cattle and sheep raising also are important.


jasper
Opaque, fine-grained or dense variety of the silica mineral chert that exhibits various colors, but chiefly brick red to brownish red. Long used for jewelry and ornamentation, it has a dull luster but takes a fine polish; its physical properties are those of quartz. Jasper is common and widely distributed, occurring in the Ural Mtns., N. Africa, Sicily, Germany, and elsewhere. For thousands of years, black jasper was used to test gold-silver alloys for their gold content. Rubbing the alloys on the stone, called a touchstone, produces a streak the color of which determines the gold content within 1 part in 100.


Jaspers
German-Swiss philosopher and psychiatrist. As a research psychiatrist, he helped establish psychopathology on a rigorous, scientifically descriptive basis, especially in his General Psychopathology (1913). He taught philosophy at the Univ. of Heidelberg from 1921 until 1937, when the Nazi regime forbade him to work. From 1948 he lived in Switzerland, teaching at the Univ. of Basel. In his magnum opus, Philosophy (3 vols., 1969), he expounds his view that the aim of philosophy is practical; its purpose is the fulfillment of human existence (Existenz). For Jaspers, philosophical illumination is achieved in the experience of limit situations that define the human condition--conflict, guilt, suffering, and death--and that in mankind's confrontation with these extremes it achieves its existential humanity. One of the most important existentialists, he approached the subject from mankind's direct concern with his own existence.


Mesmer
German physician. After studying medicine at the Univ. of Vienna, he developed his theory of "animal magnetism," which held that an invisible fluid in the body acted according to the laws of magnetism and that disease was caused by obstacles to the free circulation of this fluid. In Mesmer's view, harmony could be restored by inducing "crises" (trance states often ending in delirium or convulsions). In the 1770s he carried out dramatic demonstrations of his ability to "mesmerize" his patients using magnetized objects. Accused by Viennese physicians of fraud, he left Austria and settled in Paris (1778), where he also came under fire from the medical establishment. Though his theories were eventually discredited, his ability to induce trance states in his patients made him the forerunner of the modern use of hypnosis.


pepper
Any of many plants ...

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