Mesmerism

Drawing on fresh source material, Fred Kaplan considers the importance From Dickens and Mesmerism of Dickens' involvement with mesmerism for his work and his personality. In so doing he describes a si

Drawing on fresh source material, Fred Kaplan considers the importance From Dickens and Mesmerism of Dickens' involvement with mesmerism for his work and his personality. In so doing he describes a si

Harriet Martineau (1802–1876) was a British writer who was one of the first social theorists to examine all aspects of a society, including class, religion, national character and the status of women. Seriously ill in the early 1840s, she turned to alternative remedies, and underwent a course of mesmerism, to which she attributed her remarkable restoration to health. She published her account of the treatment in a series of letters in the Athenaeum in December 1844, and subsequently in book form, and her cure caused a sensation, adding greatly to public interest in mesmerism. To her fury, her doctor (and brother-in-law) T. M. Greenhow defended his own treatment of her in a remarkably detailed account of her illness, which she regarded as a serious breach of patient confidentiality, and his pamphlet is appended to Martineau's work in this reissue.

Mesmerism, Medusa, and the Muse: The Romantic Discourse of Spontaneous Creativity explores the connections among the Romantic discourse of spontaneous literary creativity, the nineteenth-century cultu

From the 1830s to the Civil War, Americans could be found putting each other into trances for fun and profit in parlors, on stage, and in medical consulting rooms. They were performing mesmerism. Surp

From the 1830s to the Civil War, Americans could be found putting each other into trances for fun and profit in parlors, on stage, and in medical consulting rooms. They were performing mesmerism. Surp

This edition provides an insight into the dark areas between Victorian science, medicine and religion. The rare reset source material in this collection is organized thematically and spans the period

William Carpenter (1813–1885) was a leading medical teacher and researcher in London. Although much of his work focused on physiology and the nervous system, he spent a considerable amount of time investigating questions surrounding the relationship between science and religion. He participated in many debates on this issue, and was a member of the prestigious Metaphysical Society, which explored scientific and religious connections. In Mesmerism, Spiritualism, etc. Historically and Scientifically Considered, two of his lectures published in 1877, Carpenter sets out to question on scientific grounds the many spiritualist beliefs that were gaining popularity throughout Britain. His work covers topics such as odylism, electro-biology, thought-reading and clairvoyance. He locates these practices in historical contexts that often stretch back to ancient times, and gives modern scientific explanations for certain phenomena, all with the aim of stifling what he called 'epidemic delusions'.

Chauncy Hare Townshend (1798–1868), poet and collector, was a well-connected friend of Robert Southey and Charles Dickens. He became fascinated with Mesmerism while in Germany and went on to popularise it in England. This book, first published in 1840, was his passionate defence of Mesmerism. Developed in the late eighteenth century by Franz Mesmer, Mesmerism was a kind of hypnosis based on the theory of animal magnetism. With its spiritual associations and uncanny effects, it was an extremely controversial topic in the nineteenth century and its practitioners were widely considered fraudsters. Townshend describes in detail the mental states Mesmerism induces, which he identifies as similar to a state of sleepwalking. Perhaps most fascinating are the eye-witness accounts describing experiments carried out by Townshend on the continent, in which he hypnotised his subjects into feeling his own sensations and knowing things they could not know.

For most of his life a clerk in the post office, Frank Podmore (1856–1910) was a prolific author on psychical research. As an undergraduate Podmore became interested in spiritualism, and he joined the British National Association of Spiritualists. Eventually disillusioned by that society, Podmore co-founded several organisations: the Progressive Association (in 1882); the Fellowship of the New Life (1883); and, spurred by his desire to see political change, the Fabian Society (1884). Podmore's membership in the Society for Psychical Research influenced his activities and interests, and he spent the next twenty years investigating and writing on psychical phenomena. Podmore's two-volume Modern Spiritualism (also reissued in this series) is a source for this 1909 work, which 'constituted the most scholarly history of mesmerism and its offshoots to that date', according to one reviewer. This work will interest historians of science and medicine, and scholars of Victorian religious movemen