MESMERISM IN LONDON.

Mesmerism (?)

MussuMMAT Ntjnnee, aged 24years?a Kurmee by caste? ?was admitted into hospital on the 1st March, 1872. History.?She states she was married about twelve years ago, but did not go to her husband's house for two years afterwards. The first time she went, she remained well and hearty in his house for about eight days, and then tell into an insensible state, in which she remained for two or three da...

Mesmerism, Galvanism and Quackery

Elizabeth Gaskell and mesmerism: an unpublished letter.

The work of Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) is not often seen as a source for the student of medical history. However, the picture of her as a undemanding writer dealing primarily with domestic life found in Lord David Cecil's Early Victorian novelists' has now largely been replaced by an approach that recognizes her engagement with the wider social issues of mid-nineteenth century England. Criti...

Dickens and mesmerism. The hidden springs of fiction

An early nineteenth century absorption-based theory of mesmerism.

In 1844, an obscure and little-remembered American theorist, A. Yorke (no further identification is available), published a theory of mesmerism based on absorption, i.e., mental concentration. Unlike Mesmer's conceptualization of animal magnetism as a biological fluid, however, Yorke's theory emphasized the psychological importance of the mutual interaction between mesmerist and subject. This p...